9 Reasons Why Bad Grades Don’t Mean Squat

I found this article today, and its pretty compelling. Bad grades don’t always mean you stink at whatever. Who knows, maybe your teacher just is horrible at teaching, and you get dinged because of it. I myself have gotten bad grades in the past, but I’m still doing fine in life, and so should you too.

Here is a brief excerpt from the article:

“I bet we’ve all heard this one:

Student: “Why did you give me a C?”

Teacher: “I didn’t give you a C, that’s the grade you earned.”

This argument is based on the idea that grading is objective. Supposedly, your grades reflect your performance and are not assigned arbitrarily by the grader. I call bullshit. Objective grading is a myth, a dangerous myth high school and college instructors have been hiding behind for years. Here are 9 reasons grading is subjective, if not entirely arbitrary.

1. Rubrics can’t create the objective from the subjective

Clearly, the grading of research papers, essays, presentations, etc. is predominantly subjective. We can’t even agree what makes for a good presentation, for instance. Some professors will require a slide show while others bemoan DBPPT (Death By PowerPoinT). That said, some idiots actually claim that subjective grading can be made objective through the use of rubrics. A rubric is a set of criteria and standards used to structure the grading process. If you’ve ever had a grade broken down into 20 points for content, 5 points for style, 5 points for bibliography, etc., that was a rubric.

I hate to rain on the educational parade here, but dividing one made up mark into 5 made up marks and adding them up does not make this process objective. How does the grader decide what gets a 4 and what gets a 5? Furthermore, the process of developing the rubric is completely subjective. Why does content get 10 points instead of 9 or 11? Why does bibliography get 5? Why doesn’t originality get points? Why don’t I get points for being poetic? I agree that rubrics help structure grading and might even facilitate discussion of the grades, but anybody who thinks that combining a bunch of subjective grades in a subjective way will magically create an objective grade is delusional.”

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