Should High School Students Get Good Grades

Chuck Grassley once said, "What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school, but a different way of looking at the world and learning." (brainy quote.com). Growing up in an atmosphere where education is strictly based on getting good grades takes away from the actual learning experience that people are supposed to receive while in a classroom. It starts from youth where the fear of not getting a grade that is considered suitable can be very daunting to youth while trying to understand the world around them, through the use of an education system. In fact many times, it can cause students to go into states of clinical depression, where they become so overworked by a grade they didn't receive, rather than focusing …show more content…
To the psychological development of a person, this can be very detrimental to their growth patterns. Hard tasks such as an intensive math problem or an essay prompt that might be difficult to respond to give students the problem solving skills needed to progress in a professional environment. By taking that away, students are always trying to find the easiest way out of a problem. Kohn validates this with explaining, "The more pressure to get an A, the less inclination to truly challenge oneself. Thus, students who cut corners may not be lazy so much as rational; they are adapting to an environment where good grades, not intellectual exploration, are what count." (alfiekohn.org). Furthermore this type of thinking is what causes an individual to stay in a place in life that is not suitable for evolving into a greater individual, rather than looking at school as a positive challenge that is helping them to become a better version of themselves. By applying grades into this type of school environment, students start to become lazy and expect that there is an easy way out in order to get the grade that they wanted. So they take school less seriously and focus on the grade rather than the larger picture that is their overall …show more content…
Given that students may lose interest in what they're learning as a result of grades, it makes sense that they're also apt to think less deeply." (alfiekohn.org). For a person to lose quality in their thinking patterns, takes away from their their overall human experience on Earth. Humans are biologically the most advanced creatures on the planet as far as brain patterns go. We are made of an intelligent design, because we have the ability to not just simply communicate, but rather do it on an extraordinarily advanced level. For a person to slowly lose the desire to think in an advanced fashion, puts us back in our overall growth into the later stages of life. Kohn validates this idea further by discussing, "One series of studies, for example, found that students given numerical grades were significantly less creative than those who received qualitative feedback but no grades. The more the task required creative thinking, in fact, the worse the performance of students who knew they were going to be graded." (alfiekohn.org). The grades in the case of this example created an effect in the students that caused them to have a lack of interest in thinking creatively. Whereas the students that knew there was no grade, felt the need to excel for their own