Grades are detrimental to education

That being said, there are a few things that their rebuttals assume that are false, and a few things that their rebuttals fail to acknowledge about my contentions. To show this, lets go through his last speech All additional evidence is for the purpose of extensions only. My opponent’s response to my first contention would be valid, assuming that students were under only minor amounts of stress. It is completely true that small amounts of stress can be good for a person. While it doesn’t have the “many benefits” my opponent states, the one he brings up is valid. The problem is that the amount of stress that students are under due to grades is most certainly not minor. The APA study cited earlier also found that high school students reported more stress than adults; that 52% of teens felt that stress affected their mental health; that 83% of students say that school is a significant sign of stress; that 10% of students report their grades are lowered by stress; that teens believe their average stress level to be far above the healthy range; that many teens feel their stress is increasing and has been increasing (34% and 31% respectively;) that stress causes procrastination in almost 30% of teens, that 21% of teens neglect school work because of stress; that approximately 25% of students have felt sick; that many felt like they could cry because of stress; that around 30% experienced depression; that around the same amount skipped a meal; and finally that 35% couldn’t sleep because of it [1. ] All of these impacts become even more significant if you take into account that the study also found that students don’t accurately understand just how much stress affects their health. A further study reports that 56% of students worry about grades, and only get 6.8 hours of sleep a night (teens need 9 to be healthy) [2. ] Clearly stress has fare more disadvantages for students (given their levels of stress,) than it has advantages. The numbers on missed sleep, massive amounts of stress and the affect on their mental health (including depression) are incredibly worrying, as all of these affect cognitive ability and in turn their ability to take in knowledge. I myself go to an extremely selective school, and the effects are even worse there, as most students get on average 5.5 hours of sleep. Not only does stress affect students, it affects better students more. Clearly stress is a significant detriment, and my first point stands. I also think that it should be clear that, should there be no adequate response with an extension on benefits, the argument about is a significant voting point. My opponent doesn’t even significantly respond to my second contention, saying that his case talks about it. Sure his case talks about it, but this is a case in which he doesn’t understand the nuances of the argument. The argument first states that grades are not meaningful feedback, because they don’t tell you what you did wrong. To be fair, my opponent does state that students can strive to do better by looking at feedback, which I assume means comments as well as grades, but this still ignores a fundamental tenet of the argument: students are less likely to look at other types of feedback if they get a grade. This should be clear from many of the arguments that I have already made, but it is also directly evidenced by the source connected to contention 2. The fact that students aren’t interested in furthering their understanding passed the necessary point for a grade by looking over their mistakes in detail and correcting them is extremely detrimental and completely destroys my opponents claim about improvement, meaning that this point stands as well. Additionally, he completely drops the argument that teachers often don’t give feedback if they don’t have to (and standardized tests almost never do this,) in favor of a grade. As an extension of this point, one of the main psychological states that leads to standardized testing is the idea that all you need is a number to help a student. With out that fundamental idea, you can’t have a standardized test. Standardized tests have been shown to be harmful multiple times. My opponent’s response to my third contention is just a restatement of part of his opening case, and a completely irrelevant part at that. My third point still stands. My opponent’s response to my 4th contention is that students wouldn’t want to learn. My opponent provides no evidence of this, and my Hampshire and MIT examples rebut this perfectly. These are two of the best schools in the nation and they don’t grade universally. In the case of Hampshire, there are no grades. My opponent doesn’t even respond to contentions 5 and 6 and skips to 7. He states that 7 is irrelevant because it is an argument based on tests, but doesn’t actually state why it doesn’t apply to grades as well. I provide a direct link, and my earlier psychology point also serves as a link so contentions 5 6 and 7 stand as well. My opponent responds to 8 by saying that fear of failing makes the student do the last five. This response completely ignores the time constraint point. Either the student looses sleep and does worse, or doesn’t do the hard points and does worse, so this stands as well. Once again, my opponent doesn’t attack the connection which is documented by science so contention 9 stands. My opponent’s argument that grades are utilitarian is irrelevant, as he never shows that utilitarianism is good. My opponents response to my rebuttal about working towards a strong goal in the future completely misunderstands the argument, because it ignores the basis of it: that people who can do work for goals that are important in the long run, like acquiring knowledge, or being able to pursue a field they are interested in, do better. My opponent says that these long-term goals are Grades. That response completely ignores the argument, which directly states that having grades as your ultimate goal is detrimental. My rebuttal stands and my opponent’s first contention is debunked. The efficiency point is just quoted from the first speech, and I’m not even sure why it is there. Additionally Con’s taking my words out of context in such a gross way immediately forfeits him conduct. The full sentence is here “This debate is about whether or not education is benefited, not whether educators are helped to make decisions. ” I did not point out what my opponent says I did in any way. His last point is once again quoted from the first speech and ignores the response that cognitive bias is inherent in grades, whereas complicated, meaningful feedback allows for a student to see a response, even if it does have cognitive bias. Grades are inherently more prone to cognitive bias and are the guesses my opponent talks about. In conclusion I would like to state that all of my contentions have been inadequately attacked, and all are significant detriments to education, especially 1 2 4 5 8 and 9. Therefore I have 9 important, unrefuted claims, while my opponent only attacks two of my rebuttals, both by restating his original case. The outcome of this debate should be clear. To help students learn, to stop group work from being crushed, to reduce detrimental levels of stress, to increase knowledge retention, teach kids to look at meaningful feedback, to increase reliance on intrinsic motivation, and to spread the word on the effects of grades, I urge a pro ballot.