Death Penalty

Re Rebecca Fuentes

English 101

June 10, 2011

Jun

Believing and Doubting Grades Are An Effective Means of Motivating Students To Do Their Best Work

Believe

Motivation is what gets you going, keeps you going, and where you’re going. I do believe that grades are an effective motivation. Grading sends the message to students that the goal is to learn the material and retain it. Students with good grades usually see rewards for their accomplishments such as verbal/written praise, privileges, monetary awards, and exemption from assignments. In my experience, the rewards pushed me even harder to achieve good grades--to the point that I took risks; failure was not an option. In my family, we were required to have good grades and we were encouraged to do so but if we failed, we were put on restriction until the grades came up, which put a lot of pressure on us to succeed and do out best. It felt, at times, that we were pressured to be perfect; a lot of anxiety but a healthy form of anxiety. It seems, these days, that educational policies are aimed at easing the obstacles to learning and graduation which results in teachers lowering their expectations and students’ reducing their efforts. Academic achievement is no longer a prerequisite to go to college; any student who wants to go to college should not be denied the opportunity do matter what their level of achievement is. Lowering the standards of achievement will not solve the problem of motivating students to do their best; it will just have students exert only enough effort to meet the minimum criteria for the class. Some students love school--they think it’s interesting or easy. Other students hate school--they find it boring or difficult. Teachers have moved to using rewards as motivation; this is not effective for long-term goals as students begin to focus on the reward instead of focusing on learning and achieving. But, don’t colleges offer monetary awards for GPA and SAT scores,...