I can totally relate to your post and frustrations with grades. I also agree with Kohn’s in “how motivation through grades can undermine the true purpose of learning”. But the one time I had a class where we had to justify the grade we earned and I said obviously an A but I ended with an A- and I got really annoyed. Also, this was in grad school so it was definitely an interesting experience. I thought I had backed up my answer enough and if anything I think everyone in the class deserved an A. So now I feel that I rather just get a grade than get the option to say what grade you think you earned and then getting something else back….

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It was nice to read your post and all your thoughts are super relatable. I agree, I too got caught up in the addiction of grades in high school and the beginning of college. There have to be more productive ways of assessing a students understanding than assigning points or tiering one student above another.

I really liked your post! your personal experience regarding how one should compromise his/her learning goals based on a cost-benefit sort of analysis meshes well with what some of the critics of grading are concerned about. It seems we (as both students and teachers) are trained to be worried solely about the grades (and at deeper level degrees) to an extent that sometimes we really cannot describe the reason behind a number of our academic choices! Unfortunately this trend does not seem to be limited to a few number of nations!

I’m going to speculate (!?) that taking the test helped reinforce the recollection. By taking the test, people re-engaged with the content of the article, thus integrating more solidly into their working memory.

Thank you for your post. You included many important points regarding how we all are skeptical towards grade-free education since it has engraved in us that grades are the best tools for measuring learning objectives. Like many other internalized values, we seldom question our beliefs about grading and how it can be detrimental to creativity and learning itself. I really appreciate that you brought this point up, because many of us are not brave enough to be as self-reflective!

“grades are a long outdated sorting tool” I love that line. That’s exactly what it is, it’s a way of classifying students in tiers measured by arbitrarily assigned points. None of this actually gets at someone’s understanding or comprehension of material or ability to critically interact with the material they are being taught. The idea that all of it is just for the students survival and to get through the material is pretty depressing too.

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I think that some care and some don’t. But from my experiences so far, letter grades and scores still prevail. I’m also thinking that they may care more about feedback if an opportunity to redo an assignment is available.

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So do I! I killed myself through all these 23 years to get A+ in all courses I have taken, however, when I come back I rarely remember those that I loaded into my brain and unloaded them in the exam. I agree that this is our responsibility as future instructors to change the grade-oriented to the learning-oriented educational system. But how? This is not clear to me how we should facilitate this change.

I completely agree with the points you emphasized in this blog. First of all, yes, I blog or comment for the grade. But this is because I grew up in the grade -oriented educational system and learned to compete for grades which significantly degrade creativity and deep learning. But you asked good questions about why we should change it and why we did not change it from the 1930s or how we want to change it. I also can see the naivety in learning-oriented learning and how the learning will be assessed in this system?

I’ve heard about pink time from others in my department but have never experienced it for myself. From how you and others describe it, I too would most likely do something that I would’ve needed to do at any other point of my day or week. I think graduate students are good at self-motivation but maybe not good at stepping outside of our programs and academic fields? Also maybe not applying imagination to things that are required for class. I think once you set requirements and parameters on something that is meant to be a different learning strategy, the fun is gone from it. These are just my random thoughts.