Parents, students and educational experts often criticize the tendency to judge the merit of students on the basis of the exam grades. This is not a controversy that is restricted to America alone. This is a controversy that affects each and every educational system all over the world.
The current system used ranks different students on the basis of their performance in a single uniform test. For some, the presence of a single uniform test is the biggest negative point. When two kids are not similar, how can they be judged using a single test? Well, the only alternative would be to come up with individual tests for each and every child.
While this will give every child a fair opportunity to do well, it will be next to impossible to compare performance. The parents are not free of blame either. They often criticize the idea of testing and grading students but push their own wards to the maximum to get good grades.
The issue of poor grades and the flaws in the grading system arises only when students do not perform well. The education is essential but the process of testing the education gained by the child is imperfect. In any case, an intelligent child without strong family support at home will not perform as well as a child with reasonable intelligence who has complete family support.
Children from dysfunctional families rarely, if ever, perform well in tests and this has nothing to do with their intelligence. Hence, even if tests and grades were modified to incorporate variable factors, there would still be no single parameter to judge the ability of the students.
Another argument in favor of grades is that the students are not as innocent and gullible as parents would like others to believe. From choosing sports to get good scholarships later to choosing those subjects that will help child get better jobs in the future – parents and children adopt a functional approach towards education.
While grades and tests may not be perfect, these solutions have been proved as the best way to judge children today.