I had been keeping all of my blogs in a notebook which I would write just before I went to bed, and haven't found the time to put it on the internet because my computer has been in and out of commission. However, I wrote a blog about my high school and saw recently that Michelle Webb had posted a question regarding what possible alternatives to grading there was, and I talk about this a little in the blog I wrote prior to.
I came from a charter school where we didn't have grades or tests, so as you can imagine, adjusting to college (especially when I am used to 60 people in the entire senior class) was awkward. My high school's catch phrase was that public schools prepare you for college but Parker (my school) prepares you for life. I absolutely agree with this. How do we benefit from being graded = and more over, being ranked! What good can come from ranking? For those that score high, they will encounter unimaginable pressure to maintain such a status and those that rank low will lose any and all self-esteem. My roommate was in a bad mood the other day because she's nervous that she will not graduate with a high enough GPA. A GPA should not be a reflection of your intelligence. I would never want my intelligence represented by a mere number. For this I get frustrated. It feels silly to me that the only reason I work so hard on projects is to see a number hopefully close to 100. This should not be our motivation. In my high school we always had the ability to revise our work and LEARN from our mistakes!! This is absolutely imperative to learning.
My question has already been stated several times, but how do we benefit from grades and class ranks?