A = Average B = Bad C = Can't eat dinner D = Don't come home F = Find a new family

Lmfao schools care more about grades (memorizing and tests) than teaching

Many times while working on an assignment, English assignments specifically, I've had the thought "Should I write what I want to write, or should I write what the teacher wants to hear?" I usually chose the latter because I knew that way I would get a better grade.

Here's to everyone who's GPA did not reflect either their passion for or capacity for learning. Here's to everyone who got pushed under the bus by a one-size-fits-all system that does not focus on individual learning styles. *Here's to educational media on KZfaq* which rekindled a passion for learning math and science, subjects that I was consistently graded poorly in. _**hits subscribe button with conviction*

A=acceptable B=beating C=crisis D=death E=execution F=funeral

In my opinion, grades are a very dangerous thing. Especially as a person my an anxiety order from a very young age if I didn't get at least an 80 I would have a mental breakdown and with how much society relies on grade to advance to the next level (elementary grades determine which high schools you can get into and high school grade determine which universities you could get into) I always had a pressure to be perfect. One wrong move could ruin my entire life. THAT is what it felt like and that not only sucks all the joy out of learning but puts unnecessary pressure on parents, students, and teachers.

A+: Amazing. A: Great A-: Still Good B+: Okay B: Maybe a little practice B-: A little more practice C+: Being in the Cs or lower is a bad sign C: You are struggling C-: Almost a D. That ain’t good D+: You need practice! D: This is bad. D-: Have fun telling your parents you got a D- F: F***

In grade 12 I got the highest mark in the class on several exams, and 30s in more than one of the same courses because I didn't do the coursework. Then in university I got basically every grade imaginable, more Bs than anything but everything else. If you just took my averages you'd get a completely incorrect impression of my overall performance. I've always considered grades to be problematic and not something I wanted to focus on getting but they still end up having an impact. People with low grades end up hating themselves, people with high grades end up expecting too much from themselves and then being disappointed and disillusioned later. The system needs to change.

I’ve always been to grateful to my parents for recognizing that I would have a better learning and life experience if they didn’t pressure me on grades. They encouraged me to do my best while also pursuing my extracurricular interests, which ended up paying off, literally, in scholarships, but also in getting into my “reach” school. My experience ended up being a lot like what the girls realized in Booksmart. I even had to overhear a kid viciously, bitterly complaining that he got better grades than me and was soooo much smarter than me in physics and math but got rejected from the university I chose. It wasn’t all based on the numbers, bud. Thanks to my mom and dad, school was positive experience for me, and I really blossomed and thrived even moreso in college. Such an incredible gift they gave me, and I’m so privileged to have had it. Had I been able to have kids, I hope I could maintain their approach and give the same kind of support. Grades are NEVER the *full picture* of a child’s current or future achievements.

Colleges put way too much emphasis on the difference between A, A-, and B+. That's thousands of dollars of scholarships, and even admission, based on whether a teacher believes you should get an A for getting a 95%, 90%, or anywhere in between. As a high school teacher, I can tel you that most of that is arbitrary and only loosely represents real learning.

Albert Einstein wrote, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

As a teacher, I really prefer the idea of standards based evaluation. That is, you create a list of things a student should be able to accomplish to "pass" the course, and what percentage of these standards must be met to pass. Then you design multiple ways for students to demonstrate they have mastered these standards; tests, assignments, demonstrations, etc. If my student can use at least one of these methods to demonstrate they have mastered each needed skills, then they have finished the class. If not, they have not finished the class and may either keep trying or leave. Part of the issue is to give students multiple ways to demonstrate their mastery of a skill. I have seen students who will consistently fail a written exam but excel on an oral exam, or show great skill on an assignment, but totally bomb a timed essay. Notice that I am not advocating for grades, just simply a certification that a student has mastered enough of the core concepts to be finished with or pass a class. Also, I do think idea of writing narratives sounds great on the surface, but is horrible in practice. I say this as a teacher who had to write narratives on each of my students. Even with only about 30 students a year, I found myself writing out cliches and thinking about how the parents and students would react to what I was writing. Sometimes I would phrase things very delicately to encourage or avoid discouraging a student. And a very combative, unrealistic parent (or administrator worrying about tuition) can influence what you write about their child. One of my principals even went so far as to come up with a cheat sheet, a list of 50 or so positive comments that you could check off, and a smaller amount of things that need to be improved that you also could check off. Then the principal would count your checks marks. If you didn't have enough positive marks or too many negatives you got your cheat sheet back to redo. TLDR: We need standards that can be shown to mastered in multiple ways and to remove some of the subjective judgements.

After 30 years as an engineer, I've just decided to start a new career as a STEM teacher. While I have no worries about teaching STEM, I do have a couple other worries. First is managing a classroom of hormonal students, some of whom will have difficulties outside the classroom that affect learning. Second is providing fair and useful assessments that are more than simple letters or numbers. This video really speaks to me, and has given me much food for thought. Thanks!

a letter doesn't determine your knowledge

'Why do we get grades in school' - Me after 10 mins of revision

Something needs to be done and this grading or percentage system needs to be changed with descriptive results. Because this grading system has caused many students committ suicide in history, and even depression, etc.

Number 1 source of stress...

2:45 with English captions on, it says "Those guys are dead." She doesn't say it though. That's some creepy stuff going on there.

I had a teacher in 11th grade who said on the first day that she was going to grade us on standards rather than numbers. This was a groundbreaking proposition in the ridiculous college prep high school I went to where all the students, parents, and teachers were obsessed with grades. Originally I was confused and skeptical about this and I also really loved getting grades because throughout my life I based my entire self-worth on my good grades because school was the only thing I ever succeeded in. Anyway her class was one of the most stress free and enjoyable classes that I ever took. She ended up being my favorite teacher in high school and I loved every second of not having to worry about grades for once.

School is just one big game of trying to get an A. Students that get below that kick themselves because they can't "pass their classes" by getting all A's. Everyone is trying to race to the top,and while doing that,learn pretty much nothing starting from freshman year. Algebra,Trigonometry,Classifyfing,Calculus,its all just a competition between fellow classmates. Later on,in those 12 years of what you learned,you don't know how to pay taxes,bills,invest, buy a house,loan things,and all that you need for a basic lifestyle. Not saying you have to live this way. Colleges accept students with the highest grades/GPA,little do they know,there are smart students that get D's and C's,and even F's,grades only display how much work you do,not how WELL you do.

As someone who typically gets good grades, I can tell you the negative effects to self esteem still happen even to the "smart kids" if not more so. In middle school and elementary school, I'd get 4s (out of 4) almost all the time, but then I switched to a private high school with a A-F grade scale, and was not prepared in the slightest. Even though an A- was really good, I cried about it because my parents expected perfection. Even when I would drop everything to do my best on an assignment, I would either do one thing that could vaugely be interpreted as not A+ just because the teacher thought I didn't put the analysis that they wanted or something, or I would get an A+ and my parents would be like "cool". I have stopped caring as much about grades though, as the time I spend just trying to get an A instead of an A- could instead be spent on my passion, video game design

Grades have me so stressed that once I got a C and had a mental breakdown because I thought I would be a failure and be begging on the streets for spare money if I didn't get at least a B on all report cards. Probably would still have one today if that were to happen, and that was almost a year and a half ago.

This vid won't change anything- nothing ever changes the school system, because it's more about grades and memorizing and stuff than actual teaching.

I like the comment about grades identifying "generalists vs. specialists". I think there is a lot to be said for that. Although if you watch my channel you can probably guess my outlook on school.

Love the mention of Kentucky! I remember going home and seeing my brothers report card and being super confused at all the new numbers and labels.

As a mexican US grades always confused me. All those letters and plus and minus signs... Here we score 0-10 (or 100. Just move the decimal point at teacher's will). 5.9 or below and you falied. THAT SIMPLE

Grades dictate so much although it mainly tests your memorizing ability and testing skills. A students appear to hate learning yet B/C students love it: they explore other areas and don’t focus solely on what is taught in class. The real world is not perfect so why do grades have to be?

Math was a self esteem killer xD

in elementary school, we used ABCD grading. from 7th to 10th grade, i was in a program with 0-8 grading, and now it’s just percentage.

You did skip over the reason that "E" is not in there, I was a little disappointed at that. One factor of culture that I've always found fascinating is Japan's emphasis on grades, which is even greater than ours.

A= Amazing B= Beautiful C= Creative D= Doomed, just kidding E= Excellent F= Fantastic

Maybe we should stop paying to attention to grades and study happily and let life brings what ever to the table that’s not stressful

It is good to hear that institutes are finally trying something different, the current grading system is a bit like telling a patient "well, you sick." instead of suggesting what is actually the wrong and/or what to do about it.

As a teacher grades have always been a tricky thing. On one hand you don't want students to be grade crazy and equate their self-worth with their GPA. On the other hand, you also want them to excel. Without grades learning becomes optional and students will just procrastinate.

A= bragging rights and honor rule B=Acceptable but do better C=Improve or we are pulling out of this school( my parents actually did and I miss my friends) D= You are moving to you aunts house. ( quote from my dad follows) "If you don't value the education we are paying for you then someone else can take care of it. I work 7 days a week to pay for your education and you obviously don't care!" F= I am moving schools and living at my aunts house. ( He is serious that's why I don't show him my F's)

As a teacher I often see student putting way too much emphasis on their grades. I work in Sweden where they have a much more open, rubric style grading system that I like more than the US system but I still have kids who would rather get a 0 than try and not get an A.

I tell students grades do not measure your intelligence, it measures effort

Parents: A D! Why'd you get such a bad grade? Me: Don't blame me, blame Ezra Stiles.

My high school changed our grading system my senior year, each subject had four competencies that we were “graded” on from a rubric, which was on a scale of 1-4. Our grade evolved as the class went on. So, you might start getting a 1-2 on assignments but as the course went on if you were improving the competency number would go up. Instead of averaging those grades each “assessment “ changed our grade. So, our final would be our final grade. The only class that year I had a test for a final was my math course the others were all projects that went along with our competencies for that class.

I feel like one thing that would make grades for efficient is if semesters weren't the end all be all you know? Like give kids the time and help they need, a semester should be for reporting and setting a trajectory not just "get in all your work and do your finals or fail"

What I hate about the grading system, is that it doesn’t take into account your rainy days. When you go into this state of stress you struggle more and more, it feels impossible to get a second chance in school, you let one thing slip through your fingers and it ruins you. I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress and almost depression recently and I’m getting Cs. My parents are disappointed, schools make it look like I’m an idiot all because I can’t balance 7 classes at once. I get it, I messed up. But how are students supposed to learn that pursuit will get you where you need to be if you don’t give them a chance? Are you just going to let us fail? Now I have three Cs before 1st semester finals week. And I can’t do anything about it.

Meh my parents don't care about my life, friends, mind, problems... but apparently if there are ONE "B" I have done EVERYTHING wrong.😦

A = Good B = Ok I guess C = They'll never find the body D = That's it, I'm dead

Knowledge is more important than grades.

while on the subject of school, even though its kind of new, you should cover where the idea for common core came from. for most of us whove been out of school, the idea of it just seems confusing. ive only seen a few examples from my nieces homework, it doesnt make sense that they should force these kids to go about their answers through the longest means possible. i still remember back in school, math was one of the few classes i did really well in. but what kept me from moving to more advanced classes was that i never showed my work. i refused to use a calculator and always did the stuff in my head. i always got in trouble for that... now as an adult ive been trained to use calculators, and i can barely do basic multiplication and division in head anymore. school trained me well...

my dad didnt even try to help me when i had bad grades, he just grounded me for weeks - dad how am i gonna do homework? he didnt let me. i basically had to keep an A, B or C or else i lost my computer, aka the thing i do HOMEWORK on most of the time.

New Zealand switched to NCEA years ago, a system where students would get descriptions such as achieved, rather than a percentage grade. It meant their overall performance wasn't so dependant on exams, but some students found they weren't as well prepared to the exam culture in university as a result.

Dealing with LDs, I've never been able to make good grades. I was tested by specialists and it's not that I wasnt knowledgeable. I always just didn't do well in the standard classroom. I would study anytime I wasn't eating or sleeping, and still made bad grades. If I made a C, my parents where happy for me. When we moved to another school the councilor told me I would have a better time if I was held back a year, which was a terrible idea, and let me to drop out because even the teachers would hate having me in their class. I wanted to learn, but the system isn't made for all learning types. People too often fall through the cracks.

In the UK we have numbers 9-1

Very interesting video but the background music in the last part (starting at 5:40) made me cringe: way too loud and distracting !

A - awful B - better C - congrats D - dominance E - entrepreneur F - free man

The avoiding challenges is an interesting side effect of a focus on a perfect GPA. I'm always impressed by the array of facts and cited examples

now people will use this as an excuse to not do well in school 😂

Honestly. I used to get stressed out over poor grades. But now I don't care about my grades even if they are bad which they are.

My math teacher does standards based grading and it’s amazing. I have 100% in the class, and I actually focus on understanding the material. I stress more about a regents health class than my CALCULUS 3 class. I also took AP Calc BC with this teacher and 50% of her students get fives on the exam. Standards over percentages!!!

I watched my school slowly fall from teaching to standardized testing within 4 years. At first, it felts freer. We did more projects rather than tests and it felt like teachers had more control over what they wanted to teach. Year two, it got more restrained. Things weren't as free and tests increased. There was a noticeable shift with the teachers' happiness. The third year, everything went sour. All of my teachers were complaining daily about activities they loved doing with their students that they were forced to replace with tests. This is the year we almost got a standardized test for every single class in the high school. It was very bad and we barely skirted out of it. Year four just felt empty. You could tell that the teachers didn't like to teach anymore. Even the good teachers were overstressed trying to figure out how to best teach with this unceasing testing curriculum. There was a drop in the drive for the students' work ethic. I was one of those students. While I still graduated honors, I lost my passion for learning in school. I would go to school, chug down information, regurgitate it a few days later during the quiz/test, then promptly forget it. It's time for a change. For our future's sakes.

What about A+ student like mark who created Facebook while he was studying in Harvard . straight A student can also have creative thinker by the way. you are kinda motivating kids not to work hard and study and get more information from their books when you talk about these uneducated or self taught people you have to clarify that they are an exception.

School causes more stress than sending a risky text... prove me wrong

If you haven't done an episode on homework yet, you should. Loving the channel, keep up the great work.

Very imformative. I'm sure someone noted this already, some school districts, like the one I graduated from, still use an "E" grade instead of an "F"

oh hi James Baldwin! ...oh hi again James Baldwin!

I liked this video a lot, but it was quite USA focussed. There are so many different grading systems! In the Netherlands a scale of 1 to 10 is generally used. Could you do a video on the origin of primary education?

I always appreciated seeing the overall average percentage score in high school in Alberta and knowing what the weighting of each test and project towards that average was. I always had a very accurate picture of how I was doing and knowing which areas that needed improvement when studying for finals. I also appreciated these marks determined what universities would accept me and not a second arbitrary and useless test like an SAT.

In school I ALWAYS over stressed with tests. In high school an office worker with enough power hated me (Long story) and she would fail me no matter how good I did (A-B with a C here and there average). When I was 16 I got tired of failing so I dropped out. I went back and the principal and teachers let me sit in class and do the work. I no longer had to worry about test or failing. Learning became FUN. I have a GED with the highest high school education a person can have. And since teachers had college they taught me as much as they remembered, so I have some undocumented college,too. With my children I started educating them by the time they could talk. When they started 1st grade, they were ready for 5th grade. And they started 1st grade at 5, a year early. By 2nd grade, they were used as substitute teachers for all elementary grades. Needless to say, my kids only got A's.

This channel is great. Let me know if there's any way i can help

If you have PTSD from bad grades you have bigger problems than bad grades so stop worrying about bad grades

HS Math Teacher Here : Very well done Origin Of Everything!

Yes grades are important, but they cause a lot of stress. One thing I used to have a big problem with was, for example, in math I may understand the concept and get good grades on assignments, but sometimes testing I would get really stresses out and not do so well. I'm only in 7th grade and I'm afraid of the future tests and whole lot of stuff I will have to endure. Also, a good thing colleges some colleges have been doing is that they don't always count all the tests or SAT'S because not everyone are good testers

This was very informative ! but it is The Origin of Everything, I was expecting something a bit less American-Centric :P In France, grading history is different, and we have notes on a 0-10 scale at primary school since 1866, and there was systems before. Also, Japanse is on 0-100, Germany on 0-6... Every country has a different history on the subject. www.slate.fr/story/89081/notes-sur-20-ecole It's nice anyway that you take the time to report the relationship between grades and student interest/learning. :)

This is why school sucks for the most part

*grade is temporarily A-* Indian parents: “No more netflix, no more phone, no more youtube, no more eating, no more sleeping, no more living in this home if you don’t get your act together”

Some great food for thought here. Adding this video to our November edtech Playlist.

I do think that grades help students to improve their skills, as long as they don't see them as burden and if people can stop judging others by their grades

It is a fact that A student usually work for B students, and B students work for C students. Have a college degree is no garentee of a career. As time passes, era change our reality. We don't live in the era of yesterday. Grades means that little if at all any more.

In Italy we don't have letters for grades, we have numbers (1-10 for elementary school, usually 0-8 for high school, 6 is "sufficient") and judgements for the middle school (excellent, very good, good, sufficient, bad). The high school final exam grades go up to 100 (but when I had mine in 1986 the grades went up to 60). University exams go up to 30 (18 is just enough to pass the exam), and the final university dissertation gets a grade up to 110, Are you confused enough? :)

When I was in high school, I felt my school placed more emphasis on the State Standardized test than your overall grades, which is even stupider than measuring grades. As a first-year, teacher, I feel that all of my students that have low grades have them because they don't study and aren't very diligent. Only two of them try hard, but still struggle, and one of those two has ADD/Autism. As an English teacher in South Korea, I do evaluate progress, and I evaluate progress based on different components of English - grammar, speaking, vocabulary, reading, and writing. I'm even going to suggest ideas on how to help students for next year.

The grading system is meant to tell you where you are in the class. Everyone is graded not just you and everyone has to go through it. I’ve seen so many comments saying “schools are just tests and memorization” well I’m sorry you are wasting your time. How about you take the time to understand it on your own time. Put in the work, most of histories geniuses didn’t have a teacher to stand over their shoulders and wait for them to understand. The teacher provides materials and it’s up to you if you want to put in the work. I hear people say they want to be a “doctor” or a “lawyer”, yet they struggle with school. That should tell you to either find a different career or suck it up and finish. And to be honest, if it weren’t for grades most of you would be watching Netflix instead of attempting to learn.

*Schools arent about learning but passing*

In Canada(montreal) we mostly use percentages as grades but we also use the letters system from A+ to e.

4:23-4:39, I actually had a conversation with a college professor about that exact part.

The music makes it very hard to follow what's being said

I don’t hate report card day....I fear it like the black plague... *shivers*

This is really interesting. Plus, I think letter grades can be a catalyst to a fixed mindset.

I'm a former 4.0 and successful entrepreneur who was a large employer. Grades really don't matter in life. Way more important in determining success is ambition (for an entrepreneur) and the ability to get along (for a corporate employee). Pity as I passed on many college subject for fear of not doing well and one really should fail at times in college for you've plenty of time for corrections that are harder to do later in life.

It's really hard to want to watch these videos with how insanely biased they are and their intention of pushing an agenda out in front, rather than actually giving the information they claim to give by the title of the video. What it says is, "Why do we get grades in school?" But the real title should be, "Why grading in school is outdated and wrong." I agree with it, but it's just kind of annoying to not be given the actual information I came here for and instead, am given 90% personal views and 10% actual historical information.

I hate loud music overlays while people talk >.< There's so much of that now Agh!

Can I make a request? Please pull all the videos into one playlist so I can binge them with ease ;) found this through “its ok to be smart” and am totally loving it. Awesome information and awesome topics. One more small request: I love your enthusiasm but sometimes you talk very quickly and I find myself not being able to retain everything I’d like to. So many awesome information nuggets! Maybe you could slow down the delivery just a teeny bit? Love you girl, can’t wait for more episodes.

I'm currently a 7th grader, and my elementary and middle schools both used numbers for our grading system. It's from a scale of 1-4, 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest. 1 - Below Grade Level 2 - Near Grade Level 3 - Proficient 4 - Advanced To get a 3, you just need to do the bare minimum/what's required. To get a 4, you have to do what's required and then think harder to answer a more challenging question, come up with ideas that connect to the world on a larger scale, or put in extra effort.

Or be someone who gets good grades and creative :)

Too much US history, please tell whole story in Europa and Asia too. Việt Nam use 10 point system.

When I was in college I learned that it's possible for people who are high in academic achievement to be low in common sense, social skills, and street smarts. Those things may not matter in academia but they definitely matter in the real world especially the job market.

Me when gets 80 or lower: don’t tell parents Me when get a 90 or higher: I GOT A 95!!

Even though I get good grades, I still don’t know what I am doing sometimes in my courses. I go to an American high school, and I see trends like cramming, which loses long-term memorization, for tests all the time. If you know what you’re doing, it’s easy in some high schools to get all As/maybe a few Bs while not trying (I try to stray from doing this). Some students tend to not be great test takers because of test anxiety, and this can limit your chance of getting a good grade. This is because tests generally make up 40-50% of your overall semester grade. There are many other ways to evaluate student performance because grades generally don’t tell the whole story.

When I was a high school student (late '80s - early '90s), numbers were used instead. I lived in Italy.

Great video!!! In my personal experience, this video is on-point!

Grades were never about learning to begin with. It was always about ranking, comparisons, relative performance, mere productivity to avoid truly catering to every student, and coercion.

I’m going to highschool soon but my elementary school did a proficiency scale instead of letters Emerging: little to no effort. Developing: some effort Proficient: the expected amount of effort Extending: basically if you did extra work.

So in effect what you're saying is the typical grading system is begging the question. Brilliant insight. Thank you.

It’s funny I was thinking of an essay to write about this very topic.

In college I found a lot of specialization even in within a department. A number of times in my research there were revelations that made me go _WOW!_ Yet when I tried to tell anybody, student or professor, all I got was "eh." "mhm" or at most, "that's nice." Like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, I wanted to shake people CD say, "Don't you understand how awesome that is?" I wanted to join a think tank with other people who also saw awesome things in science and share ideas. And create awesome creations and understand things in a new way. Even on social media I get less than a reaction of "hm."