The world is extremely competitive. If you want to succeed, good grades are the way to do it. At least this is what I grew up believing. A drive to gain people’s approval turned the process of learning into an attempt to never fail. Failure didn’t really feel like an option. Why would someone purposely choose to fail?
When failure doesn’t seem like an option, we tend to become more risk-averse. Not just in grades, but in anything we are uncomfortable with. The often-quoted proverb “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, along with the parable of “Thomas Edison having failed 1000 times before (not) inventing the light bulb”, are insignificant if our world revolves around good grades.
A System Level Issue
It’s very easy to dismiss my claim by stating the obvious. Everyone uses grades/GPA to evaluate success and so should you. Change usually doesn’t come from following the status quo, but let’s look at our system.
We get good grades so that we can get into a good college. We then proceed to work on our GPA so that we can signal to employers that we’re a good enough bet to have them part with their money. We take standardized tests, mid-terms, and final exams, all with the intention of trying to get the highest score possible. Because we know those numbers go everywhere.
We even have to take them to the visa interview when applying to study abroad.
Do they work?
Of course they work! There have to be good reasons for using grades in our evaluation systems. It’s an incredibly simple and quick way of attaching a number to someone. If you’re about to bet on something, you want to know the probability of getting a good payout.
The intention is that those numbers tell us everything in just a few digits. But just like any metric, grades are susceptible to failure.
- Grades offer a goal for students. They ensure students can get quick feedback about their progress and adjust accordingly. We believe that without grades, stuents won’t be motivated. Maybe that should already be an indication that we’re not approaching learning correctly if we need to hold a carrot in front of students throughout their lives.
- Use to distinguish students from one another. This just reeks of toxic competitiveness. Competition is vital for growth. Rivals help push us further, and give us those boosts of motivation we need. But when the students (especially young students) get continuously ranked by their grades, they come to associate their worth and the worth of others with this number.
- A single numerical value that helps indicate the potential of the student. Colleges will use your highschool grades as an indication of persistent hardwork. In reality, what it signals is the ability of the student to play the exam game.
- Grades are an early way to teach students about recovering from failure. Personally, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Striving to achieve good grades quickly turns into a fear of failure. A fear of disappointing those who always expect the best. A fear of disassociating from our identity.
A Missed Opportunity
Looking back, I think it wasn’t until college that I started to realize that I actually enjoyed learning, and that worrying about grades was holding me from exploring. Even now I wish I had taken more risks at college.
Grades are good for measurement and assessment, but a system built around grades ensures that we optimize for grades, not learning.
I think its especially true where I grew up in Pakistan, where to get good grades, and one-up other students, it became expected that rote memorization was the way to get ahead. Sure it might have symbolized hard work for those with poor memory skills, but it didn’t really achieve anything.
It’s understandable that school is temporary, and the idea that students need to be prepared for the next stage, requires being set up for success. My argument is that those who go on to be successful, not just in getting a good job, but also enjoying their career, maximizing their potential, are those who learn when to stop trying to let grades be tied to their identity.
Colleges (at least in the US) care less about GPA and standardized scores than one might think. They want intellectual people who show passion, grit, and curiosity. Even potential employers are likely to not care about your GPA. Perhaps the culture in some companies and groups still give high weightage to GPAs. It’s highly unlikely those are the companies which bring out the best innovation from people.
Ofcourse exams which are needed to demonstrate sufficient knowledge to practice high-stake careers like medicine, law, civil engineering etc. are necessary. But the pursuit of grades uptil those exams really isn’t.
Grades have a place in this world. Just on a much lower pedestal.