Are Grades Necessary for Learning?

Some words on the Use of Grades these days...Inspired from the video segments found on Larry Ferlazzo's blog


After watching the first excerpt from The Daniel Pink interview, I felt I could totally relate to Pink's beliefs about how grades end up being the reason for going to school. He got straight A's in his 6 years of learning the French Language, but he admitted his inability to speak French today. I had only 3 years of Spanish classes, but I too can say I have little knowledge on how to speak the language. I agree that grades are a form of performance expectations that, if met, do not necessarily relate to the meeting learning expectations.

If we took grades out of the equation I totally feel that students would be better off. I would expect that students would learn more as well. The stress of grades, on BOTH students and teachers, make the learning process harder than it needs to be.

Pink also says on the second chopped YouTube video that he feels that Science (and I'm assuming Math too!) is too much presented as a bunch of facts rather than being built around inquiry. This hit to the core of me and to what I have been thinking about recently as I approach the end of my schooling to become a mathematics teacher. I think about how all the content of our math and science textbooks came to be known. I think about how many generations of curious humans were out there when they thought about and wondered why the world we live in works. People have the brain capacity for wonder and empathy. We as teachers need to foster these abilities in our kids. The way I think about it, the ones who didn't have the textbook growing up were the lucky ones. The Newtons, the Einsteins, the Pythagoreans, the Aristotles (I can go on forever) of the world were the lucky ones. Because they all experienced "Ah-Ha!" moments in their lives. Its a shame to have our kids learn these beautiful subjects without letting them experience "Ah-Ha!" moments. We don't have to have them invent crazy math formulas for this to happen either. Just a little bit of time for student-centered exploration will do the trick.