Grades ; how 5 letters of the alphabet are affecting adolescents

|| Content Warning ; This article goes over the statistics of self-harm among adolescents. If you are easily disturbed by this, feel free to click off. ||

Across the world, education comes in all different shapes and sizes. Some places may have uniforms, and the different systems may vary when it comes to funding. However, something that translates into most schools and education systems as a whole is grading.

While some schools have started to do grading in different ways, such as point-based grading, most school systems still follow the A, B, C, D, F grading system. This grading system is flawed for many different reasons, one big reason being how much stress it can cause.

The ABCDF grading system grades students based on what they do wrong. It is not based on what they are learning, and is instead based on if they got the right textbook answer. However, all this system does is un-motivate the students; as instead of grading based on what they have been learning, they are punished for their failures.

According to Sprc.Org , on the American Health College Survey in 2015, over 30% of students were struggling with stress and how to properly manage it. However, this stress isn’t just limited to college students.

I had interviewed 10th grader Alex Digregorio on different stressors that had been affecting him at school, and one thing he had said stressed him out a lot was grading.

“How often would you say that you stress out over grades?”

 “a lot,  it also depends on the classes too.”

Stress can be a good thing. It can be something used to motivate you, or could encourage you to be more careful with different decisions. The difference between good and bad stress all boils down to how you are able to handle stress, which students often have a hard time with.

 “So how well are you at handling that stress?” 

“I’m pretty good now”  

“Did the stress cause unhealthy coping mechanisms or anything?”

 “I got really stressed out to the point where I pull my hair out… I don’t do that anymore, though.” 

“do you think like the teachers are doing enough to help out with the stress or not?” 

“they sometimes increase it.” 

As stated before, stress can be good. Stress is a natural part of life, and a natural part of growing up, getting more responsibilities over time. However, the line gets drawn when that stress is no longer being handled in a good way.

According to bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com , out of every six adolescents that they interviewed, at least one had reported engaging in self-harming behaviors. One in six! That is over 16% of the adolescent population!

School is not the only factor of this, and other factors of stress should not be dismissed. It it important to keep these statistics, as well as the different experiences that today’s children have faced, in our minds as society moves forward.