A Proposal to Abolish Grading

In every education system, grading and testing are done simultaneously so as teachers and lectures can know the capabilities of their students and whether they have assimilated what have been taught and used effectively.

Most of universities and higher learning institutions as prerequisite of students admission is being tested before granted admission, the system help the universities assessing applicants’ capabilities in correspondence to their applications.

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The grading system which is conducted after certain amount of academic units covered of students respective courses or subjects, apart from assessing students’ capabilities, also assist them in studying especially for lazy students. When students know that there will be grading for the tests they are going to do, definitely they are going to study hard for it.

I tend to differ with Paul Goodman in his proposal to abolish grading as the notion has been much effective for quite some time and has helped most of students scoring good grades even though they were lazy. But to Paul Goodman, who proposed the abolishment of grading take this as bullying students as he argues that “Many students are lazy, so teachers try to goad or threaten them by grading. In the long run this must do more harm than good.”(Paul Goodman, Mis-Education, 1971).

Nevertheless, grading system assist in discovering people weaknesses being students or applicants to the higher learning. Through grading students can be able to spot their weaknesses in accordance with the type of grades they get either low or high. If low then students have an opportunity of knowing how to correct it so as to improve their grades, hence becoming knowledgeable.

Despite the good intention the system has, there are setbacks that have been spotted by Paul Goodman as he argues that “But if the aim is to discover weakness, what is the point of down-grading and punishing it, and thereby inviting the student to conceal his weakness, by faking and bullying, if not cheating?”(Paul Goodman, Mis-Education, 1971).

In conclusion, even though students might cheat during their assignments, yet they will be working hard in the tests and examinations which will help them study. Grading and testing system still assist students to learn more through the performance of their grades.

Reference:

Goodman Paul, ‘A proposal to abolish grading’, Mis-Education, (1971), Chapter 10, John Wiley New York

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