The Emphasis with Education

by Nathan Kistler

There are problems with the American educational system that stem from the fact that Americans have lost sight of what education should be like. Education is about providing knowledge, not evaluating students, but our culture, has diminished the importance of learning and retaining knowledge, and has placed an inordinately high value on how well a student performs in terms of grades. This can be seen by how “test taking strategies” have gradually worked their way into the classroom and are now commonplace. This detracts from the total time that is spent teaching students the facts they should glean from their respective classes.

It is obvious that grades serve a greatly important part in our society. One important system in our society is the university system. Grades are the major consideration for acceptance into universities. Application essays are better indicators of a student’s knowledge when compared with grades, because the student can directly present their abilities, rather than indirectly through their grades. The application essays are used only as a secondary source for decisions about applications, when they should have more weight. Employers will hire applicants based on what certificates and degrees applicants have, which is frequently a derivative of which grades that applicant received. But are grades a really accurate indicator of how well one will perform at a certain job or if one is qualified to attend a certain college? The answer is no, since attaining high grades, can take precedence over teaching and learning. This is the purpose of education, and it is being overlooked.

Some might argue that the purpose of education is to prepare students for the “real world.” I would argue against this because there is no “Real World” class. Every required class is intentioned to teach information on academic topics. There are certain classes that attempt to teach skills that are applicable to the “real world” job market, such as Keyboarding and Journalism, but these are in the minority of all classes. It isn’t that there is an absence of these type of classes, it’s just that if we are going to focus on educating our students, but not with trade-skill classes, then we should live up to that ideology. Simply providing education has little to do with evaluating students. These classes should be about teaching and learning, and less about emphasizing grades and real world applications. The other option is to provide more career-oriented classes.

Since the focus of our educational system, is to simply educate students, we should de-emphasize the importance of grades in our society and in the classroom. Emphasizing grades takes away from education by focusing on how to produce tangible results to a student’s learning. There should be no need for a student to “prove” him or herself since they aren’t working in a competitive market like the job market. It might be argued that the race to attend a university makes this a competitive market, but there are other ways, other than grades, such as an exam, or an essay, that would demonstrate academic competence.

To further clarify my point, certain assigned exercises from school, can have merit when it comes to the teachers teaching, and the students learning. I do not suggest that all assignments are appraisals of students. It can be valid for a student to learn from teacher criticism on assignments, but where is the need to evaluate them since students are not participating in a competitive market? High School itself is not supposed to be competitive, although higher education sometimes is. It doesn’t make sense to judge the “achievements” of high school for acceptance to colleges, since the focus of each institution is different. College has specialized areas of study that can be applicable to a student’s future, while high school, in theory, is simply about educating the masses. Education should either redefine its principles, or live by them.