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Grades and academic pressure have been affecting more and more students each year. Many young people struggle with handling the stress from taking AP classes, taking the SATs multiple times in search of the highest possible score, and pulling all-nighters, which will lead to their mental health worsening in many cases.
Mainly, students tend to stress a lot in high school, taking all kinds of classes with college credits and retaking SATs multiple times in order to simply be able to apply to college. Therefore, all the struggles that a high school student faces during their entire school career are being tolerated to get into college and get their career going, starting in high school.
Another important aspect of this matter is the teacher’s perspective. Mr. Ziser, a history teacher at Coronado, thinks that “While there remains clear evidence of strong correlation between early academic success… financial and corporeal health, there are emerging more and more examples of exceptions to the hegemony and assumed relevance of our education system.” Nevertheless, Mr. Ziser admits to still seeing grades as a main objective regarding a high schooler’s “ability to work hard, plan, meet deadlines, and express their thinking.”
As for students, Lucy Robbins, Class of 2024, says, that “to an extent grades do represent our base knowledge of a subject.” However, that does not mean that “one should not just look at grades for intelligence because while someone may have gotten a bad score on a test they may have studied and worked very hard,” and that grades cannot represent one’s work ethic. Lucy added, “I believe work ethic is very admirable and shows just how dedicated a person can be to school.”
Most people might agree that grading system is the most effective way of assessing a high school student’s ability to work in a classroom setting and understand and memorize huge amounts of information. However, the question we should be asking ourselves as a society is that is it really the best we can do for the kids and educators, or is there an alternative system of grading high school students in the way that separates their self-worth from the academic success?
