Background⌗

It’s the start of spring break, which means I have time to write about random things!

Anyways, once during school, I asked my teacher for extra credit. They replied:

I don’t believe in extra credit. Your grades should reflect your understanding of the subject.

I tried to think of responses to this to persuade them to give extra credit, which made me think - why do I want extra credit in the first place? This mader me realize that the teacher and I had different goals; the teacher wanted the grades to reflect knowledge and I wanted to have a 100 for college admissions and scholarships. Which answer is correct?

More background: The XY problem⌗

The XY problem is when someone tries to solve X by doing Y, but doing Y introduces more problems, causing the focus to be on how to fix Y and ignoring whether achieving Y would fix X.

One example is gifting. I hate gifts that the recipient doesn’t get to choose - it turns gifting into a game of guessing what the recipient likes and the recipient pretending that they like the gift.

As an example situation, let’s say Alice wanted to make Bob happy (the X in XY problem). Alice decides to choose a gift (the Y) and has to figure out what gift to give Bob. Alice doesn’t know anything about what Bob likes and is stressed about picking the wrong gift. Alice decides to give Bob a $100 gift card to a movie theater.

Bob is behind on their rent payments. They cannot pay their rent with gift cards. Giving $100 in cash would’ve made Bob significantly more happier, but since Alice focused so much on giving a gift, Alice spent $100 that could be spent anywhere to buy $100 but worse in the form of a gift card which can only be spent at a specific place. As a result, the XY problem causes both sides to become unhappy.

What’s the purpose of school?⌗

Before we look at why grades exist, we need to look at why school exists. School is the result of the XY problem. School has the following goals, and it fails to achieve them:

To teach real-world skills⌗

I agree that elementary school teaches useful skills as in basic math, reading, and writing. I include basic math because it’s difficult to use a calculator when you don’t know what addition is.

However, you probably know how to read and write after elementary school. You really don’t need to spend 7 more years through grades 6-12 to practice reading and writing. I’m practicing reading and writing by writing this blog post. Billions of dollars do not need to be spent to let students practice reading and writing.

Some people also say that studying history is important to avoid repeating the past. However, school does not teach you about how to actually stop the past from repeating itself; they only teach you to recognize it (assuming you don’t forget about it after the test). For example, there are countries commiting war crimes right now. Will school teach you how to stop these war crimes? No.

In addition, history doesn’t teach you about current problems. For example, how (not) to solve traffic, how statistics can be misleading, how you can’t really vote for the U.S. president, how first-past-the-post voting (one person votes for only one candidate) leads to people voting for candidates they hate, and how gerrymandering can cause a candidate with less votes to win. These are all important problems that you won’t learn about if students are required to be busy memorizing the names of the battles in the U.S. Civil War and various dates of each event. In addition, there are so many more topics that school won’t teach you about because at least one parent is going to complain, such as the importance of vaccination and LGBTQ+ rights.

To avoid ignorance⌗

One common argument against not learning something is that people just want to be ignorant. You’ll see people on the internet saying things like:

Clearly, we need a solution to this problem [of ignorance], because believe me if nothing is done, tomorrow’s doctors are going to be people that used Chat GPT to write their essays and tests in med school.

However, ignorance is okay. For example, do you understand how exactly your computer is working to read this blog post? Probably not. Leonard Read once stated

[N]ot a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make [a pencil].

No single person knows how a computer works either. People spend their entire career studying how a part of a computer works, such as CPUs. No single person knows how electricity flows through wires, how that electricity was generated, how the electgricity was delivered to your home, how AC power is converted to DC power, how the laptop battery works, how CPUs work, how GPUs work, how memory works, how SSDs work, how the bus between those work, what the various USB standards define, how the screen works, how the OS works, how software works, how sofftware interacts with the OS, how the network sends data, how WiFi works, and how data is sent reliably across that netowrk. There’s still a lot of things missing from this list. Is you not knowing how all of these individual components work important? No. Being ignorant about these is okay. We do not have enough time to study every single subject there is to know, and that’s okay.

This also applies to the school cirriculum. Do you really need to know what covalent bonding is to be a functional member of society? Maybe if you’re a chemist, but otherwise, no. Do you need to understand the literary devices used in Romeo and Juliet? No.

Spend your time studying something important. Study something interesting. Study something you enjoy.

To promote time management and responsibility⌗

When students become an adult, I’d say that time management is actually easier. Of course, I might be naïve about the real world (consider that the author is “a random high schooler complains on the internet”). However, in most jobs, you are not expected to do anything outside of work. Most people agree that you shouldn’t respond to work emails outside of working hours:

Don’t reply on weekends. Set your boundaries, or they will take advantage of you.

No, and if management expects that to happen find another job

Never respond to e-mails or take calls outside of your normal, scheduled work hours unless you want to set the expectation that you’re both available and willing to work during that time.

School trains you that you should always be available outside of school hours. You’re expected to spend time outside of school to study for your school classes, do homework, figure out what college is, sign up for scholarships, study for the PSAT, SAT, ACT, and TSIA. These expectations train you to have a bad work/life balance. This isn’t to say that adults have zero responsibilities outside of work. However, people aren’t doing taxes and paying bills every day of the year, and being lazy generally won’t cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt.

To keep children out of work⌗

School doesn’t stop children from working. In 2021, 19.4% of teens 16-19 had a job. School is actively causing people to lose money by preventing them from working extra hours. In addition, teachers can assign homework at any time with practically no rules on what homework can be. Good luck scheduling your part time job!

To practice critical thinking⌗

You can practice critical thinking with anything. For example, I program things in my free time. School is taking away time for me to critically think and try to solve real problems through programming.

Critical thinking and analyzing a fictional text is not useful. It makes the students bored and hate the class, it makes the teacher upset that the students hate the text, and nobody likes it.

To get money⌗

Schools make a lot of money. For example, in 2023, FBISD made $1,007,993,866. In 2022, HISD made $2,107,492,062. These are billion dollars organizations that provide school administrators a lot of money. Teachers also get paid some of the money, but not as much money. Compare this to the fact that FBISD also only spent 1% of their budget on maintenance. There are no functional library printers at my school. They’ve been broken since last spring break. Thanks FBISD.

Schools also sacrifice learning for money. FBISD blocks YouTube on their network, while most teachers require us to watch educational videos on YouTube. As such, it’s expected that everyone has a VPN or has mobile data and good mobile data coverage inside the concrete building. One reason I believe FBISD blocks YouTube is to receive discounts from the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The FCC states:

CIPA imposes certain requirements on schools or libraries that receive discounts for Internet access or internal connections through the E-rate program – a program that makes certain communications services and products more affordable for eligible schools and libraries.

What are the requirements for the discounts?

Schools and libraries subject to CIPA are required to adopt and implement an Internet safety policy addressing:

  • Access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet;
  • The safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms and other forms of direct electronic communications;
  • Unauthorized access, including so-called “hacking,” and other unlawful activities by minors online;
  • Unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and
  • Measures restricting minors’ access to materials harmful to them

There are some more requirements, but they are omitted since they aren’t relevant.

Because Internet traffic is encrypted thanks to TLS used in HTTPS, it’s impossible to determine which YouTube video a device is accessing, so obscene videos cannot be blocked individually. However, it’s still possible to determine that a user is trying to access something on YouTube. To meet the above requirements, YouTube is blocked entirely. This shows how FBISD places a greater value on money by receiving discounts from CIPA than education from educational videos on YouTube.

In addition, administrators get paid a lot of money to put policies that really don’t help. For example, the school district I’m currently in used to require student ID badges to stop school shooters. This seems like a great idea in theory, until you realize:

  • these badges are only given out during the spring semester, and no authentication is done during the fall semester
  • some students don’t wear the badges
  • administrators are so focused on checking if students are wearing badges that they don’t check if the photo on the badge matches the student wearing it
  • students can get a replacement badge with zero authentication

This is an example of security theater. This is worse than doing nothing because by having IDs, people in school have a false sense of security.

In addition, my school has a policy of not opening exterior doors, and this is also to maintain security. Students are supposed to tell people who are outside to go to the front office. However:

  • extracirricular activies occur outside
  • those students in the extracirricular activities go back and forth from inside to outside
  • neither the students nor their coaches want them to walk up to the front office and check in every time they go back inside
  • students need to enter and exit portables (small “temporary” (they really aren’t temporary) classroom buildings that are outside of the main school building) during the passing period, and nobody wants to go from the portables, to the front office, check in, and get to their class inside in 5 minutes
  • in practice, some exterior doors automatically unlock during passing periods, and people who aren’t students can enter too

If nobody opens exterior doors, everyone is inconvenienced. Minimal additional security is obtained because there is still an automatic unlock schedule on the doors. In practice, people open the exterior doors. Having fake rules which exist but people aren’t supposed to follow are bad.

Teachers are also paid. The standard for teaching is really non-existent. It can range anywhere from “every grade is determined by a random number generator” to “nobody can write a perfect essay so everyone gets a 40” to “I buy my assignments which don’t teach you anything* from Teachers Pay Teachers for $1 while I sit here and relax.” If you don’t like your teacher, you’re usually out of luck. Counselors usually reject course changes just to change teachers. In addition, it’s not possible to report a teacher for being bad at their job. This lack of competition for teachers to improve leads to teachers who don’t care about teaching. Some teachers are there just to collect their paycheck and leave. Of course, there are definetely great teachers, and in general, there are more good teachers than bad teachers.

* These assignments include assignments like the “Columbian Exchange Menu” where we had to list and include photos of:

  • meals with ingredients from the Old World
  • meals with ingredients from the New World
  • meals with ingredients from both worlds

This doesn’t teach anything. Knowing what food can be made with a specific set of ingredients isn’t useful. Memorizing the ingredients from either side is usually not required either. This entire project is a waste of time, and it’s only done because:

  • it’s easy to assign to students
  • it takes about a week, which means a free 1 week vacation for the teacher
  • it’s easy to grade simply by skimming through it
  • it helps the teacher tell themselves that the students are having fun and enjoying the class because they see the students working together and being creative
  • it looks visually impressive, which gives the general appearance that the classroom is “fun” and that students enjoy the class to other teachers, administrators, and parents

I had another teacher want to assign us an assignment which involved drawing solely for the last reason above.

Don’t do this.

There are better uses for everyone’s time.

To provide free day care⌗

Don’t do this. There are cheaper day cares that don’t cost billions of dollars per year to operate.

Children going to school is an inconvenience to parents, who either:

  • need to schedule work so that they can drop off their children at school and pick them up later
  • tell them to walk/bike to school and hope they don’t get run over because the U.S. is not pedestrian friendly
  • tell them to catch the bus

The last option is somewhat unreliable. The bus might be late, and you won’t know if it’s late or if it came early and you missed the bus. Also, I remember on my first day of school hearing on the announcements:

Bus route [number] has been dissolved. Please find an alternate way to get home.

I wasn’t on that bus route. Good luck to everyone who was though - the road outside the school is a literal highway.

To protect children who face domestic violence and food insecurity⌗

I know someone who’s had school protect them from abusive parents. This is great! However, if this is the main purpose of school, it should say that instead of being disguised under education. Being disguised under education means that schools can’t focus on protecting these children. If a child wants to talk about a family issue with a teacher, there’s nothing making that conversation confidential; the teacher can call their parents at any time. In addition, school never teach students what domestic violence is and what to do about it. Many people like to gaslight children into thinking that nothing bad happens, which means that when something bad does happen, children don’t know what to do.

In addition, school can increase domestic violence. Some parents beat children up for having poor grades. If you’re a parent who punishes children for poor grades, consider this: why do you not like other people knowing your income?

Income is a number determining how good an employer thinks you are.

Grades are also a number determining how good a teacher thinks a student is.

People hate comparing income because it compares how much people perceive them as successful. For example, if Alice makes $80k/year and Bob makes $60k/year and Bob works harder than Alice, Bob would feel bad that their income doesn’t reflect their effort. In addition, Alice sees Bob’s hard work, and Alice feels bad that Bob isn’t paid more. Comparing income makes both people involved feel bad. This isn’t to say that you should never compare income - it’s useful to be able to negotiate a higher salary. However, what if your partner beat you up if you made less than $70k/year? Or maybe for rejecting a job that requires doing something you hate for $80k/year when your current job which you’re passionate about is $60k/year? Beating someone up for this would be completely unreasonable.

The same applies for grades. A student might study less for a quiz and get a 60 in exchange for more time to socialize, study job-related topics outside of school (which is completely possible and encouraged in fields like computer science), and sleep. Sure, they could’ve spent this time studying to get an 80, but was it worth it? Is getting 20 more points on a grade that won’t matter at all from 1st-8th grade (ignoring high school classes taken during this time) and will only matter for 4 years from 9th-12th for college admissions and scholarships really more important than making childhood memories, learning job-related subjects, and sleeping well? And is it reasonable to beat up a child because they have other things they value aside from grades?

Some people say that punishment is necessary to get children to care about grades. It isn’t. What is necessary is that both the parents and the student knows why the grades are more important than making childhood memories, enjoying time with friends and family, and being happy. In addition, don’t assume that this statement is true - if you intend on getting a job that doesn’t require a degree, is sacrificing your childhood really worth it?

My parents don’t care about my grades, and this is good. I also get 100s often because I understand that I’m sacrificing my childhood happiness to increase a number on a random PDF document. Was it worth it? I’ll never really know. I often try to look for a path to success, but in reality, there is no universal path to success. Even if you go through the entire school system and get a PhD, you can still be homeless. School isn’t a magic solution to being successful.

What’s the target grade?⌗

Students should be able to get a 100. It should be realistic to get 100 if they try in their classes. See “What do grades to in reality?” below for why getting a 100 is so important. In addition, teachers from other schools already give students who work hard a 100, so by giving hard-working students a grade lower than a 100, teachers are causing them to lose college and scholarship opportunities.

How do teachers use grades?⌗

Motivate people to learn quickly⌗

When teachers provide zero extra credit and no progressive testing (higher test grades in the future replace lower test grades in the past), students have to have everything learned before each quiz and test in order to get a 100. If a student has a bad day and struggles with a concept and doesn’t manage to learn it before the quiz, they will get points taken off their semester average with no chance to recover it when they do eventually learn it. These constant time constraints on learning also leads to increased stress and an increased dislike towards the subject since instead of learning at your own pace, you are constantly trying to cram information with the threat of losing money by having worse grades.

Motivate people to learn at their own pace⌗

When teachers provide extra credit and progressive testing, this allows students to learn at their own pace. If a student struggled with a unit but eventually learned it, this will be reflected in their grades by extra credit points and progressive testing.

Motivate people to dislike the class⌗

When teachers grade harshly and stops people who work hard from getting an A, people will dislike the class. Entering low grades quite literally cause students to lose thousands of dollars, increase stress in regards to college admissions, and can increase family tensions.

What do grades do in reality?⌗

The following sections assume you are in 9th-12th grade, or that you are taking a high school course in middle school. If these do not apply to you, your grade does not matter. Nobody cares about your elementary or regular middle school grades or whether you took advanced classes in middle school as long as you passed and didn’t need to redo the course.

Cause students to lose money⌗

College is portrayed as some place you go to that will somehow make you more successful. You need to realize that 3.5 million Americans 60 years and older owe a total of $125 billion in student loans. Even if you get a higher income, you might still have a negative net worth when you retire. College isn’t the solution to all your problems. However, it is the solution to some:

  • Learning skills that require expensive equipment such as science
  • Safety-critical jobs that cannot be self-taught (medical field, pilots, etc)
  • Increasing chances of employment

As such, some students might choose to spend about $150,000 to get a 4-year bachelor’s degree, or more or less money depending on the degree and college. This money isn’t coming out of thin air. Almost all students need scholarships to help pay for this. Many scholarships are merit-based, meaning that they’re based on grades and GPA. If a teacher gives a student a B, the teacher is causing the student to lose thousands of dollars. A 4.0 GPA is much more impressive to scholarships looking for good students than a 3.9 GPA.

In addition, Texas has the top 10% rule, which guarantees automatic admission into public Texas colleges for people in the top 10% of people in their class with the highest grades. The only catch is that the college gets to pick what major you get to go into, and students have to apply for other majors and those applications may be rejected. However, if you’re a student that wants to go into a non-competitive major such as liberal arts, great! However, if any teacher gives you anything below a 100, they are hurting your class rank. If you don’t get in the top 10%, you need to apply to multiple colleges, which can amount to hundreds of dollars wasted in application fees and a possibility that you might not get accepted into any college you apply for.

Cause domestic violence and a general distrust between children and parents⌗

Grades divide families. People envy siblings who have higher grades. Parents don’t like when children have poor grades. For more details, scroll up to the “To protect children who face domestic violence and food insecurity” section.

Make students lose sleep⌗

The CDC states that 6 out of 10 middle schoolers and 7 out of 10 high schoolers don’t get enough sleep.

This causes people to die.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states:

These days, teens are busier than ever: studying, extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, and spending time with friends are among the long list of things they do to fill their time. However, with all of these activities, teens tend to compromise on something very important—sleep. This is a dangerous habit that can lead to drowsy driving. In fact, in 2021, drowsy driving claimed 684 lives, and some studies even suggest drowsiness may have been involved in more than 10-20 percent of fatal or injury crashes.

In comparision, the National Center for Education Statistics states:

From 2000 to 2021, there were 276 casualties (108 killed and 168 wounded) in active shooter incidents at elementary and secondary schools and 157 casualties (75 killed and 82 wounded) in active shooter incidents at postsecondary institutions.

That’s a total of 433 casualties over 21 years. This isn’t to say that school shootings aren’t a problem - it is a problem and we should find ways to prevent shootings. However, there are also larger causes of death caused by the school system. Not only does school cause students’ health to suffer by getting less sleep and therefore being more prone to diseases, it causes people to die.

However, a lot of people say that students not getting enough sleep is caused by the students’ actions, and that it’s the students’ fault that they don’t have enough sleep. In addition, people say that it’s irrational to sacrifice sleep to work on school. Even the CDC says:

[Children and adolescents who do not get enough sleep] are also more likely to have attention and behavior problems, which can contribute to poor academic performance in school.

In addition, the University of Michigan states:

College students go to bed one to two hours later and sleep less per night on average compared to previous generations. As a result, 75% of U-M undergraduates do not sleep enough to feel rested on five or more days per week, and 19% reported that sleep difficulties had an impact on academic performance in the past year. The amount of sleep that a college student gets is one of the strongest predictors of academic success. Sleep plays a key role in helping students fix and consolidate memories, plus prevent decay of memories. Without sleep, people work harder and but don’t do as well.

All of this advice makes it seem like it’s the students’ fault that they don’t get enough sleep, and that it makes zero sense for students to sacrifice sleep to study. However, people often forget about one fact - school isn’t just about tests. Homework exists. Homework takes time to do. If you get your full 8 hours of sleep, go to school for 8 hours, take 2 hours taking care of yourself (eating breakfast and dinner, taking a shower, taking any medicine, etc.), you only have 6 hours to do things. If you’re in a time-consuming extracirricular activity like band which takes about 4 hours for rehearsals after school, now you have 2 hour of “free time.” If you ever get more than 2 hour of homework assigned, the only way to make time is to sleep less. Teachers also often underestimate how long their homework takes to do. You will not understand how long it takes to draw a map with accurate country borders, draw rivers in that country, and color it unless you’re a student actually doing that activity. In addition, even if you’re a Professional Time Manager who can do all your homework in 2-6 hours, you’ve now used up your 24 hours in the day! You have 0 free time. Do you really want to spend 12 years of your life in 1st-12th grade and 2-6 years in college doing nothing but sleep, eat, and school? No. People want to have fun during their life. The only way to have time to have fun is by sacrificing sleep.

Even the conclusion of these studies are incorrect - more sleep doesn’t magically increase test scores at all times. Some teachers won’t teach you concepts on the test and will only give you busy work like the Columbian Exchange Menu (mentioned above) and map making activities that don’t teach material that is covered on the test or material that is remotely useful in day-to-day life. I have a teacher that will only post the review the day before the test, so you have 1 night to study this review. It doesn’t matter how much sleep you get to build memories if you don’t have the test material in your memory in the first place. There’s a reason many students cram material in the day before the test and don’t get enough sleep.

Distract students in class⌗

As mentioned above, students do not have enough time during the day to complete homework and study. Therefore, students need to study, do homework, and sleep during classes for other subjects. If you’re a teacher, please provide free days (call them study halls or catch-up days if an admin asks) and don’t mind if a student is sleeping or on their phone duiring class. There is simply not enough time to do everything while being 100% on task in every class. There’s a reason tests exist; reward students for being able to learn the concept through high test grades and don’t punish them for not learning the way you intended.

Final thoughts⌗

School is a game. You can’t make good decisions until you understand the real reason why you as a student, teacher, or parent, care about grades.