RomanIwa

Competition for high grades seriously limits the quality of learning at all levels of education. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position. In our modern age, which requires the quantification of almost every single aspect of our lives, standardized tests and grades are becoming an increasingly important tool in assessing a student's value. The growing focus on grades to describe a student’s performance makes these grades the primary goal of students. The resulting competition for grades, however, is not tantamount to a competition for knowledge and therefore decreases the overall quality of education. As high school student's grade point averages are vital for their admission to college, those students who are most interested in obtaining a higher education will be the ones most concentrated on achieving high grades. Unfortunately, this presents a great dilemma to these motivated students. Given, that a biology exam on the immune system was scheduled for next week, the student is presented with two choices: He or she could either read through the entire chapter of the textbook on the topic and then further the reading by following up on related aspects which interest him or her most, such as bacteriology. Alternatively, the student could focus purely on the topics that are likely to come up on the test, together with some answer-elimination-strategies for multiple choice tests. While the former approach would definitely have left the student with more knowledge, the latter is the one that would grant better scores on the test and is probably the one chosen by a student who does everything to increase his chances of admission to his or her dream college. Thus, competition for grades reduces the knowledge acquired. On the other hand, teachers themselves can be pressured to produce high-scoring classes in order to put the school in a good light. As these performance assessments always rely on standardized tests, the teacher will be obligated to revert to easily quantifiable pieces of knowledge, such as single historical dates or multiple choice questions. My own history teacher admitted that his test questions had little to do with understanding the nuances of historical events, but rather presented an easy and objective way of scoring. He would, for example ask what a certain idiom meant that politicians frequently used during the cold war era. He chose this question, because it was simply free of ideology and could be scored easily and quickly. If, instead, we want our teachers to focus on a holistic education, they also need to have the leeway to do so. While the motivation exerted by rewards in the form of grades is surely an aspect which should not be forgotten, it is mostly a certain type of student who benefits from and responds to those rewards. Receiving a positive feedback for the hard work invested into a laborious long-term project is absolutely necessary to keep up the motivation of those students and going from a B+ to an A- can galvanize certain students to perform even better in the future. However, this only works as long as the students receive positive feedback and are not discouraged by bad grades. Also, the grades have to be representative of the student's performance as to not appear unfair. In summary, the fierce competition for grades might have its benefits, but it certainly limits both, the creative possibilities for teachers to design their classes and the student’s latitude for studying what they are most interested in. Instead, highly important grades favor a "learning for the test only" approach of students, which is can be disastrous to their education.

Dear Qual, I think your essay sounds very good, you use precise language and you completely address the question asked. Additionally, you might want to use one small paragraph each (2-3 sentences max.) for an introduction and a conclusion. In the introduction you would make an opening statement concerning the relevance of the topic discussed and then foreshadow your opinion on the topic (in this case it would be "ambiguous" right?). In the conclusion you should simply restate and summarize your points and thereby reaffirm your position. Do not introduce new thoughts here. One sentence was "Allowing such students to take the courses within the fields they are interested in studying is likely to encourage high levels of engagement in classes and assignments." While an elaborate language is appreciated, it should at the same time be compact and concise. This sentence could be shortened to "Allowing such students to take the courses they are interested in is likely to encourage their engagement in class." and it would, in my opinion, still convey the same information. I like your third paragraph very much. In the second paragraph you used a real world example of a computer scientist and using another real world example in the third paragraph would make it absolutely delicious (say, an economy major who has no knowledge of biology might fail in the world of business in 2043 when genetic engineering is the main global business). Keep up the good work!