Do Grades Matter?

Do grades matter?

As a government teacher I use news about the 2008 election, and the biographies of the candidates in my classroom on a regular basis. However, this can bring up conversations that can be difficult to have with my students. For example: by consistently playing up the fact that he received some of the lowest scores of anyone in his class while at the Naval Academy in Annapolis John McCain seems to be implying that academic achievement is not particularly important. True, simply graduating from the United States Naval Academy is a major accomplishment, but I’m forced to wonder how the dozens of people who excelled academically feel about his current success as Republican frontrunner. McCain has also discussed his discipline problems while he was at the academy, which apparently were numerous. All of this comes in the wake of President Bush, who frequently brought up his poor grades while at Harvard and Yale.

I see the mentality that grades don’t matter in my students who are constantly obsessed with simply passing. There are students who want to receive the highest scores in the class, but many just want to cross the threshold of 60. Of course I encourage these students to set their sights higher. But, the success of McCain and President Bush does beg the question – do grades actually correlate to success? Perhaps these leaders, and some students, measure their success by a standard completely different from a grade point average. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the danger is when students begin to think that because other people have been able to succeed with bad grades that opportunity will be available to all of them as well. That said, moving beyond grades as the premier measure of success may be a good direction for schools and teachers to move in.