Education Reform

Been ruminating on this subject for some time and have some thoughts to share with.... well lets be honest pretty much nobody at this point but nevertheless, I will share. A discussion of America's pure obsession with privacy rights needs to happen eventually, but in this case I only wish to briefly question why grades are a holy grail in America, never to be touched or seen by anyone else but the student

Anyhow, it is well known that social pressure is an extremely powerful force in children, teens, and adults. Socialization affects nearly everything. The way we dress, act, eat, talk is all guided by our socialization. This is why people dress up for big events or interviews; it is why people are professional at work. It enhances customer service and stifles rude and inappropriate behavior. Sure the rules change as society changes, but that is good too, it's dynamic like that. I bring this up because the same should be with grades. Grades should be public domain. At least in public school, one could argue the state, not the student, should own grades anyhow. But that is a boring argument. Grades should be made public for much better reasons. Before your brain takes a test, it ought to "dress up" by studying the material because everyone else is going to see the results just as they would see your attire in an interview or behavior at work. The social pressure of having grades public would no doubt persuade students to study more and pay attention in class. Don't take my word for it, check out this article and read the comments --- make up your own mind: Posting Grades. Something even a bit more crazy than what I'm talking about but in the same vein: Bad Grades = Punishment. If you are still skeptical, I invite you to think of some examples that could serve as proxies for posting grades and analyze the outcome. For example, art and music classes clearly involve a large degree of public scrutiny in the form of galleries and recitals. A neat study comparing achievement in art/music and other presentational subjects with traditionally private ones such as math, history, most basic science, geography, wellness, etc would be interesting. You would have to control for the varying degree of subject difficulty (and subject popularity) to isolate the effect of having one's work public on grades. Anecdotal evidence is abound, however. On average, the time students spend on art projects, practicing for recitals, or even for business class presentations greatly outweighs time spent on the private matter of a test, at least in my experience.