Grades or NO-GRADES?

I still remember my result publication days in elementary school and high school. The night before the result, I used to pray to my God to bring a disaster like a cyclone or anything on my school the following day(childhood frivolity). I think, you can easily get from this line, how much I used to fear my result days. The resulting system was nothing but a numerical grading. And just a number used to make my days horrible. Though I used to get good grades often, even then I was frightened about it. Because whenever I got any grade, not desired to my mom, It was kind of a disaster at home and I used to be the victim for the next couple of days or months. Even on the basis of this grade, students were divided between two groups. One was considered to be good Students' group ( thought to be brilliant)', the other bad students' group(not brilliant)'. I belong to an education system where learning is completely teacher-oriented. Our acquired knowledge is measure through some symbols and numbers. In our country, teachers use the ABCDF grading policy. They focus more on the grading number rather than the learning progress. Within a school year, students are required to sit for three exams and they are only evaluated on the papers, they used to write on exam days, but not on their learning skill, even not on their knowledge, they acquired during the whole year. I also noticed the tendency of some of my teachers to be biased to some students and giving them good grades, even they don't do better. I, personally hate this system from my elementary school level. When I got a more clear idea about it, I started hating it more and always used to ask my friends how do they feel about this. And, the answers were the same, most of the time. Because the ultimate goal of a learner should be learning and acquiring. I remember, how stressful those days were. Because only one number can change your grade.Don't know why I used to be the unlucky one always. I used to get the marginal mark always that used to drag my result to a lower grade. I'm not saying these just because I faced these but because I saw a lot of students struggling with grades. At the end of the day, they ended up focusing more on grading, but less on learning.

When I came across Glenda's article named"A Simple Alternative to Grading", I was amazed by her Contract Grading system. As a student and as a teaching assistant, I would love to follow this policy. Because I agree with the writer,'The goal in classrooms should be learning and retention, not the acquisition of meaningless letters or numbers." I know, I have to ensure my students' learning development first. This method is also recommended by the NCTE, as an effective alternative to traditional grading. That's great too. It is a less stressful system for both teachers and students. Besides, it's time-consuming. Over the past few years, researchers found traditional grading as too subjective, too arbitrary and often not conducive to learning. So why should we fix on it, when it is detrimental to our students' learning? Just because they are comfy to teachers or their apathy towards change? I know, change is kind of not desirable. People fear to change. It also has some negative effects, though. Students may not accept it willingly. But we should take the initiatives to make this system familiar to students. We have to make them understand and obviously, the teachers have to work on it. Because when I have a better option, which values the ultimate goal of learning, then why should we stick to the traditional one that is not that much effective.

Over the last couple of years, good researches have been conducted over this issue and we also get to see revolutionary changes. Many universities revised their policies,many faculties took their own responsibilities to implement this idea. And those turned effective for students. In this system a student gets freedom to learn,students are not confined to some specific syllabus and remember them, again and again, to vomit on their exam papers,rather they get the opportunity to learn through mistakes, revise their work, again and again, get their problems sorted out, get the chance to work on different type of works and most importantly, over the semester, they get engaged on their study.

It is beneficial in many ways for students, I assume. Because they get to concentrate more on their performance and less on obtaining a grade.

Even the classroom dynamics get changed due to this policy as teachers work with the students as a collaborator here not as a judge. So, students find a more comfortable and healthier place to learn.

Everything has two sides like the coin. So, it has some disadvantages too, that I explained above. Like, how the students would take it?

Change is always something scary. But we can't stop discovering and inventing new things emphasizing on that fear. We have to out rule the fear and leave the traditional things to get some new spark and new vibes. Most importantly, this grading system is very much useful to both instructors and students. So, we can clearly notice that the advantages of Contract Grading system outweigh the disadvantages(That we are assuming as disadvantages).

I would obviously go for the contract grading system. Because as an instructor I have to value my students' improvement first. This new grading method is going to make the students quench for learning and ensure a far better learning environment for them.