In this quest, students should embrace failure, because failure and success are two sides of the same coin.ĭutch designer and THNKer Marcel Wanders once argued in a THNK session: “Doing a good project in school should be forbidden…students have to make as many mistakes as possible, and learn from it.” Truly innovative concepts emerge in such environments. Still, I think we want students to be naïve, to dream big, to take risks and to engage in divergent thinking.

Looking back at my university education, I too strategically chose subjects that would benefit my GPA.īut as a society, do we want our students to engage in this type of behavior? Will this make them educated individuals? Perhaps, this is just inherent to human behavior. Students are therefore prone to choose the path with the least resistance, opting for the easy A. As a consequence, the expectation of receiving a grade creates a fear to fail. These links are deeply entrenched in society’s perspective on education. Surely we agree that futile and vain feelings are associated with the letter grade F and proud and happy feelings are associated with the letter grade A. In this article, we shine a light on these questions and in doing so reflect on some essential features of the THNK Executive Leadership Program. Why do we attach so much value to grades? Are grades an adequate form of feedback? What is the relationship between education and grades? And could an educational model be effective without this? However, upon closer inspection, essential questions arise: They allow differences between students to be quantified and permit teachers to process more students in a shorter period of time. Grades function as a simple and immediate feedback mechanism. Just look at how the best jobs go to the students with the best grades at the best universities, who in turn accept students with the best grades at the best high schools.Īt first glance, the large-scale implementation of grades seems like a textbook example of efficiency improvement. Our society is even structurally dependent on grading performance. Grades define the contours of our educational system. Today however, the contrast couldn’t be greater. Educated individuals like Thomas Jefferson, Rene Descartes, William Shakespeare, Galileo, and Plato were never given grades.

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