Grading: The Issue Is Not How, but Why, Essay Example

All the time during our studies, we face ‘grading’ over and over again. We are certain that our grades make us professionals in what we learn and clearly reflect our progress. But is it really the point? Have you ever thought about why teachers grade us? In my speech would like to present an article of Alfie Kohn, an independent scholar in the fields of education, parenting, and human behavior. He brings up an important issue of education administration and expediency of student assessment. He clearly defines three different levels of approaches to assessment, and then uses them to explain sorting, motivation, and feedback grading rationales. Consequently he comes up with the demand and support models, which incorporate different approaches to student assessment.

There are three levels of approaches to assessment, which tend to doubt the consistency of current grading system as they go along. On the fist level he discusses the practical issue of grading, for students must receive some grades for what they do. On the second level he questions traditional grading as the way to assess students’ performance. Then Kohn judges teachers’ objectionable attitude towards student assessment.

In order to explain how those apply, Kohn provides three grading rationales: sorting, motivation, and feedback. For sorting, he claims that the whole grading system is designed to sort out and label students “like so many potatoes”. Thus, he questions whether grades are reliable enough to accurately ‘sort’ the students. He also questions the motivational approach, saying that students, who have been made to think about their grade as a reward for the task, tend to perform lower than those who are not expecting to get anything at all. Another interesting point is feedback, for it appears that grades do not provide students with any feedback on the work performed, but merely end up to be ‘letters on the paper’. A teacher may evaluate a student’s literature paper in terms of personal objective opinion, but it doesn’t mean that it was bad if it received poor grade. It appears that it is more important not only to demand something from students, but guide and stimulate their natural proclivity to explore what is unfamiliar and come up with their own understanding. The argument that was raised in this article is that system of grading is very unjust and it may promote complexes and psychological insecurities in students.

So I can draw a conclusion that the basic drive for the creation and launch of different grading systems – helping students to internalize and work toward meeting high standards – is beneficial in its origin. But the methods by which grades are distributed and how they are perceived – as rewards and punishments – is absolutely false and not motivating. It’s like Campbell stated that grading systems turn schools into “bargain-basement personnel screening agencies for business”.