Thinking more deeply about my anti-grading fanaticism, especially considering lots of my peers -- even if they admit cheating in school, doing the bare minimum, and hating grades -- don't share that fanaticism.

I always cite Kohn's PUNISHED BY REWARDS as its source, but:

a bigger, deeper source of it for me is this @InnuendoStudios video @DBoyFajardo showed me on the origins of conservatism, which in retrospect committed me against grades for the rest of time, even though Ian doesn't mention them once. Totally rewired me.

When we grade, we are committing kids early to a mythology that says some folks deserve to serve and some folks deserve to lead. We are baptizing them in this ideology before they even have the tools or social standing to decide whether or not it is true.

we can lull ourselves into thinking that most kids take a failing or d or c grade as "i can try harder next time and do better", and some do!

but a not-insignificant slice take it, often with teacher support, as "i am on track to be in the underclass, as it should be".

We can provide detailed feedback without establishing a hierarchy. We just...clearly can.

Most assignments have two components: written feedback and a grade. Grades accomplish something categorically different from the written feedback or they wouldn't be on the paper.

Tell me what the answer can possibly be to "what is a grade doing on a paper that already contains individualized written feedback?" if it's not "a grade begins to implant in the mind of the student AND grader the notion of where the kid is on a hierarchy"

and oh-ho, buddy, if you think that hierarchical seed we plant when we grade stops growing at the classroom door, you're wrong.

why do you think we have a populace that accepts a "credit score" as a reason to make someone homeless, or be homeless themselves?

I have spent the better part of my life talking to 'high performing' and 'low-performing' students about school, which is to say primarily about grading.

There isn't a single person yet who's told me they were happy in the pyramid of it all. Top or bottom.

The only rebuttal I've ever ever EVER gotten to ripping out the grading system at the roots -- from teachers, parents, or kids, after presenting them with the neurological and political realities of what grades do? -- is "what if there's no alternative?"

that's it.

There clearly are alternatives. Follow @Jessifer, for one thing.

But also: if your only reason for staying in one place that you know is hurting you and everyone around you is 'there's no alternative'? There are usually some alternatives being kept from you, and for a reason.