Klein 1

Sarah Klein
Instructor Germain
UWRT 1102
20 August 2014
RJ 1 Degrading to De-Grading
Personally, I have very mixed emotions about de-grading. Some of the points make very
persuasive arguments as to why grading should be cut out. An idea I came across that I agree
with about traditional grading is point number four which talks about grades not being valid,
reliable, or objective. I completely agree with the fact that many grades are handed out based on
a group in general. A test is given to a group in general. Grades are given to a group in general.
Every student has a starting point and an ending point and most of the time, teachers are not
grading the students on what is important. In my opinion, the importance of a class is not to earn
a grade but to end the class with a better understanding and knowledge for that subject. Everyone
has different ways to learn and everyone progresses in different ways and it seems unfair to give
grades on a broad basis. Grades do not always show a reflection of the student but more of a
reflection of what you did and did not learn and not of how much you did and did not learn.
There is a cartoon that shows a picture of a rabbit, tiger, monkey, and a fish. The cartoon reflects
a teacher telling the different animals that they are going to be tested on climbing the tree. This
relates to grades not being valid because not everyone can do the one thing being tested or
graded. The monkey is going to perform better and get a better grade at climbing a tree but a fish
is going to perform better and get a better grade on something testing swimming.

Klein 2
An idea I came across that I did not agree with is point number one in Three Main Effects
of Grading that suggests grades tend to reduce students interest in the learning itself. In my
opinion, I am more interested to learn about something and gain interest in it if I am being tested
on it. If I am given something just for fun and I am not being tested on it, chances are I wont
care about it. I force myself to want to learn and gain knowledge about something if it is going to
be graded. I also disagree with this point because just because were not being tested on
something does not mean we care. We still have to practice and learn something in the
curriculum even if a grade is not going to be given for it. Being given a grade just gives more of
a reason to be engaged and try to be interested in order to learn something.

A negative experience I have had with being grades was for my childhood and adolescent
development class my junior year in high school. Instead of learning the ideas behind the
theories and theorists we had to memorize word for word what their theory was which was
absolutely ridiculous to me. The point of the class was to be able to learn the theories and
theorists in order to use it in our own lesson plans for the preschool. Knowing the theories word
for word was pointless in my opinion. When I study, I do not study word for word, I get the main
details and broad idea and think of other ideas on my own which really works well in my favor
for writing papers. On the final for theories and theorists for this class I failed because I did not
have down exact words and to this day I still have to force myself to study the petty little details
because I am afraid that will happen again.