Grading System

Grades are very important in schools today. The purpose of grades is to show students how they are doing in school. If they didn't have a number grading system, teachers would be subjective, personal opinion,  rather than objective, fact based. Scores are based off of 100% because it is easy to convert to and from a fraction. To some students, grade are their entire lives. To others, it is just a number. This does nothing to prove how well we are at something. All we do is answer questions on paper. There are no questions that test our actual intelligence and creativity. There are no questions that say "If you were alone on an island, how would you survive?" We should combine both grading systems. The numbers that we are assigned on Powerschool mean nothing. If it only said "Proficient", how are we to know exactly what score we got? That could be a large range of numbers. If both are combined, we can see exactly what we need improvement on and what we are excelling in.

What Happened to Creativeness

Sir Ken Robinson of England spoke on Ted Talk about his opinion on our creativity. He is a great speaker, with the way he incorporates stories. Anyway, on to what I am supposed to be blogging about. I think he made very good points. If someone is a dancer, put them in a dancing school. What he means is that someone's talents should be nurtured so they can be enhanced. Schools make tests and quizzes the focus of everything. All of our in-school activities are planned around it. Creativity has dwindled, but has not been totally destroyed. We all learn the same thing no matter what level the students are at. We should be put in a group that suits our intelligence.

The Creativity Crisis article gives an accepted definition of creativity. It is the production of something original and useful. James C. Kaufman says that 'creativity can be taught.' I'm not sure if I agree with that. But anyway, branching off of the article, us children are so used to the drill-and-kill method. You practice the same thing over and over until you get it right and it is embedded into your brain. Some middle school children have created paracosms, which are fantasies of entire alternative worlds. Studys show that these paracosms are very strong signs of future creativity. These are points I entirely agree with.