What’s in a Grade?

Since the time I began teaching, I was told of the wonders of the highly motivated student – the one who constantly strives to get the best grade. This is the student that knows the most and wants to know more. This is the student that offsets the ambivalent, disengaged one who clutters up the roll sheet and drags down the class as a whole. This is the student who will go on to achieve the greatest of all of his or her peers. As a teacher, I have many students who could be classified as highly motivated. However, the extent to which I treasure these students has waned over the years.

My attitude towards these students is never personal – it is professional. However, I have taught these students for sixteen years in high school, including three years at a local community college. In that time, I’ve come to understand the danger of these students. In Matthew 6:24, it reads that, “No man can serve two masters…Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” So it is with students. One can either achieve for knowledge or achieve for an “A” but one cannot do both.

The pursuit of knowledge is compromised by the government officials that seek test scores as affirmations of success. It is undermined by the school officials who stress that all of their children are headed to college – and certainly should be. It is undermined by parents who stress a letter as the highest level of achievement of their child. It is undermined by the teacher who constantly re-affirms that the grade is the most important goal. Lastly, it is undermined by the student who places their effort to achieve a letter over their effort to better understand something.

I teach Advanced Placement World and U.S. History classes. I have the grade-mongering students who will pore over the terms for each unit in preparation for a unit exam. In the interim, they will read and I will discuss the context – the history – of which the terms are a part. When I write up a test, I pose questions based on the terms but occasionally, as an experiment, I will ask questions based on the terms within the context. Because the grade-mongers see only the terms as the path to success on the unit exam, that is all they study and they will not go beyond. Therefore, they will nail the fact-based questions using information of the terms but to talk about the terms in context, they fail and are frustrated every time. The goal is not to completely understand the information but to learn what is needed to make a passing grade. The gaps in their knowledge are even more evident when I hold conversations for a test grade. My feeling is if they can carry on a five- to ten-minute conversation with me on a particular subject, then they know the information. They seldom show such knowledge. It is not a pursuit of knowledge these kids are concerned with; it is the perversion of the pursuit of knowledge of which they are guilty.

A colleague of mine and I have given much thought to what should be in place of grades. It is not enough to say, “We are not going to hand out grades.” At the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, they have a place called the “sweat room.” It is here that students await for their time in front of a panel where they will justify their earning credit for a particular field of study. Likewise, we would like to create a school where a student earns a “passing” or “failing” grade by speaking with a panel of three teachers and having to defend their knowledge. It is much more challenging and more comprehensive a process than the current grading system. On a practical level, this type of model is not conducive to the school system in its current form. Changes would have to be made. At present, as my colleague and good friend is fond of saying, high schools today are simply tools for universities and businesses – we help them by categorizing and labeling students to their benefit.

To some extent, it is not the kids’ fault. The blame lies with the government officials, the school leaders, the teachers and the parents. We are raising a generation of people chasing success and not chasing knowledge. There are those, both in and out of education, who have boiled the pursuit of knowledge down to future occupation or wage-earnings and I can’t think of a more depressing thought. The more we come up with fancy computer programs or various initiatives to find a way to motivate our kids to embrace the cult of success, the less knowledgeable they will become. Socrates worried about the student who depended upon outside sources as a means of knowledge and complained about those who, “will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”