Topic: Grades encourage students to learn. Agree or disagree? Do grades encourage students to learn or not? Some say that grades promote competition, motivate us and give the opportunity to gauge our performance. Although those facts are true on principle, reality of grades keeps showing the reverse effects and perverts the meaning of study as a mere means of getting a good grade. Therefore, I firmly disagree with the statement, ‘grade encourages students to learn.’ In principle, the grades do encourage students to learn by promoting students to compete with each other. It is human nature to try harder when they got lower scores compared to others. Moreover, such marks give students the opportunity to measure their performance. Since the report card show their grades concretely, they can now clearly understand their levels among all students. In light of these facts, supporters of grade marks insist that grade mark is an ideal way to motivate students to learn. In practice, however, grade marks lead to excessive competition among students and cause serious social problems in our society. In order to get good grades, almost all students in Korea rush to the academy right after their school hours, and this schedule became a routine to most students. Now, students consider the study as a mean of getting good grades, not the process of becoming mature through learning. This perverted purpose of education often leads to a drop in the efficiency of studying. What is worse, due to the extremely fierce competition, many students are now under the great pressure of achieving good grades. In the most extreme case, unfortunately, great stress from grades even makes students committed to suicide. For example, when I was in the first middle school year, one of my friends got a really bad score compared to other students. The grades showed him a dire result directly and clearly, which is hard to believe despite of his hardworking. He once said to me that he want to choose his life to the end. I was sorry for hear that. Can anybody yet proudly say that grades encourage students to learn despite of these facts? In conclusion, although the grades are created in order to motivate students, over and over again, we have come to realization that they aren’t always what they were meant to be. Grades frequently discourage students’ interest of learning in our current educational and social system. Grade systems need to be whole revolutionized |