Week Seven - Entrance Slip (Grading)

The usage of grading is that it may indicate how much students could understand the course content and if they are good enough to carry on to the higher level. And students who worked hard and had interesting idea of math deserve a good grade. However, many people relates good grade with intelligence, and this is the reason that students who are regarded to be “gifted and clever” are usually be outgoing and quick learners. There are different types of learners and they have their pace of learning, but they would not get good grade if they did not get the answer “correct and fast”, and this force many students who are “deep thinker” and “slow learner” to disorder their pace in order to satisfy teacher’s needs. I doubt that our grading system might be not friendly and appropriate to all students.

My own experience is that as a introverted “deep thinker”, I hardly ever perform on math class and was tagged as no talent in math during middle school but I majored in math in my university (which means I was wrongly tagged). In schools, students who get good grades were in two categories - hard-working students and talented students. Teachers obviously prefer students who were more diligent and obedient to teachers. However, students hate hard-working peers because it is not “cool”, so students often show themselves as not working hard in order to not be hated but tend to study hard outside school for good grades. Also, students think getting good grades without hard work is an evidence of being talented and it is “cool”.

Unfortunately, although I mentioned about many negative aspects of grading system, I could not imagine a math class without being grades. It is like what is being mentioned in the article - we are like hamsters in the rolling cage, and once they get in the “cage”, what they can do is running and it is extremely difficult to get out of the “cage”. However, I hope to stop students from getting into the “prison” that many of us had been at, and tell them math is supposed to be beautiful and fun. Maybe the cage is difficult to be break, but we can change the grading system cage into a park so that students could enjoy and be less anxious about their grades - that is, change the grading system to be more flexible and do not just students based on their grades.