Storymakers: Grade Inflation

Storymakers: Grade Inflation

By Jeremy
Eighth Grade
Odle Middle School
Bellevue, WA

High expectations have always been the goal of every student and school. The Ivy League is considered the dream colleges for many. Students work manically to try to get into the schools, dreaming of being high up and a CEO. However, this is nothing more than a distorted dream we use to survive. This problem has frequently happened in this nation, and is known as Grade inflation. Grade inflation is caused by society-induced greed, and is forced upon the students.

The first perpetrator of this would be the overzealous parents of young toddlers. There used to be a time where the toddlers were simply allowed to crawl around, and randomly bonk and bash objects for pure entertainment. This has been replaced by children being put in small walkers to prevent themselves from getting hurt, and toys that somehow improve a child's thoughts. Health foods are required, and are chopped up into miniscule pieces in order to prevent them from lodging in the child's throat. Music by Bach and others are played endlessly in an attempt to help IQ levels. Before the overzealousness in child mental development, preschools were places where children could play and enjoy themselves, and was made to keep children entertained while adults worked. Now, it's nothing more than an extension of elementary schools, created to try and cram as much as possible into a child's mind. This is the first contributor to our grade inflation.

But why do the adults do this? A simple reason: Greed. All over the media, power and wealth are glamorized. We see baseball and football players with hulking muscles and massive paychecks. We see supermodels with super-slim bodies and huge mansions. Adults are then saddened by their own paycheck, house, and physical condition. Through this, they attempt to prevent children from being stuck in corporate America, encouraging them to become bigwig CEO or skilled athlete. How? Adults force children to work harder to try and exceed the adult's standards. This occurs generation after generation after generation. However, this didn't happen in Medieval times, when it was impossible to escape the feudal system, and any hope was crushed. Now, in the "land of opportunity," we work under the idea that somebody will rise to the top. This is true, but only one person can take the highest seat. This keeps the vicious cycle going. The big CEO's children will then have to work to at least match his or her expectations, and everybody underneath will be unsatisfied with the results, and will work to try and catch up.

Elementary School is no kinder to their young students. Grades are constantly stressed here, and the whole curriculum has been changed from previous years. Instead of drilling the students on information, school districts attempt to teach the students through reasoning. Students start earning grades already from elementary school, instead of simply enjoying their lives. Detentions and principal referrals are now on permanent records instead of giving opportunities to change their ways. Health food is continuously stressed with no avail. Grades are overemphasized, and children have reduced recess time since earlier years. High school simply causes this cycle to continue. Everything that happens here is stressed as a method to get to college, mostly a student's GPA and their SAT and ACT scores. Remember when a D was actually a passing grade? Not anymore. Students stay up past midnight cramming for finals whose information they forget the next year and never apply in their lives. To add to that, staying awake for such a long amount of time requires drinking massive amounts of caffeine, causing many more problems. As if that weren't enough, students work part-time jobs after school or in the morning. There is no time for fun and games. All this insanity is simply used as a preparation for college.

Our whole life is a vicious cycle, as stated before. However, school emphasizes this the most. In elementary school, we're simply preparing for middle school. There, we're preparing for high school and college. In high school, everything we do is for college. All we do in college is get a degree, which is no guarantee for a job. Even so, we try to get a job based on high school and college. From there, all we do is try and save money up for retirement, where all we do is sit around, complaining about how we didn't enjoy life. During this time, we have no choice but to sit around, when we could've used our time as a child to enjoy ourselves.

There is no true way out of this cycle, but there can be a few methods. Instead of constantly putting pressure on children to improve their grades, there should be some kind of approval for a certain grade level. Let your children set their standards, and from there, you can GENTLY push their standards. Do not forget to remind your children to enjoy themselves while they can. Bombarding a child with mundane classes they don't enjoy, like piano and calligraphy, will simply create an unhappy student with no true goals.

Storymakers: A Creative Challenge for Young Writers, is a program inviting students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades living in Washington State and British Columbia, Canada, to submit their own original creative writing pieces.