Students focus on grades rather than learning

Prof/Walid El-Gohary

English supervisor

As the school year comes to an end, students are scrambling to fix their grades. It is obvious that the students put more effort into passing or getting good grades than taking in the material taught by their teachers. Students are reminded constantly that their grades represent how well they do in school and often forget the true purpose of an education: to learn.

Blaming the kids, however, would be unfair, seeing as to how they are only adapting to the circumstances set by school staff and parents who also play a big role in students losing sight of the true purpose of school.

Many students argue that grades do not determine their intelligence, claiming that the students who get good grades aren’t necessarily the smartest.

“You can cheat your way out of school and your grades will show you that you’re the smartest person or whatever but are you really? No. But it doesn’t matter right

Teachers will focus on students memorizing material for such tests, rather than students actually learning it. Throughout the school year, teachers will say, “This is important, it will be on the TEST.” Just like grades, a standardized test doesn’t really show how capable you are. A standardized test is a way for colleges to see how well students will do compared to students at other schools. Many students, however,  have a hard time handling the pressure of tests and grades while balancing other things outside of school.

“Standardized tests create stress.  Some kids do well with a certain level of stress.  Other students fold.  So, again, there isn’t a level playing field.  Brain research suggests that too much stress is psychologically and physically harmful,” writes Thomas Armstrong, the executive director at the American Institute for Learning and Human Development

Many argue that this issue goes beyond the walls of the classroom and starts at home. Parents are quick to encourage their children to get good grades and test scores, forgetting that grades do not define their children’s intelligence.

“Schools are for showing off, not for learning.  When we enroll our children in school, we enroll them into a never ending series of contests—to see who is best, who can get the highest grades, the highest scores on standardized tests, win the most honors, make it into the most advanced placement classes, get into the best colleges,”.

 Gray, a research professor at Boston College, explains how parents take pride in their children getting good scores in school, ultimately fearing that bad grades and scores reflect bad parenting.

“We see those grades and hoops jumped through as measures not only of our children, but also of ourselves as parents. We find ways, subtly or not so subtly, to brag about them to our friends and relatives,” Gray writes.

Parents will go as far as to issuing punishments for their kids to get better grades, adding to pressure for students to get good grades.

“I want to get good grades to make my parents proud and make everything they worked hard for worth it. When I don’t get good grades, I feel bad because I’m letting my parents and everyone who supports me down,” said one of the top students in the class of 2018.

Ultimately, students are not to blame for their concern of good grades and test scores. After all, they are only adapting to the system set in place for schools and education institutions around the country.

“When students cheat on exams, it’s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.” No one sentence rings truer or clearer about the status of education than that single quote.

Thirst for a letter grade has always far exceeded the thirst for actual knowledge. Complacence has always triumphed over true endeavors. Hollow titles such as “valedictorian” or even “2018 Star″ have always held a dearer spot in students’ hearts than the search for passions, which make life worthwhile.

Ask a student what their GPA is. Ask them what their class rank is. Ask them what prestigious college they got into. Then, ask them what their passion is. Ask them about their career choices. Dig into the details and find what truly lights their heart on fire. A select few will immediately light up and talk about their love for creating music, their desire to help people through medicine, their passion for crafting poems eyes may never see. However, the large majority will never answer with a spark in their eye.

Dig deeper and ask them about stuff they’ve learned in class in the previous semesters. A lot of students have no idea what they’ve learned if they’re not having to use that knowledge. I know if you asked me about chemistry right now, I’d probably have a hard time giving you a sufficient answer.

While I certainly consider it OK to sometimes forget things, it seems like we forget everything. We barely glide through high school. Somehow, through sheer brute force work, we have conned our way into a four-year college and graduation. Moreover, what’s really concerning is that we are supposed to be the “top of our class,” the “best and brightest.”

After you’ve asked the students all these questions, look at where these questions have led you. For the vast majority of students, they’ve made it through classes where they don’t remember anything they’ve learned to achieve hollow titles that then allow them to go to a college where they are supposed to be groomed to chase after their life’s passion — a passion that is virtually nonexistent, because their entire high school life, they have just been chasing their tail to get into college in the first place.

Personally, I respect any person who makes it their life’s work to teach anyone, especially teenagers. Teenagers are a rowdy bunch and, often, when life gets in the way, it’s hard to be an inspiration to teenagers every single day, year in and year out. At a certain point, you just want to prepare them for the exams and make sure you’ve covered everything you need to cover.

I’ve seen many bright and capable students who could easily achieve greatness with some effort prey on the kindness of teachers instead of actually putting in the necessary work. In my personal experience, I know of students who would purposely take a very, very long time on tests and say they needed extra time to complete it. The teacher would ask them to come in and finish it later, maybe after school or the next morning.

These students, the ones who search constantly in vain for titles to justify the hard work they’ve put in, would then take advantage of the teacher’s kindness and find the answers to all the questions on the test online, then come back in to finish the test with all the answers memorized. Some students would even lay out of class then have their friend tell them the essay prompt from the test so they would be prepared for it when they would come in to take it the next day.

In another case, a teacher would have students turn in homework at the beginning of class to a tray and then, after most students had turned in their work, a few dishonest students would pull out a completed assignment from the stack, copy the answers off it onto their own papers and return the original paper plus their own to the pile. Hilariously, to my knowledge, the person they copied off of was actually ranked lower in the class than the main ones doing the cheating.

Each of these students I referenced previously barely participated in anything academic outside of school, though they had ample opportunity to do so. Then, as the final testament to the system we have created, they got into the exact same colleges and programs as the students from the same school who didn’t cheat their way to the top. Those involved in starting and cultivating their own personal academic pursuits, those heavily involved in academics outside of school, ended up getting accepted to the exact same level of college as those who had conned their way there.

There isn’t exactly one person to blame. Teachers bemoan the system but answer to the principal’s demands. The principal does the same but answers to the superintendent, and you can honestly just keep going until you realize that no one really wants to be in the place we are now. The students can only do so much on their own, and they need guidance from those who have made it their life’s work to give them that guidance. Many teachers, though, are simply burned out on trying to be the inspirational, amazing teachers you see in the movies, and the students, still motivated to get into a good school and receive prestigious scholarships, have fallen into the path of least resistance as they pretend to learn things to make it out ahead of everyone else.

I encourage teachers to be models for upright, moral, thoughtful, lifelong learners and seek to inspire each student that way. Those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge, create art for the sake of art and reach further than their teachers ever expected them to are a dying breed. Teachers, principals and school systems as a whole should take it upon themselves to make this dying breed a new standard within schools, not an outlier.