A Proposal to Abolish Grading Paul Goodman - Essay Example

Goodman´s thesis is to abolish the grading system in universities. In Goodman´s thesis, he writes about Harvard’s admission process and wonders why a university should be testing students for the benefit of corporations or graduate schools. He also discusses the history of examinations during medieval times. He asserts that in that time, the point of giving a person such a difficult trial was to accept or not accept the person as a peer. Those tests were never intended to turn fellow test-takers against one another or to make comparative evaluations; you either passed or moved on.

Goodman feels that American tests never had such an orientation and that students will only comply with another person´s requests, instead of standing out on their own. He continues in that, if grading were to be abolished, the most vocal opponents would be students and their parents. Since parents have already caused enough damage, he feels that their opinions should no longer apply and that it falls to the universities to remove the students’ sense of dependence and force them to confront it.

Goodman says that testing should be a way of finding out what is wrong with or missing from the information that is being taught in school. Grades seem to cancel out the testing’s aim to the point where students feel they have to hide their weaknesses. Grading, according to Goodman, has also been used as a threat by teachers to students who are “lazy.” Ironically, students end up not retaining most of the information from the class in which they “passed”. With this essay, Goodman is trying to convince the reader that doing away with the grading system the students’ learning would be more beneficial.

He supports this thought by stating that grades should not be used to judge the student´s knowledge since this will deter him/her from learning information and only learn by rote memory. He asserts that testing should only be used for pedagogy purposes and