Grades for young pupils.

Grades in general has always been a topic where people disagree and have different oppinions. Should we use grades or no grades? Should we start with grading in the early years or a lot later. Some people say that our entire school system is a big grading system. Every teacher, pupil and parent have their own oppinion in these kinds of questions. I am going to discuss my opinion. To grade pupils any earlier than we already do, would be a mistake.

First of all, a childs self esteem is the most important part of learning. Without self esteem the childrens learning are going a lot slower and some pupils don´t even dare to try to learn, in fear of failing. They also easely get stuck in that way of thinking, that they never are good enough. I believe that grading children a couple of years earlier than we do now would increase the number of pupils with low self esteem.

Second, in the world today, to many children are stressed. Stress leads to headache, it gets hard to focus and concentrate, it leads to hairloss and later in life it could lead to several dangerous diseases. These stressed out children are also going to increase if grading begins earlier. For some children it would be a great thing to strive for a good grade, but it can easely get out of hand and be to stressfull. Always wanting to be best, always wanting the highest grade. Grading can be to much to handle for some pupils.

Third, if we want our pupils to learn as much as possible, the years they go to school, it is important that school is fun. If the school is fun and keep being fun, the pupils will go to school with a positive attitude. They will remember the lessons and therefor learn as much as possible. As long as school is considered as fun most of the time, we will not have a problem. Mostly school is considered as fun when the children are young and stops being fun as they grow older. Grading is one way of taking away most of the fun in school for the children, as they see it.

On the contrary, pupils learn quickly if they belong to the smart or not so clever part of the class so they can get low self esteem with or without grades. In short, grades should not matter on this particular point. That is not true, even if the pupils learn fast if they are smart or not, I believe that it is a lot heavier to have it written down on paper. Harder to be graded and maybe even fail. That is much worse for their self esteem.

Grades can lower our childrens self esteem. Grades can make more children stressed out. Grades can take away a lot of the fun in school sooner and therefor also a big part of learning. Do we want to bring grades to younger pupils? Let our children be able to be and live as children for as long as possible.