Education

[Tesserax]

I feel that while our education system (Australia) is great and all, there is one HUGE mistake with it. We give it a ranking system, from A- whatever letter your school chooese (E for me). The problem with this is that you strive not to do the work you have been given, but instead to achieve an A. On top of that, you get huge amounts of pressure to achieve a score/rank higher than your classmates. I think that what should be done is that these should be teacher only, and the students should not be allowed to see their respective grades, thus eliminating competition and a large amount of pressure.

Additionally, this "ranking" system should be used for the teacher only to determine which students need more help, and the areas that they need help in. For example, an assignment with 5 criteria to be met, and on student scores 5/5 on all but one. This student is told by the teacher where he made his mistakes and how to improve. The student proceeds to work on this area of fault and then scores perfectly on his next assignment. Or a whole class scores quite low in one criteria, clearly showing that they did not understand this, so the teacher goes over it in the next lesson.

While it seems like there is no difference, there is one huge one. Pressure. There is not as much pressure when students do not know their respective scores, but simple know their areas of fault. Most people will undoubtedly have areas of fault, and as such the playing field is leveled out, and people are not competing for the highest score, but instead to improve themselves. Maybe my method or explanation wasn't so great, but I believe that something MUST be done to help alleviate the pressure from students, as I find that I can do, for example, research very easily, but when the pressure of an assignment that I have 6 or so criteria to perfect and get an A so I can say to my friends "I'm not stupid", I suddenly feel reluctant to begin from the pressure.

Anyway, that's my point of view and I'd like to see the ideas you people have on the Education system, PEACE

[Miserabilia]

I'm not compeltely sure on it but I've thought about this alot too and for the most part, I aggree.

School is viewed the completely wrong way by both teachers and students. The point of a grade is just to see how good you did. If you get bad grades the whole year, you can redo the year to be able to learn more which will be visable in the grades. Just like leveled high school educations (which differs alot around the world, but basicly I mean differnt difficulty level high schools), you may not be capable enough of learning that level, and you can go to a school of a lower level.

However the way people see it, is you go to school to get grades, and pass the exams and go to your next year. Getting a bad grade is seen as failure, not passing a year or a difficulty level is seen as failure.

So there should definetly be a change in that imo.

[Living For Love]

I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you're driving at, but I don't think competition as you described ("huge amounts of pressure to achieve a score/rank higher than your classmates") is necessarily a bad thing. I see lots of students (at least in my area) that have the idea that the important thing to do is to avoid failing a certain subject, and not having the highest mark you can achieve. I don't think schools should condone this way of thinking. When you start a project, and here we can considerate our school career as a life project, you should always aim at achieving the highest result as possible, otherwise you might succeed, but you'll never be the best at what you've proposed yourself to do if you have that mindset. Promoting healthy competition between students, for instance, might be a way to overcome this issue.

[Tesserax]

I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you're driving at, but I don't think competition as you described ("huge amounts of pressure to achieve a score/rank higher than your classmates") is necessarily a bad thing. I see lots of students (at least in my area) that have the idea that the important thing to do is to avoid failing a certain subject, and not having the highest mark you can achieve. I don't think schools should condone this way of thinking. When you start a project, and here we can considerate our school career as a life project, you should always aim at achieving the highest result as possible, otherwise you might succeed, but you'll never be the best at what you've proposed yourself to do if you have that mindset. Promoting healthy competition between students, for instance, might be a way to overcome this issue. I understand what you're trying to say Tiago, but the thing is, from a personal standpoint I feel pressured, because I feel that I will be looked down on if I do not achieve a good grade, and I know for a fact that there well be many others that share the same feelings as I. Not all will be the same, but for all those that do (and it is many, I know form experience) it will be highly beneficial, as School will not be seen as so much of a burden, but somewhere to learn from. Also nice friendly teachers are good.

[Vlerchan]

I understand what you're trying to say Tiago, but the thing is, from a personal standpoint I feel pressured, because I feel that I will be looked down on if I do not achieve a good grade, and I know for a fact that there well be many others that share the same feelings as I.
Does this encourage you to work harder?

[Kate]

The grading system is used to reinforce students to participate in school, but it's also very stressful to students with letter grades and how the .1% between B+ and A- will look on their transcript. For me, I both agree and disagree with the system. However, I think instead of letter grades, they should just use plain percentiles.

[amgb]

I think the education system of ranking and grading is both sensible and unhelpful. I can see why there is a point of Ranking and grading; so that students know how they're progressing in their education and can see where their strong and weak points are and then improve their weak points. Ranking and grading helps to distinguish the different levels every student is at, and also provides the competition and pressure to motivate students to continuously improve themselves. It's unhelpful in that not every body can be motivated with competition and pressure, and a lot of the times pressure might make someone go backwards instead of getting better. And I don't think students MUST know where they stand amongst other students, although it can be reassuring to know your position amongst others, in education I believe it's more important to know your position amongst yourself. I believe that Education isn't about seeing how well others are doing, it's about how each person sees themselves learning new skills and knowledge and it's about every individual's own unique learning process. Education is about learning about the world which will help us when we leave school to find a job that will in turn help improve our world. Although it is important to know where you stand, We should mainly be focussing on ourselves. If we continue the rate we're going, in the future I reckon we're all just going to be mindless drones endlessly trying to be better than everyone else

[SethfromMI]

I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you're driving at, but I don't think competition as you described ("huge amounts of pressure to achieve a score/rank higher than your classmates") is necessarily a bad thing. I see lots of students (at least in my area) that have the idea that the important thing to do is to avoid failing a certain subject, and not having the highest mark you can achieve. I don't think schools should condone this way of thinking. When you start a project, and here we can considerate our school career as a life project, you should always aim at achieving the highest result as possible, otherwise you might succeed, but you'll never be the best at what you've proposed yourself to do if you have that mindset. Promoting healthy competition between students, for instance, might be a way to overcome this issue.

I think if more students at my school saw just how low they were compared to the rest of the school, they would be more motivated to work harder.

[Stronk Serb]

We have a simpler, more efficient grading system here.
You need more than 50% of the test to be correct for the lowest passing grade (2), 60% for good (3), 75% for very good (4), and 90% for perfect (5). Also

We don't need no education!

[Tesserax]

To those who are saying that pressure makes people work harder; this is true. But it is not necessarily a good thing. Have you heard the story of the Last Straw? The camel was able to hold large amounts of luggage, or in our case pressure. However, it eventually reached its breaking point, despite the fact that with each added load it was forced to work harder, and harder, and harder. If a bridge can only withstand so much weight, pressuring it to try and carry more than said limit will only result in its destruction. Naturally, these aren't exactly what's happening, though it is pushing many people to their limits, and it is not a good burden to bear.