Schools should give grades

Thanks for offering this debate. I think we will both enjoy discussing the topic. First and foremost, I contend that grades are different from feedback and that they're useful in school. Perhaps it is best to review the history of grades: "About two hundred years ago, society began asking educators to tell them how much the student has learned. Somebody somewhere - probably at Oxford or Cambridge in the late 1700s - came up with the system of giving the best learners A's, the next best B's, and so forth. It was just a system of shorthand that was supposed to describe how well people think. Through most of the 1800s, schools in England and the United States used only two grades. You either got credit for taking a certain course or your didn't. But by the late 1800s, schools had adopted range of grades from A to F, from one to ten, or some other scale. In the twentieth century they added pluses and minuses." [1] Having provided the history of grades for context, I will now delve into my arguments. 1. Grades are useful tools. Given the quick pace of school and the necessity to evaluate whether students have learned the material, it is only right that grades should be divvied out according to the merit of each student. Multiple grades offer a more realistic spectrum of achievement compared to the older model of pass/fail grading. Instead of being failed for even narrowly missing the threshold, student can take comfort in know that they will still pass the class with a C grade. Another element of grades is that they can be easily stored and compared against each other. Hence, the GPA. Every letter grade is assigned a numerical equivalent and the average thereof determines a student's overall effort, learning, and scholastic success. This is probably the most efficient model of grading to date. 2. Grades are the status quo. It is worth mentioning that grades are the current currency of academics. From middle-school to high-school, high-school to undergraduate college, undergraduate college to graduate college, grades permeate the modern structure of education. Grades can be improved, perhaps, but not abolished without serious ramifications Refutations: Here I will dismantle Con's arguments piece by piece. 1. "Grades are a sort of feedback for the children." I disagree for good reason. Grades are ratings/rankings. They primarily serve an administrative function. Besides, letter grades hardly tell students anything. Rather, the teacher's notes in the margins consist the feedback. All the red ink in addition to the letter grade is the feedback. 2. "See, grades are not feedback at all, but a way to rank children." Agreed. That's exactly why grades exist. 3. "Learning should not and cannot be a performance" But are real-world jobs based on how well your perform? Why should schools mirror what the real-world demands so that students will better understand the expectations upon their graduation? 4. "Children in schools are always thinking, 'What does the teacher want me to say?' not 'How do I solve this problem?'" Well, that depends. If it's a history, government, literature, etc. class, then subjectivity does exist which may compel a student to copy the teacher in order to maximize the final grade. Yet, in more objective classes (like mathematics and hard sciences), the teachers' biases are largely irrelevant. Still, Con raises a good point. There are problems with grades that must be addressed and can, I believe, be reformed. Still, Con's arguments do not show the need to abolish the grade system. At the very most, Con has only proven that reform is necessary. Thanks for reading; I highly anticipate the following rounds. Sources: [1] Ken Bain. "What the Best College Students Do" London: Harvard UP, 2012. (p. 7)