Concerns over Grades and Complaints Take Precedence over Learning

By Sam Rosenblatt
Managing Editor of Sports, Features contributor

Seniors slowly trickle into an AP class as the bell rings to begin first period at Newton South High School. Many of the students are exhausted and drone on to their peers about another night of hard work.

All are apprehensive about receiving their grades on the most recent test.

As the teacher hands back the test, some students sit quietly to reflect on their grade in private, while others are quick to compare grades with their neighbors. This gesture could be perceived as friendly, but to many South students, such as senior Jacob Rozowsky, the action feels intrusive.

“If it’s a good friend and they’re asking out of the goodness of their heart to see if I was happy about it, obviously I’ll share [my grade] because they care about me,” Rozowsky said. “But if it’s just some random kid and on some random assignment they have no reason to know how I did.”

These occurrences have increasingly become commonplace at Newton South. The school’s competitive academic climate produces significant competition among students to rise to the top of a class.

As a result, students are talking more about their grades and their workload, while discussions about interest in the content of their classes steadily decline.

At its core, this trend stems from the language students use to talk about their classes. When teachers pass back a graded assessment, students will ask one of two questions: “What did you get?” or “How did you do?”

Asking someone “how they did” often comes across as a friendly gesture, requiring a vague, simple reply such as “I did well” or “I didn’t do well.”

On the other hand, asking someone “what they got” suggests giving a grade as a proper response. Whether intentional or not, this question puts pressure on students to reveal their grades.

In an anonymous survey of 79 current and former Newton South students, 54.43% of students said they mainly hear their peers ask, “what did you get?”

“I don’t think failing means failing anymore. If a smart person usually gets A’s and they get a B on a test, they’ll consider that failing.” – Junior Roy Avieli

Senior Catharine Pierce always deflects this question, despite the peer pressure to answer. “It doesn’t matter to them,” Pierce said. “If [knowing someone’s grade] does matter to them, there’s something wrong with the way they’re doing school.”

Pierce does not see any positive side to asking “what someone got” on an assessment.
“One person is always hurt in one of those situations, unless you got the same grade,” she said.

Respondents to the anonymous survey concurred, as 69.62% only sometimes or never felt comfortable sharing their grade with peers. Of these respondents, most noted that they only felt comfortable telling close friends their grade.

Robert Parlin, a long-time history teacher at Newton South, feels that the only way to combat the potential pressure to reveal a grade is to prevent students from talking about grades at all.

“I always start the year by telling students when I pass back work, ‘do not ask the person next to you how they did [because] you’ll embarrass them,’” Parlin said. “It really is one of the things that bothers me most, and I think it has gotten worse.”

The Culture of Complaining

Students are also complaining more about their workload to their peers, especially those in honors or AP classes. According to the anonymous survey, 88.61% of students reported hearing these types of complaints on a daily basis.

The majority of such complaints arise from Newton South’s notoriously challenging classes for each grade, such as Honors Math for freshman, Honors Chemistry for sophomores, and AP U.S. History for juniors.

Students speculate as to whether these complaints demonstrate genuine stress or a desire for attention.

“I think part of it is that it’s actually a very hard class and it’s something that they spend a lot of time on,” Rozowsky said. “I complained about Honors Chemistry sophomore year because I did spend two hours a night doing it. I [liked] to show my dislike of all that excessive work.”

While Rozowsky himself has complained about his stress from honors classes, he still ultimately feels that students complain as a means of getting attention.

“You [complain] to show everyone else how much of a ‘dedicated’ student you are,” he said.

Junior Roy Avieli agrees with Rozowsky that attention is the main reason for complaining. “I think most people are just complaining to get attention or to get somebody to cheer them up,” Avieli said. “I think people have a lot of stress when it comes to work, but I don’t think that’s why they talk about it.”

“If [knowing someone’s grade] does matter to them, there’s something wrong with the way they’re doing school.” – Senior Catharine Pierce

This culture of complaining extends even to the freshman class. Through just one quarter of the year, freshmen are already immersed in a subconscious competition between students over who has the most homework.

“I think in high school in general it’s ‘cool’ to have a heavy workload, and stay up until midnight [or later] doing homework,” freshman Shaw Miller said. “Nobody will ever acknowledge that it is cool to have a lot of homework, but people are always bragging about how much homework they have.”

Complaining about high-level classes is not unique to Newton South. Steve Rome, a senior at Mamaroneck High School in Westchester County, New York, has seen the same behavior at his own school. Rome also hears his peers complain about their workload in various honors and AP classes on a regular basis.

“At times it almost feels like a status symbol or even a little cult-ish,” Rome said. “In general people certainly like talking about how much stuff they have to do.”

Back at Newton South, workload itself is not the only subject students complain about. Some also complain about “failing” tests when receiving a score that is below their standards, yet far above an actual failing grade.

“I don’t think failing means failing anymore,” Avieli said. “If a smart person usually gets A’s and they get a B on a test, they’ll consider that failing.”

The School within the School

Though these complaints resonate throughout all of Newton South, Parlin agrees that they mainly stem from students enrolled in multiple honors and AP classes. He says students taking Advanced College Preparatory (ACP) and College Preparatory (CP) classes have the same desire succeed, but do not feel the need to rank themselves against their peers.

“In the ACP and CP classes, many students want to do well, but it’s not always that doing well means [a student has] to be exactly the same as someone else,” Parlin said.

Newton South junior Michael Garb, who does not take any honors classes, agrees that competition is not as prevalent in his ACP and CP classes and that these courses have an overall “calmer” environment.

“I’ve never taken an honors course, so I don’t know what it’s like in there, but what I can say is – especially in the CP class – you’re not so focused on getting the A,” Garb said. “You’re more focused on learning the new material, not the grade.”

However, Garb is fully aware of the competitive environment encompassing, the “school within the school”– Newton South’s honors students.

“From what I hear around South, I think all people care about is their grades. Some people, like me, do care about the learning,” Garb said. “But I know for a lot of people, [and] a lot of my friends that are taking all the honors courses, it all comes down to the grade – not what they’re learning about.”

Grades vs. Interest

Online grading sites like Schoology have given students more transparency and access to grades. However, this added access allows them to constantly check up on their grades, a privilege that some say causes the increased attention and emphasis on comparing our grades. Photo by Julie Samuels
Online grading sites like Schoology have given students more transparency and access to grades. However, this added access allows them to constantly check up on their grades, a privilege that some say causes the increased attention and emphasis on comparing our grades. Photo by Julie Samuels

Garb’s message underscores a larger theme throughout the high school. Students focus more on learning in order to pass a test rather than learning for the sake of learning. In turn, a decreasing number of students discuss their interest in the actual subject matter of their classes.

For example, South students will often say “I got an A- on the French Revolution test,” but rarely say “It’s so crazy that the peasants overthrew the French monarchy and then used the guillotine on aristocrats as payback.”

According to the anonymous survey, 53.16% of respondents said they rarely hear students talk about the material of their classes.

Dr. Audrey Friedman, an associate professor at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education, believes that this pattern is a result of pressure in the college process.

“I’m sure [students] are occupied because they are looking at grades as benchmarks and requirements to get into college,” Friedman said. “I think the issue is that it’s not everything.”

Both Avieli and Pierce agree that such pressure results in a lack of focus on a course’s material.

“I think the level of college expectations that South has makes people think a lot more about how good their grades will be so they’ll get into a good college instead of what they’re actually learning,” Avieli said.

At the “school within the school,” students feel they are expected to receive good grades all the time. Anything below a B- is unacceptable.

“I think that’s not what people think to talk about anymore because of the stigma around grades and around how you do,” Pierce said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re interested [in a class] if you’re failing.”

“I always start the year by telling students when I pass back work, ‘do not ask the person next to you how they did [because] you’ll embarrass them,’” Parlin said. “It really is one of the things that bothers me most, and I think it has gotten worse.”

Friedman says that the stigma around grades is still prevalent in higher education.
“I get students all the time who are very preoccupied with grades, with competition, with worrying about how to in a sense ‘nickel and dime’ a professor to get extra points,” she said.

Friedman does not give grades in the classes she teaches in order to combat the obsession with grades and to encourage students to hone their interests. Instead, she leaves comments on students’ papers and suggests they revise their work to improve.

Friedman feels that revising gives students the opportunity to demonstrate that they truly care and are interested in her class, not that they are focused on the grade.

“If [students] believe that just getting good grades for the sake of getting good grades is a best way to proceed, I would consider that in some senses, kind of a lack of judgment,” she said.

In his own classes, Mr. Parlin finds it unfortunate that many students focus on the grade rather than on the material itself. However, he does not feel this trend applies to everyone.

“It’s not that it’s every student, but it is disappointing to see how many are just focused on the grade,” Parlin said. “But there are a lot of students who do like that second part – learning interesting material is what appeals to them.”

Like Parlin, Rozowsky feels there is a contingent of students who value learning over grades. These students, many feel, are doing things the right way, ignoring the academic and social pressure and instead focusing on what matters most – their own interests.

“If your primary interest is the grade, then the enjoyment of learning and the doing well might not follow,” Rozowsky said. “The best way to do well in a class is to actually care about what you’re learning.”