A Young Person's Guide to the Grading System

“What does the grading system do for learning?” is a doubtful question that Jerry Farber, a professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University gives to the readers at the very first paragraph on his article, “A Young Person’s Guide to the Grading System”. For some reasons, he states that grades only focus students attention on the test itself; he suggests that students only push themselves to learn as far as the test is on the way and what they have after taken the test is irrelevant. According to Farber, academic success is something that students’ measure not in knowledge but in grade points; however, grades do not make students want to enrich their minds; they just make students want to please the teachers. He also notes that learning happens only when people want to know; for examples, people still spend time to learn how to drive, to talk, to play chess, to play guitar, to dance or find the way around a new city without being graded. Further, he believes that grading system is not the best way to determine a person’s qualifications, he points out what bad about this system, which is students’ record will get hurt if they do not pass the class or get bad grade on it. So that is the reason why he provides the Credit system; if you meet the minimum requirements of a course, you get credit for it, and if you do not meet the requirements, you do not get credit for it, nothing else happens.

After all, Farber’s points are grading system has destroyed students’ motivation to learn and learning is meaningful only when students have a strong desire that they wanted to learn. First, grading system does not help students to motivate their learning because with no willing or wanting to learn, students will never get it straight. And if they are lucky and pass a subject, it does not mean that they have learned anything from it. Secondly, learning only happens when people want to know. Regarding to a real life, people spend a lot of time and even...