Using Qualitative Feedback Of Grades - 3184 Words

Letters Over Words: Using Qualitative Feedback Instead of Grades Paige M. Bartlett University of Washington Teaching to Transgress April 9th, 2015 Oppressive Classrooms The year was 1987. My mom was a freshman in college. She felt virtually invisible in her Intro to Anthropology course of around 300 people. It wasn’t her best class, but she was still surprised when she received a C- on the paper she wrote. She hadn’t thought she’d done that badly. Confused, she scheduled an appointment to talk to her professor about it. She walked into his office asking where she’d gone wrong, so she could understand and improve. The professor took the paper and changed the grade to an A. â€Å"I thought you were someone else,† he told her†¦show more content†¦It gives students a better understanding of their academic abilities and prevents students from being powerless in their own education. Grades have served to dehumanize students. Instead of being seen as full, complete beings they are reduce to A students, C students, and students failing the class. This judgment is not only made by their teachers but by society as a whole. Parents often set standards for what their kids grades need to be and punish them if they don’t reach the mark. Friends and classmates compare the results of tests and report cards, making learning into a competition where some are â€Å"better† than others. Additionally, and perhaps the most disturbingly, for some students, grades become a reflection of their own worth. It doesn’t help that in many ways our future is defined by our GPA. In a world where grades carry such weight, they can seem awfully fatalistic. A streak of bad ones can look like the end of a dream career. A friend of mine is facing just that reality. Her GPA is lower than she expects and lower than what it takes to get herself to grad school. With the added possibility of disappointing her parents or losing her scholarship, each assignment is an anxiety provoking threat, which could take her closer to failure. The way we’ve set up schools, once your grades drop, it becomes incre asingly hard to bring them back up. Many students faced with mounting