A Powerful Number

A Powerful Number

"How did you do at school?" "Well, I got an ok grade, sure will pass!"

Sounds familiar? Indeed, we stopped asking our friends if they are happy at school or what was learned, but how good their grades are. The final goal of learning is to get good grades, lots of them. Nothing else matters anymore.

Is this the education we long for?

Companies and graduate schools judge candidates by grades. Parents and teachers use grades to evaluate students' performances, and students grasp the idea that the essence of schooling is the powerful number on their transcripts. At the end of the day, your grade is the only thing you got on a piece of paper. It is the result of the Final Judgment. It is the number counts for everything.

Grading system can also mislead teaching. Teachers focus on the important parts and left out other parts. Their aim is to help students getting good grades so teachers have a better evaluation, too. On the other hand, grading also became a threat from teachers or a tool for teachers to find students' flaws. With influences as such, grading made schooling a competition and schooling lost its purpose.

School is a place for us to learn and grow, but with the influence of grading, students cheat or plagiarize. Students would do everything just to get good grades. How about applying the knowledge in real life? "No thanks, I just need it for my exam. A good grade, that's all I need" The learning process is ignored, the outcome determines everything.

Same condition, students who are good at exams can also be wasted because of their good grades. Majority consider degree is so important so that they don't know what else to do with themselves aside from being a student, getting one after another degree. They are buried alive in endless exams and schooling. The only meaning of this is to be somehow qualified, not about what has been leaned.

Pathetic, isn't it? There's more. While the bright ones passing exams and scoring their meaningless trophies, students who are not so bright but with passion to learn can lose their chance to learn simply because their grades aren't as pretty as the smart one.

How sad is that? We let numbers determinate who we are, and how valuable we are. People ignore how trivial exams can be, the dimension of exams be problematic, or may be teacher's teaching should be revaluated. No. I only want to see a grades, end of story. But what if students had discomfort or emergency during exams and can this one grade still help us to see him objectively?

Don't get me wrong, I do not against grading and exams. It is the invaluable ones I am disgust of. Exams views as an indication about how the new policy or program is going or whether the program is worth doing, for