The Flaw in the Grade Scale
Chris Sinagoga | Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 5:00PM In school, 60 percent should be an A. Maybe an A+, if they still give those out.
When dealing with a conflict, it seems to me that everyone’s first assumption is that they are correct and the other person/thing is wrong.
Mom: “You’re coming home too late”
Our thoughts: No I’m not. Moms be trippin’
Coach: “We’re going to cut you from the team”
Our thoughts: The coach sucks
Lumbergh: “Yeah… I’m going to need you to go ahead and move all your stuff to Storage B
Milton: “Okay… I’ll set the building on fire”
While it is true that people can say and do things that the majority would conclude are wrong, their mind tells the opposite story. To them, they are right and we are the ones who are frustratingly wrong. In other words, they are thinking the exact same thing we are! What make us so special to judge quickly? Still, our reflex is to deflect responsibility and refuse to accept that maybe we were out late, or didn’t practice hard enough, or were too obsessed with squirrels and Swingline Staplers. I think a main reason for this habit comes from our history of being penalized for being wrong in the place we spend most of our developmental years: the classroom.
I know I’m not the most credible in this area but I think the grading scale I grew up with, and many of you are familiar with now, is totally unrealistic. If I recall correctly, 100-90 is an A, 89-80 is a B, and so on until you get to 60 and below being an F. The further you rise up the academic ladder, the more emphasis is placed on top marks. So getting a C, which is supposed to mean average (despite being right 3 out of 4 times!), is the often the bottom of the barrel. But don’t worry; for some of the difficult classes, you get a boost to a 5-point scale. And if that isn’t enough, teachers will give you partial credit when you are sorta right.
In other words, we are pampered.
No other area of life demands the success rate present in school (especially high school). Think of all the decisions a lawyer, entrepreneur, engineer, or teacher has to make throughout the day – both little things that go under the radar and big things that will affect themselves and their subjects. I would be willing to bet that most good professionals are about 60/40 on their decision making. In other professions, being correct is even less common. A defensive coordinator calling for a blitz on 30 plays in a game would be ecstatic if it resulted in 4 sacks and a few hurries. A decade of succeeding 3 out of 10 times at the plate gets you a statue in Cooperstown. And guess the correct weather once every month or so and they’ll put you on TV.
In real life success comes, sometimes, occasionally, after a lot of hard work and luck. But they are not mutually dependent. Often times, hard work and dedication just don’t produce the results you want. That is why many people see sports as a great learning environment and why a lot of employers look for former athletes to hire; their ability to deal with an unprecedented occurrence of failure is very valuable in any area. On the other end of the extreme, when success taken for granted, you get parents complaining to teachers about their precious child getting that weird minus sign by the A.
In my subjective/anecdotal view, I have noticed a correlation between someone’s GPA and their willingness to admit being wrong. For instance, Murley and Aly had outstanding grades in high school – which is even more impressive considering they each played multiple sports. Coincidently they both struggle dealing with failure (in my opinion) because they experienced so little of it in school. On the flipside people like Matt Fecht, and Jack Trastevere – not the brightest of students – don’t appear hesitant about putting themselves in failure’s way and consistently hold their own. Matt is a lifelong hockey/baseball player who is hell-bent on running for a profession, while Cap’s Jack is an unathletic pudgeball who insists on doing 2:43 rx’d Frans and risking his life longboarding a death hill. There are counter examples, obviously. VJ Tocco, my former teammate, comes to mind – as he was Murley/Aly-level smart yet was consistently the first to admit when he was wrong. And I’m pretty sure JZ got grades similar to Jack and Fecht and still argues with brick walls in his spare time (I’m officially making that a tag). But in my experience, it seems likely that people with a 4.0+ generally don’t take being wrong very well. Again, I think the problem is not with those students, but rather how they are graded.
There is no way I should have received an A in anything other than gym class. I am a B-level writer (above average) and D-level anything else. But I also don’t think I should be penalized for that. Some people are outstanding at math, some people are outstanding at sports, some people are outstanding at science, and nobody is outstanding in everything. If they expect to be, then they have probably been pampered as well. I think the grading scale needs to reflect students’ true strength and weakness.
I know performing a complete overhaul is not realistic. But one of the things Kelly Starrett talks about is this concept of “mutually accommodating systems” – meaning all correct systems have the same principles. So spotting outliers is usually a sign that either there is a misunderstanding, or something is not correct. The fact that being “perfect” is so common in school and so rare everywhere else makes me think that there is a flaw somewhere in the grading scale – in the same way I believe there to be a flaw in the Endurance Base. There are a few adjustments that I think could be incorporated from K-12 to make the results more realistic.
- Make the questions harder
- Less leniency with what actually determines a correct answer
- Less time to prepare for some assignments/tests
- No 5.0
- Adjust the difficulty so the class average is a C
- Keep things as pass/fail
- Make straight A’s a national newsworthy accomplishment
I have heard classmates say, in the exact words, “I have to be perfect.” In school, this may be realistic for the time being. But if this mentality translates into other areas of life, then problems arise. Expecting one hundred percent on things sets people up for unreasonable expectations and can make them not try things that they could fail. If that becomes the case, then you are missing out.
You don’t generally get smarter/better from being right. If anything, you are just reaffirming that you are as smart/good as you thought you were. Instead, you should strive to be wrong. When you learn why you were wrong, you become smarter. That seems to be generally how intelligence works.
I think Aaron Sabal has this figured out pretty well. He started off as a bad student, changed to a really good student, and is now in Doctor School. He is also very slow to judge. He listens carefully, asks questions, and then presents his understanding if he still thinks he’s right. This kind of delivery, as opposed to the examples at the start of this post, is usually the difference in getting things accomplished.
Our brain is a muscle and it thrives off challenges same as hamstrings and abs. Settling for “being right” does very little to challenge ourselves. Instead, throw yourself to the wolves. Have a conversation with someone that isn’t a yes-man, find a pick-up game with the players everyone considers the best, take on the project that you think is over your head. Start off asking, “Am I wrong?” And give it sincere thought, knowing that if you, in fact, are wrong, it isn’t a bad thing. You aren’t being graded. Rather, it means there’s an opportunity for improvement. And when in doubt, trust Dumbledore:
“Perfection is beyond the reach of humankind, beyond the reach of magic. In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison; knowing that pain will come again. Be honest to those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as is to breathe.”
Or any of the other Quote of the Week people:
- Matt Fecht - vol. 149
- John Wooden - vol. 137
- Michael Jordan - vol. 126
- Kobe Bryant - vol. 116
- Vince Lombardi - vol. 107
They’re not wrong. Probably.
Reader Comments (16)
spin zone: what about schools where you only give 10 a's, thats it. Example, if 60% is the highest, its an A, and the 9 rest after that get A's, everyone else fails
Alejandro, interesting idea. Heard that's what grad school's like
Do I get an A in being fat and handsome?
That is a rare combination Jacob. B+ for being fat and C in the handsome category (if you are clean shaven, and C- with that scraggly beard).
I'll take it. Mind if i print out this comment section to post on my fridge? thanks.
Many classes at UMich are graded on exactly the scale you suggest. For example, a 50% in Organic Chem. or Calc 2 is considered excellent. I think there are a few reasons its done this way. The first is exactly as Chris suggested, that allowing perfect scores in effect coddles the students. But additionally, when the tests are made harder (and the students know that they will be harder), it drives them to study harder. For me personally, my first Calc 2 exam during my first semester was a huge wake-up call that I would actually be expected to WORK in college. Simply paying attention in class while giving the minimum effort required to get homework done wasn't going to cut it anymore. Yet another reason for the marked increase in difficulty was to differentiate the hard workers from the "gifted but lazy" crowd. Every student in my class was probably a top student in high school. Making difficult tests allowed students who scored well to really feel like they EARNED something.
In short, I don't think my BFCHS education prepared me all that well for the next level. But, a counter-point to consider is that the material taught in high school is legitimately difficult for some students, and its important to realize that high school is still somewhat mandatory. In contrast, a college education is completely optional. With this in mind, maybe its important to make graduating high school somewhat attainable for all students. The difficulty is how to customize is such that every student is appropriately challenged.
An additional miscellaneous point: You could go off on a completely different rant about how the MATERIAL of school needs to be changed to teach you stuff you actually need to know in life. For example, instead of how to calculate the area of a trapezoid (cause who really gives a hoot about that), they should teach you how to do your taxes. Or how to apply for a mortgage.
VJ what's up!
Good point about high school being mandatory and graduating being attainable. Didn't really think about that.
Are you going on record saying your dad didn't prepare me well in Pre-Calc? If so, I will not have you speaking blasphemy about Mr. Tocco in front of me! He let us play euchre in class if we finished our work early
Excellent post, Chris. This is an enormous problem in our society. While VJ does make a good point about high school needing to be passable by most, you are still right in that many kids are pampered. I should know, as I end up working with most of those kids in medical school. These kids are so freakin' smart that they didn't even have to try that hard in college! And even if they did (like me), they were used to working hard enough to know every possible answer. That comforts so many people, including myself. However, the kids who really succeed are the kids who quickly come to the conclusion that they will no longer know all the right answers. Honest to god, that's a scary thing, especially when you know that someone's life can be hanging in your hands. There is WAY too much to know for any one person to keep it all in their brain without repeatedly reading it for at least 20 years (I say 20 years because I'm legitimately convinced that my attending last month actually did know everything, and that's how long he's been in practice). And with that point, I completely agree that people should embrace being wrong or not being perfect. It's an excellent way to grow and learn, just like you said. For example, I had to intubate someone yesterday (shove a breathing tube down their throat) and I failed. When I asked my attending what I could have done better or could I have done anything differently, he simply said "You could've done 75 more of those!" Translation, practice more. So I'm confident that I'll eventually get it with time and fine-tuning. But I would never fine-tune my technique if I didn't fail.
But, my question is, do you think kids can be pampered like this in order to instill some confidence in them? Confidence is a very important thing in my field. If you're unsure of yourself and it shows, patients get worried and the outcomes tend to be worse, even if you do end up being right. But, since coming to that conclusion that I can't know everything, I feel that I have become less confident in a way. Problems don't always present themselves in textbook formats, and, to me, that means a particular problem can actually be anything except for what you might think it is. It's complicated and it's something I am still getting used to now that I'm in the hospital. Being in the classroom the last 2 years, there was a right and wrong answer. Now, there might be many right answers. But, I continue to learn and adapt, and the better I can get at learning and adapting, the better doctor I will eventually become. And eventually I will have the confidence again to stick to my guns and give the right diagnosis on the first try because I have seen it and I have failed enough times.
Nice comment Sabal. I love that other's guy's response "You could've done 75 more of those."
In response to your question, I suppose that could be a reason. Kinda goes along with what VJ said about making high school attainable for everyone - giving them some confidence going into college.
For me, the unknown tends to lead me to the moments where I lose confidence. When I am playing Jack Trastevere in ping pong, I know regardless of how I play, I will beat him. So I stay loose and play with a ton of confidence. When I play you, I don't know if I will win - even if I play really well. So I tense up.
My point is I think a lot of confidence comes from truly knowing what you are capable of and what you aren't. I would think an honest grading scale would help with that. But I assume professions with a lot riding on their decisions, like doctors, rarely work independent; they usually have a team. So that is when you have confidence in your teammates. If the team has been assembled right, your strengths make up for their weaknesses and their strengths make up for your weaknesses. If everyone thinks they are strong at everything then arguing becomes more common than problem-solving.
Love the point on the materiality of school. General civics and government should be much more required. Have you ever talked to a european on american government and history? They know more than over 75% of most americans (disclaimer, majority if not all of the people at the Champs club are educated and dont relate to this, but remembers, we aren't the general public, almost everyone has some college in them)
Not entirely sure, but if the class is at a C or lower average, the teachers are to be watched by administration. That could be one reason on the pampering because the teacher does not want to get fired or whatever happens in that kind of situation. The more kids that pass my class, the less eyes off of my back and I can do whatever I want.
Chris, that's absolutely true. Knowing what you're good and bad at makes a world of difference for people. At this point in my career, I don't think I'm good at a lot of things, which might be why I don't have the confidence I used to have, haha. But, yes, I also agree that an appropriate scale would help with that. But not a grading scale, per se. I think personal feedback is the way to go. With personal feedback, at least in my world, there are certain criteria that people with my level of training are expected to meet. These criteria are well known to us. And at the end of the rotation I'm on, we are supposed to sit down with our attending and go through each one to see if we fell short, met, or exceeded those criteria. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, so if I'm not, then I can explain later. Regardless, I don't know how this would necessarily apply to other subjects. Another problem is having time to do this. I mean, teachers don't have enough time as it is. And I can relate to that! In my field, doctors barely have enough time. In fact, most of them don't really give constructive feedback, and it really hinders a lot of students. Any thoughts on that?
Alex, how much more of it would you like to see? At least in my high school, we were required to take civics or political science in 11th grade. At the time, I really didn't get much out of it. With the classes I took, I didn't have a good, structured curriculum, and that stopped me from learning a lot, I feel. I don't feel like I have the time to look at tons of resources for what I need to learn. But, I do think that we need more knowledge of our country and it's government for sure.
I have no experience in your field, obviously, but I would guess the good ones always find time for feedback, while the below-average/average ones will claim there's not enough time for it.
I appreciate the thoughts on those, and that's a good point that I never thought about. But I was talking about the "evaluations/personal feedback" vs. "grading" part, haha.
Oh. I never thought about that. I suppose good feedback gives you more than simple grading
Katie, you also bring up a good point that I didn't think about. That same thing happens with doctors. If the patient doesn't get better, it's always the doctor's fault. "You should make the patient listen!" is one of the many arguments. None of them make sense. If the patient doesn't want to get better, they won't get better...