What Your Grades Really Mean | Eva Ren | TEDxEdenHighSchool

[Music] I was excited to learn about all these new electives being offered I love so many subjects so it was hard to narrow down which ones to take but eventually when I was finally done picking my classes I compared to my schedule with my friends just to see if they had any classes with me then one of my friends said yeah I love English but I didn't take English literature this year because I suck at it and asked her well why do you suck at English and she replied well I only got a 70 in

the class last year and at first I thought fair enough but then later I realized whether you suck at a subject or not shouldn't the point of school be about fostering our interest and becoming better at something so why does getting a bad mark limit our learning unfortunately the reality for many students is they don't take certain classes for fear it would bring down their academic average and this is a big deal when students compromise their own learning just to get their numbers on their report cards now you might be thinking well that's the students

own fault anyways but why do so many of them care about grace rather than learning could it be that school is focusing on the wrong thing it seems like schools sole preoccupation is to determine who can follow the curriculum the best we as young people are taught to memorize information found in a textbook only to regurgitate it on to next week's test paper before forgetting all about it oh you don't need to know that for the test or that's way beyond the curriculum are usually some teachers responses to an insightful question or an original comment

that Aston has made I feel like school no longer inspires the minds of the next generation instead researchers at the College of William and Mary showed that the creativity among students is on the decline an increased number of students merely learned a minimum just to get the desired grade we asked hey what's on the quiz so we can study just that and if something is not for marks or not on a test then we're reluctant to do the work assigned now is this because students are lazy why do we seem so mark obsessed well it's

because a number means so much to us nowadays because we feel like those numbers determine our futures so we value getting a good mark as more important than learning itself but what other choices do we have it's not like we really have a say in this we are told day after day that education is the key to a successful life and that we need good marks in order to have a respectable job or good income sure some people tell us that marks don't define us and that were more than just so great but it never

feels that way many institutions and learning programs solely look at the marks on a transcript making students feel like their future is determined by that simple piece of paper so even though some students might be passionate about their learning or have an inventive mind if they underperform on those exams then these organizations will refuse to consider them innovation will stagnate if this current ideology of education is followed because we kill our children's creativity curiosity and desire to learn the education system makes it easy for them to just do what they're being told by high school

most of us students we will stop asking questions and we will roll our eyes add a few hoodoo and in the midst of all of this we have developed another problem we somehow adopted this false perspective that those who have good marks must be better and smarter than those who do not now those that have trouble following one way of learning have to face a stigma because in our society students with lower grades are considered as less intelligent and this lowers the self-esteem but often times it just means they might learn differently and they are

smart in their own way or they could be going through a personal issue that consequently affects their marks we shouldn't be so quick to judge them personally I have always been a straight-a student throughout high school most of my marks are in the mid to high 90s and when I tell people that I have almost failed grade two and three and only God sees an elementary school no one believes me they say oh you seem smart so how could she have possibly struggled an elementary school well the truth is I almost failed those couple of

grades because those were the years when I first immigrated Canada and at that time I didn't know English or French a space with a lot of language and social barriers I had horrible grades not necessarily because I wasn't intelligent or I was just lazy at school no I honestly couldn't understand the words that my teachers were even saying let alone understanding the homework I can communicate with my classmates because of this language barrier and from being faced with racial stereotypes on a daily basis to being very secure due to my Inessa T my accent at

that time or even like the food that I brought from home because it's no different no wonder I had difficulty learning in school I was so concerned about fitting in as a minority thankfully I eventually overcame the problems that came with immigration but to this day nothing frustrates me more than when students with higher grades think that they're bad and others simply because they have better marks or when teachers there to view some of their students as less capable just because of their performance at school sure some people might not be naturally talented and subjects

such as algebra but does that honestly mean that they're less smart and why can't we also see that mental illnesses bullying financial security family issues and other factors do limit some people's ability to do well at school now does that mean that they don't have the potential to succeed of course not so numbers don't tell you everything and the problem with our current education system right now is that we have a one-size-fits-all kind of deal but we know that students have different needs strengths passions no two brains are the same and just like Richard Williams

said if a doctor was to prescribe the same exact medicine to all of his students it would be a disaster right because so many of their patients would get sick yet when it comes to school this is exactly what happens we have one system and we just expect everybody to follow it now I'm not saying that grading is useless and it's all the teacher's fault because teachers are actually stuck in the same system that was imposed on them just like it was on the students and we can't just blame the policymakers of Education either because

it's not like there's an obvious way to do this we can't just overturn the current system completely and say oh let's just abolish the grading system and consider every student individually because that's just not realistic or at least not yet however until we do improve the way we educate our future generation there is something you can do to help re-instill students desires to go to school and that is to change our perspective on what grades really mean and to realize that the numbers do not define their intelligence or potential looking back on history we can

easily find people who despite not being at the top of their class they had brilliant minds think of Sir Isaac Newton who received horrible grades in high school think of Albert Einstein who also received mediocre grades similarly Thomas Edison was called mentally ill by his teachers but he is now known as a person who lights up our lives literally so if you want to realize the potential of our society we need to shift the focus away from academic performance alone instead encouraging the desire to learn should be schools focus not just the grace that we

receive it shouldn't be about the comparative achievement but rather the long-term progress of our students so instead of relying on grace to measure someone's success potential or intellect we should just use them as feedback on their learning and we need to stop treating those that have lower grades as inferior and when we can stop marginalizing students with lower grace and when we can stop forcing students to believe that their grace is the only indicator of success that's when we will better and truly encourage the leaders of tomorrow thank you [Music] [Applause] you [Music]