Grades and self-esteem

University Degree Education and Teaching

Argumentative Essay

In “Grades and self-esteem,” Randy Moore argues that schools, especially teachers, take into account students’ self-esteem much more than academic performance. As he points out, schools tend to lower their standards in order to have less failure and more satisfied students. Moreover, he states that this interest in self-esteem has led education to grade inflation, lowered standards, meaningless diplomas and ignorance of important skills. There is some truth in this argument. However, self-esteem is also an essential factor in students’ development. In fact, what schools should do is motivate students to exceed higher standards, bearing in mind the importance of grading and boosting self-esteem without missing a high quality of education.

First of all, grades are a central part of education since they help to judge a student’s quality of work. In addition, as Moore states, these grades cannot be given without merit since good grades are a reflection of more than just knowledge, they also exemplify learned skills that would represent good workers in the future. Nevertheless, grading not only means paying attention on academic performance but also on other features as classroom behaviour, effort, participation, attendance, punctuality, attitude, personality traits or student interest in the course material.

Furthermore, self-esteem also plays an important role in students. However, Randy Moore ...

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Furthermore, self-esteem also plays an important role in students. However, Randy Moore considers that the purpose of building up self-esteem at school has led to education failures. Despite his belief, self-esteem can also cause many positive outcomes and benefits in children’s academic performance since it is believed that people with high self-esteem are more eager to participate without feeling fear of making mistakes. Moreover, students may bolster the confidence to tackle difﬁcult problems, getting satisfaction from progress and success. As a consequence, those students who have high self-esteem are more willing to succeed at school. Thus, self-esteem cannot be left apart in nowadays’ education.

Nevertheless, high self-esteem does not mean low education quality. As Moore points out American teachers avoid criticizing poor performance as this could damage students' self-esteem; so in order not to face this situation many schools have lowered their standards. This means, as he states, that not only students but also parents are cheated and given false hopes about the quality of education since children’s academic performance is poorer. Therefore, "Establishing high standards lets everyone in the education system know what to aim for. They allow every student, every parent, and every teacher to share in common expectations of what students should know and be able to accomplish. Students will learn more when more is expected of them, in school and at home. And standards will help create coherence in educational practices by aligning teacher education, instructional materials, and assessment practices”.(1)

The main conclusion to be drawn from this discussion is that high standards as well as the importance of grading and boosting self-esteem have to be held at school. However, there should be a balance between grades and self-esteem since both play an important role in students’ academic performance. Consequently, lowering standards does not mean improving students’ development. On the contrary, it means cheating both students and parents about quality education. For that reason, it is necessary to strengthen students’ self-esteem by encouraging them to raise their own standards without lowering the grades.