It wouldn’t be wrong to say that most of the parents are not happy with the grades their children bring at the end of the year. What is more, grades are important but not everything. Some go to the extent of perfectionism and do not allow their child to even blink an eye or take a second off the book to take some rest. This is because they want no less than 100 percent. Were there more than 100 percent, they would go for it. Why do they do this after all? Parents feel that their children need to work hard enough to score good grades because good grades will guarantee them a fantastic future for sure and without which they will most probably be doomed. However, this hypothesis needs to be retested, and here is why.

Before moving forward, we can’t deny the fact that there is always room for improvement. In addition, if you think that you can improve your academics to the next level but you are stuck. Then, you might need professional help. At that point, you should hire a subject specialist tutor to work on things that you can’t comprehend well. Nowadays, it is so easy that you can find a professional online tutor in no time from different tutoring services websites. Among the bests ones are “Cioal tutors” ( home tuition in Lahore ). Both works in different ways, however, are on top of the list.

Let’s fast forward into the future for a while. Your child works hard and achieves the desired grades. There is nothing that stops him from enrolling in his dream university. He gets admission there and earns a Bachelor’s or even a Master’s degree. He’s become an engineer or a doctor or maybe an IT specialist.

He acquires a job and now works dawn to dusk under an administration for the sake of one thing –money. He’s so engrossed in his job that he forgets the importance of himself even, let alone that of the world around him. What next? Is that it? No. He gets married and has children and then he repeats the same thing with his children with the same assumptions as to his parents. The cycle continues.

Is that what you are pushing your child for? Really? Is money the only goal? If so, then good grades are not really important. Good grades are only and only important for those children who have firmly believed in themselves and that they need to tap their God-gifted potential to its fullest and do something innovative or become researchers in the fields in which enough work has not been done yet they are very important. This is why we need more top Ph.D. doctors and top researchers. Mending money is a different experience altogether that has to be learnt in a different way than learning at schools. Even bad graders can earn and you should know how and why. Here are some facts and true stories laid down which if are not convincing enough, nothing can be.

Notable inventors who performed poorly at schools

Look around yourself and see how many bulbs there are to illuminate your surroundings, especially at night. Imagine there were no light bulbs and you were still to manage oil-lit lamps, every time you would need light in the dark. Were it not for the efforts of Thomas Edison, our lives wouldn’t be illuminated and we would have to live on dim lights or utter darkness.

This scientist not only invented the bulb, but also went on to make around 1000 technical devices, and also pioneered motion pictures. Did he do well at school? Was he getting good grades? Well, no. On the contrary, it is said that his teacher told his parents he was poor at studying and had no future. He lost his hearing at an early age and had to face challenges as such. Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone, also had a hard time studying. Now you might also be thinking that grades are important but not everything.

Many entrepreneurs dropped out

The new tech devices which we have now in our hands all the time and some leading social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, were created by people who could not complete their studies properly. One had to drop out because they couldn’t afford it. Another felt he was bound to fail. Yet another purposefully left college determined to focus on his project as he could listen to his instincts that dropping out and focusing on the project was a necessity for him to create such a platform that nearly everybody on this planet would use. Behind some success stories even though drop-outs, are the names of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Others even after big degrees with high grades are wandering jobless

There are numerous examples of people who after completing their graduation in the Engineering field or in Biological fields and even PhDs. Yet they are wandering about finding jobs that do not match a bit of their educational experience. Thus, deeming their degrees are worthless. One can argue that there are some basic communication skills that matter. Or that one has to struggle and exert enough even after completing the degree to find a compatible job, like for example Elon Musk, one of the leading tech giants today, says there was a time he couldn’t afford an apartment and had to sleep on his office sofa instead, where he began his business.

Well, arguments as such prove that it is the conceptual knowledge, skills, discipline, intellectual proficiency, and the God-gifted intelligence after all that decides one’s future, and it’s not the degrees! You can learn from people, from books, and from experience without attaining a degree. A man from Karachi, Pakistan studied aeronautical engineering abroad in China and came back only to see that he would not be selected for any job despite fulfilling gazillion formalities. And guess what, he began to sell Watermelon Juice instead. -_- . God knows what went wrong with him, but certainly, the degree didn’t do any good to him as all this hard work at school and university was not meant for becoming a fruit ninja.

Communication skills and socialization are also or more important

Communication skill is certainly a key to finding a job or even to start or run a business. It is well understood that if you behave in an abhorrent way, who would want to take you as an employee in his firm or how would you attract customers if you set up a business? Knowing where you need to show leniency and where you need to be firm and strict, without crossing the lines of ethics is certainly the skill you need before you exit the university and enter the practical field.

Rabea Ataya, the CEO of Bayt.com which is a leading website for finding jobs in the Middle East, says after extensive research that after wars and a certain dark period in his country Lebanon, there was a kind of depression in the job market. People were wandering jobless despite being qualified and having earned big degrees. He said that was, as his research proved, due to the lack of a proper way of communication. Either way was one-to-one or through documents, it wasn’t up to standards. He said there was a huge job potential. However, the rumor that there were less or no jobs diminished people’s interest and confidence. And thus he had to bridge the gap between compatible employers and employees by creating the website, where he’s given a pattern, which works.

Grades are not IQ tests

IQ stands for ‘intelligence quotient’ which basically is a ratio of one’s mental age to his physical age. Scientifically and psychologically speaking, intelligence can be defined as the ability of how better one can solve a certain problem with his acquired experience. By this definition, a fair test of intelligence must establish certain standards for the candidates. You will have to see for every candidate that the acquired experience they have has to be the same, factors affecting their ability to give the test must be the same and that is far from the standards set in for examinations.

A rough idea of intelligence can indeed be taken from the grades because it shows a comparative result of how better a student performed as compared to the other fellows who fall in the same age group. But the thing is different factors affect the performance of students when they are giving the exam. Intelligence is a wider concept. However, grades depend on things such as how much one has learnt things by heart. Further, how well he has understood the concept, and finally how well he put it down onto the paper.

 Grades can be unfair representations

Another reason for that, grades are important but not everything follows. Affected by many factors, such as illness on exam day and numerous practices, ranging from cheating to even bribing in some cases, the grading system is not reliable anymore. But there is something more to it. Even if these things are not present, an element of injustice will still be there. Say for example there is a history exam and students have to prepare sixteen chapters. One student prepares random chapters which he deems as most important or which some teachers predicted in guess papers. While the other student works hard on understanding how and when such and such events developed in the past and also memorizes the dates but unfortunately he couldn’t prepare the entire syllabus.

He has gone through most but it turns out that the chapters he did not prepare well were where the questions were taken from. Another factor includes the way of expression and even disabilities like slow handwriting speed with which psychological issues go parallel. We have a story of one of our schoolmates who would fluently give correct answers to the questions when asked from the syllabus because he would study hard. But sadly, whenever tests or assessments would come, he could not score beyond even sixty percent due to low handwriting speed. Even though he was given extra time in the finals, he could not sit there in the examination hall all alone due to psychological pressure and left things incomplete. And there you go, an A grader gets a D. -_-

Another student recounts that he was very good at Mathematics. Basically, he was “an A star student”, yet he got a grade B for Math in the finals for he could not reach the hall in time for some reason. One more student was good at the knowledge of IGSCE Islamic Studies but bad at expression. Another student prepared for a certain language paper at school. Who, according to school standards set in tests and assessments, got excellent grades. However, in the finals, he got way less, which shows certainly the examiner had slightly different standards for checking. Ao here is another factor that affects the grades- the subjectivity of the examiner in non-objective (not MCQ-like) papers.

Some students are well prepared but they get ill on or around the day of the exam, or something unexpected happens. A girl who was “an A star student” overall had to, unfortunately, experience her mother’s funeral like a week before the exam, and so, her score graph went down. There are many more stories to add. However, wouldn’t these be enough to ask yourself as a parent pushing your child for super excellent grades, most often with no compromise, that what are we pushing our children for? What on earth do the grades represent about the students after all? We are not saying that grades are always unfair. However, if you get the point of this paragraph you can infer, without doubt, they are, in many cases, unfair.

At schools when we prepare for the final exams, we have tests limited by time. In fact, that is what we are being prepared for how better we perform within a certain time limit. These limits can be sometimes psychologically demanding for students and they couldn’t control the adrenaline rush affecting their recall power. Adrenaline stimulates the heart rate and blood flows more to every muscle except the brain. As a result the creative part of the brain where critical thinking is controlled functions less efficiently. Grades depend on such school tests. They are essentially tests of speed and not that of your potential performance. And that is what the grade reflects speed.

Can be unfairly given

Let alone the problems with the grading system itself, there are accounts of grades being given unjustly. Instructors at universities, due to some references with or having certain illegal and awful deals with students. They have done a lot of damage to the system. After all, grading is in the hands of the examiner. Unless the examiner is a disciplined person of responsibility, whoever influences him will get his grades amended. What is more that we tend to follow the trends rather than doing the research ourselves?

Around the world, we have lots of good universities, with state-of-the-art facilities. Those have not reached the level of fame certain universities have reached luckily. America IVY league universities are so glamorized that some rich businesspersons and affluent artists bribed, yes, BRIBED! authorities to get their children with average grades admitted in “top-notch” universities. So what are these grades for after all? Those having high grades were more worthy to secure the seats in the Uni but that is what happened. That is why we shouldn’t be afraid of saying that grades are important but not everything.

In a nutshell,

Parents should take some time off from their work to reflect upon what they want for their child. This can help be and should see what are the alternative options available if things didn’t proceed as they wish. Students should think alike. Sometimes they set no Plan Bs and get depressed if they don’t attain desired grades.

No, not like that, it’s not the end of the world, there are numerous ways where your true potential can be tapped, work hard finding them ways out rather than working for “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” grades. Again there should be plan Bs. There should be working done on realistic grounds upon it. Grades are indeed assets. They do have value but they are the means and not the ends. If your child brings unexpected grades back home doesn’t mean he brought bad omen to the house. There would be better options waiting for us but we need to realize we should come out of the fantasy into the real world and act realistically. We should work hard on finding them out, and then more opportunities will come forth. And don’t forget that grades are important but not everything. 😉

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