What, Do the Grades Mean???

An observation a parent made, translated…

That day, my daughter took out her math exam for me to sign, I saw the bright red marking of “46”, I was, somewhat, shocked, after thinking awhile, I’d asked, “This test seemed a bit hard for you, huh?”, she’d answered, “Nope, I’d gotten all the problems right.”, now, I am, totally, confused, “but the grade that the instructor gave you was a 46!”, she’d said, “because this is NOT my test, it’s Jing-Chang Tseng’s!”

I’d asked her again, “So, why do you have his exam?”, she’d replied, “because he’d heard me told of no matter how bad a grade I received, I won’t get punished for it, but if he’d not done well, his father would ‘fix him up real good’, and so, we’d, traded our exams, that way, he won’t get punished at all when he gets home! Look, I’d erased his name, and put mine on it!” I’d looked at it closer, although it was, written in pencil, it was, erased from before. Other than telling my daughter, that this, was NOT the right method to approach the issues, I was also, curious of the developments of what happens after Jing-Chang Tseng took my daughter’s test home.

not my photograph…

The very next day after my daughter came home from school, I’d asked her nervously, “what happened to Jing-Chang Tseng yesterday, tell me now!!!”, she said, “he’s very happy, because his father was ecstatic, said that it was the first time he’d made a perfect score, he’d even taken him out to have steak, and his grandmother gave him a hundred dollar bill for reward too, he’d bought some chocolates and treated me today. But, I’d, told him, that that, was a one-time thing, that I won’t do it again, because it would be lying, that if he couldn’t understand the problems in math, I can teach it to him, he’d nodded, said that he was ecstatic, from not being punished this time.” My daughter stopped a bit, continued, “he’d asked me, that how come when he’d made a bad grade he would get punished, but when I’d made a bad grade, I’m okay? I’d told him, because you said so, mom, that how many problems I got wrong is testing my level of understanding, that if I couldn’t do it the first time, all I needed, was more practice, that it wasn’t as if I’d done something awful, why would I need to be physically punished for it? He felt that it was, really odd.”

Examinations, is the evaluations for how much is learned by children in their studies, allowing the instructors, the parents, as well as the children, to understand the level to which they are understanding the subjects, it is only, a medium to test how much comprehension you’d acquired. It’s just that the evaluation categories, the methods to which we’d evaluated were too narrowly set, using the academic examinations as primary methods of measurements, the grades became something that tied up the school teachers, the parents, as well as the students, and we’d started believing, that grades symbolized how much in understood and learned, that it’d become, an indicator of the children’s moral developments too.

not my photograph…

And still, every child has a different level of understanding, and each student learns with different means and measures, and, in the limited resources in education, it would be very hard, for school instructors to tailor to every single student’s learning needs, and so, there would be the differences in the results of learning. And if the parents can know where their children’s interests lie, their personality characteristics, and their abilities, and use a broader interpretation of grades, to understand what their children needed, for instance, seeing that the child is personable, kind, passionate about helping others, kind, agile, funny, artistic, good in music, etc., etc., etc., instead of basing it on the grades they’d made academically, then, I’m sure, that the parents will get along much, much better with their children!

True, but, because not all families are as open, and kind, with parents like you, because some of the parents out there always zoomed in on the grades their children made, and, anything LESS than perfection would be unacceptable to them (and it’s still caused by the experiences of the parents’ growing up too!!!), and their young get punished for it, and what the writer said at the end is too ideal, and it’s not real, because NOT all parents can be as rational when it comes to their kids, making the bad grades…and, the writer is right, on that moral development should OUTWEIGH the grades too, but it isn’t, yet………