Imagine a young university student, looking as if he lost all the hope in the world, walks into a crowded but silent classroom. Like most of his classmates, the young student wonders around and finally settle down when he spots his names on a piece of paper. This immense silent is quickly replaced with hurried but stable scribbling when the teacher gives the class permission to begin. Time passes quickly and one by one, each student leaves the room filled with gratitude and relief that the stressed day is eventually over. That thought only lasted one second because the next thing they have to worry about would by a alphabet on the exam paper which was completed just a minute ago. Almost every university student have had this experience least once, or even numerous times during their life; anxiously awaiting for the final "verdict".
The issue of students believing that their marks overrides the knowledge they acquired inside their classroom has become a concerning matter to many institutions around the world. Some universities, like in the states, have abolished grades due to accumulated stress caused by exam results. These universities have received a positive feedback which influenced other institutions to follow its lead; furthermore, one of them is the University of Toronto. The reason for this would be that they wanted their students to "focus less on marks and more on "intellectual engagement" ". Their law faculty is planning to drop the traditional letter grades and instead use a five category of marks; high honours, honours, pass, low pass, and fail.
The University of Toronto Faculty of Law proposed this change because they believe that this proposal would aid the students in lowering the stress and anxiety that they have while waiting for their grades. Furthermore, it allows the professors to spread the students out within categories or "class ranks" which they prefer since according to U of T, is a much easier and less time consuming procedure. However, I personally think that this new proposed method does not help at all! As student, I know that learning the material in class should come first, but it is also necessary to worry about the grades that would pop up on the report card. By changing the grades into categories, nothing would be change. Instead of worrying about getting an A, "now students can stress about getting high honour's". Only the word changed, the meaning is still the same as before.
Interesting article Jennyma, you have explained your topic quite well. However I do believe you are going to have to explain in more detail on how this new grading system would only remain the same as the previous one, since you have not given enough evidence to back your argument. Surely stress while wanting to get good grades is indeed an inevitable factor, since it's the result of hard work, but the new method appears to be more efficient and plus it would do a much better job in reflecting the true potential of a student.
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