Grades vs Education

[Blake the Heretic]

I teach lab courses at a University (my second university as a Teaching Assistant) and I have a friend at the same university who teaches introductory English/writing courses and this is a topic he and I have had many a good rant on, because students clearly value grades over the education that the grades are supposed to reflect.

An example is the flood of students that any given instructor will get at the end of the semester asking one of 3 things:
1) Is there any extra credit I can do?
2) I thought my grade was higher than that, are you sure you recorded this correctly?
3) I really want an A (or B+ or whatever), I worked really hard and think I deserve it.

The answers to these questions are:
1) You should worry less about "extra" credit and do more to get the regular credit. Don't ask for extra.

2) If a grade was recorded incorrectly, that is a legitimate concern but often the mistake is nonexistent or is one where a grade was incorrectly entered but has no net effect on the course grade because the change was minimal.

3) The grade you get is the grade you earned (unless the instructor grades as forgiving as I do, then your grade is actually already inflated), don't ask for a better grade. I am not here to pad your GPA, I am here to help you learn. That is the important bit here, HELP YOU LEARN.


What do you people think? Is there too much emphasis on grades in the education system? (this may primarily apply to the US)

I think it's the fact that the generation that is currently going through college if full of a bunch of self entitled brats.

I partially agree. I don't know if self-entitled and lazy go hand in hand, but my college experience was laziness. I'm full of regret now, but 18 year old me was super lazy about school. So I can imagine laziness being a motivator for failure in schools.

At the same time, it really doesn't excuse the complete lack of education in public schools, or the greed of colleges anymore. You have to gain a mountain of debt just to get started at a fairly average job. so you spend years at college, then you spend even more years attempting to pay back your debt.

[bennyboy]

I can imagine laziness being a motivator . . .

I'm not sure if you can be motivated to do nothing. I think we're talking about a lack of motivation, here.

For my two cents, dread is an excellent motivator. People think their recent ancestors, and almost every teacher in the past 5000 years, were being unnecessarily cruel for using corporal punishment. However, is smugly sitting back and thinking how wonderful it is that we are "more understanding and compassionate" a good substitute for success and accomplishment? I'm not sure that America, as liberal as it is (I mean libertarian, not big-L "Liberal"), is setting a shining example for the merits of watching kids be lazy douches and just letting it persist because you don't want to hurt their little feelings.