Finals week has (finally) come, which can only mean one thing: Let the bitching about schoolwork commence. Not that you haven’t been doing that all term.
Personally, I have come to the conclusion that the University system makes absolutely no sense. Students pay teachers to educate us, yet they are then allowed to tell us how much we’re learning. The whole situation seems akin to a boss paying her employee to clean toilets and the employee turning around and telling the employer how much she is or isn’t happy with the cleaning job. If I’m paying someone to do my housekeeping, I’ll be the one to tell the receiver of my hard-earned money exactly how well they did. Shouldn’t it be the same with education?
We are currently paying a large amount of money to attend this University and receive an education. If I have paid to be taught something, shouldn’t there be a repercussion for the teacher rather than, or at least as well as, the student when knowledge has not been taught?
Although teachers cannot be responsible for the self-failings of their students, it still seems unfair that they are allowed to judge how much a particular student is learning. I pay the teacher to teach me, and then I get slapped with the label of failure if the teacher deems that I haven’t learned the correct information?
I think many students have been part of a class in which they became exposed to important educational material and gained wonderful skills of analysis and understanding, however, their grade on a midterm or final did not necessarily reflect this education. A situation like this is the ultimate spit in the face: Students have paid someone to teach them, they have been taught, but an arbitrary grade makes it seem as though this learning never occurred. Their newfound education is not recognized, and they have, in essence, paid money to be told that they are idiots. If I want to be told that I’m an idiot, I could just get drunk and leave embarrassing messages on the phone machines of attractive men — for free.
Then there is the constant fountain of stress, emerging from that oh-so-reviled spigot of essays, quizzes and final projects. There seems to be an assumption that stress is the best way to facilitate learning. People willing to admit this underlying assumption would rightly be told to go sit in a corner and think about what they just said. Stress usually leads to two things: Procrastination, because stress makes every assignment more daunting than it actually is, and poor work as a result of this procrastination.
Eliminating the system of grading would surely do away with both of these problems. Suddenly, the purpose of schoolwork will be to garner knowledge, rather than to gain an artificial mark of how much learning one had achieved. Instead of concern about the symbol of achievement, achievement itself will be most prized. Stress in students will be significantly lessened once work is being done for reasons of personal satisfaction. Although some may argue that grades in college are essential to determining that the hardest workers are accepted to graduate school, perhaps a decrease of focus on grades will actually lead to more fair admission policies. Time not spent calculating grades could be used by teachers to write recommendations for the students who have truly shown the ability to work hard and be motivated to educate themselves.
This columnist understands that a world without grades is a fantasy utopia, populated by over-enthused learners who work hard not out of fear but out of excitement for their own continued education. Reality might instead yield a slew of frustrated students and teachers, not giving or receiving the education they deserve because of low expectations on the part of the university system as a whole. But, just maybe, removing our current system of grading would lead to classrooms of a higher caliber. Students who work hardest would be surrounded by similarly ambitious and intelligent peers; as for teachers, their time could be spent concentrating on exceptional students who want to learn, rather than wasting resources grading the sub-par work of students who didn’t care enough to do a good job in the first place.

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