Grades And The Esteem, By Randy Moore

In the United States, the average grade has been slowly creeping up during the past years. This grade inflation has generally been seen as a positive for students and parents, but it has much more detrimental effects for the state of higher education. One person to address these consequences is Brent Staples, author of “Why Colleges Shower Their Students With A's.” In his essay, he not only explains how grade inflation came to be, but he also describes how it is something negative since it is the lowering of standards so that excellence is no longer excellent because of how easily higher grades is given out.

Self esteem is the component of a person's personality that dictates how they view themselves. People with healthy self-esteem

Most people face self esteem problems at different levels. At some point in life people face this problem without realizing it. In the essay The Trouble with Self-Esteem written by Lauren Slater starts of by demonstrating a test. Self esteem test that determines whether you have a high self-esteem or low self-esteem. The question to be answered however is; what is the value and meaning of self-esteem? The trouble with self-esteem is that not everyone approaches it properly, taking a test or doing research based of a certain group of people is not the way to do so.

Getting an education is the main goal for everyone, although it is easy to obtain there are some obstacles to it. One of the main obstacles students face at the beginning of their education is standardized tests. Schools have started to adopt this type of tests as their main way to evaluate students’ intelligence and teachers’ effectiveness to educate the students. The way students used to learn has changed, in order to get them ready for the tests they have to spend much of the school time preparing for it instead of learning something they can use in their future life. According to Bruce Jacobs in No Child Left Behind's Emphasis on 'Teaching to the Test' Undermines Quality Teaching, a 2007 study by the University of Maryland teachers were put in much pressure and had thoughts to teach the test […]. This shows that teachers have also been affected by standardized tests in a way they have more pressure to make students pass. Having teachers ‘teach the test’ means their way to educate has been corrupted. In most cases when teachers’ ability to educate has been changed leads them to practice methods not convenient for scholars. One of these methods is memorization, in Relying on High-Stakes Standardized Tests to Evaluate Schools and Teachers: A Bad Idea by Hani Morgan describes how students start to adapt to an “inferior type of learning, based on memorization and recall students gain when teachers

The concept of self esteem is widespread in life. When it comes to academics and extracurricular actives people associate high self esteem is necessary for success. Society makes promoting self esteem an important goal. With that in mind, it is surprising that only recently scientific literature began providing insight into the nature of development of self esteem.

Schools and college professors, who give you a good grade for excellent productivity on assignments, allow students to perform poorly, but still benefit relative to a person with an A. Two articles that observe grade inflation, find the rising problems of grade inflation, and finding solutions for grade inflation. Stuart Rojstaczer, an author from Grade Inflation Gone Wild, is a professor of geophysics at Duke university, and created gradeinflation.com in regards for his concern about grade inflation. On the other hand, Phil Primack is a journalist and teacher at Tufts University, and published in the “Boston Globe” Doesn’t Anybody Get a C Anymore? While college students, who work with little effort and still attain easy A’s by working poorly on assignments and exams, Primack and Rojstaczer, develop a firm connection towards grade inflation and the solution that can regain control over real education.

Social self-esteem is when you based some of your self worth on how social you are and how well you do with people, for example if someone is popular their self esteem maybe higher if they were not. Academic self-esteem when you based some of your self worth one how well you do in an academic setting, if a person gets straight “A”s on their reports card most likely will have a high academic self esteem. Physical self-esteem is your belief about how they look and how other perceive how they look for example someone who constantly gets complimented most likely has a high physical self esteem. Moral self-esteem is based on virtues and how good ,decent, moral, trustworthy you and other individuals are. A person who has trust worthy and well rounded friends will most likely have high moral self esteem because they can confide in their friends and they set a good example.

Academic self- esteem is wanting to get good grades and perform well in school by working very hard to get the best grades.

Furthermore, the author points out that grades are not improving because students and education are improving but rather because parents and students are demanding grades to be adjusted according to what they think it is needed not what it is deserved. “Students and parents are demanding -- and getting -- what they think of as their money's worth” (Staples, 216). Students are not receiving the grade they truly deserve based on their work but what the parents and the students themselves

Does grade inflation actually exist? In the reading “The Dangerous Myths of Grade Inflation” by Alfie Kohn, he gives plenty examples as to why grade inflation does not exist, Kohn also backs up his examples with studies that have shown that there is no way to prove grade inflation exists. “However, even where grades are higher now as compared with then, that does not constitute proof that they are inflate,” this was stated in Alfie Kohn’s reading. Although studies have there there is not a way to prove grade inflation exists, there have been teachers and professors that have admitted to using grade inflation. In class we watched a video called Declining By Degrees: Higher Education at Risk that interviewed college professors that admitted to participating in grade inflation.

The definition of an acceptable grade has changed significantly over the years. Grade inflation seemed to begin in earnest in the late 1960s after the

The American grading system has been the culprit of the United States’ deteriorating education for a long time and proceeds to damage students’ mentalities. For many American students, receiving a low grade causes “negative reinforcement”, and continuously receiving high grades warps a student into believing the A is better than the quality of learning (Thomsen). These grades also negatively affect students’ self-esteem. In 2002, eighty percent of students in a study done at the University of Michigan said a higher dignity relied on doing well in school (Thomsen). The opposite can be said for those with low self-esteem. Students are also afraid of failure, which can lead to obstructed learning and students who are unwilling to accept challenges (Thomsen). Because of the standards deterring student learning and thinking, the education system is in significant need of a change.

Gaining education enhances a respectful life for an individual to live respectfully in the society. In this modern era, every individual needs to be educated. Education is one of the ways where people can know about the history of their country and also about the latest technologies. In the essay “Grades and self-Esteem”, the author Randy Moore, argues about self-esteem in students and their grades. He also claims that teachers should be genuine in giving grades to their students rather than focusing on their self-esteem. I agree with the author’s view regarding the grading system and disagree with the Moore, regarding building self-esteem in students.

In “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation,” Alfie Kohn sets out to determine if grade inflation is indeed fact or fiction. The opening quotes provided by two professors at Harvard University separated by over century has most definitely peaked my interest. It had me questioning whether or not these professors are holding our education system to a “Harvard” standard or is their actually truth to their statements; that feigned students are indeed submitting “sham work” (Bergmann, 260). Kohn goes onto indicate that: “To say that grades are not merely rising but inflated—and that they are consequently ‘less accurate’ now, as the American Academy’s report puts it-is to postulate the existence of an objectively correct evaluation of what a student (or essay) deserves” (Bergmann, 263). To theorize grade-inflation is to question the judgment and teaching of all the previous and future educators of America. It also raises the question of why has not there any concert data to support this claim. Why is our educational system delaying this investigation since this concern has been around for years? Especially, now that grade inflation is starting to gain more momentum.

I would argue that self-esteem is indeed critical to student success. Certainly, Maslow’s theory and model of student development can provide insight on the importance of self-esteem in self-actualization. Maslow’s theory understands self-esteem to be a measure of a human beings understanding of his or her acceptance and value. In order for an individual to have good self-esteem, he needs to perceive himself as understood, respected and useful. Recognition of the environment’s influence on self-esteem will necessarily help us to understand the importance of providing a positive educational framework in our classrooms. We must not undervalue the