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Comment by mariodiana | Hacker News Reader

I worked as a teacher for a little while. Discount my anecdote if you like, but it always seemed to me that girls are more likely to be grade grubbers than boys.

(For those unfamiliar with the idiom, it means someone who pleads to the teacher to be given a higher grade. I don't know if there's a word in Italian.)

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Kinda related, but I remember a girl was able to lobby her English teacher to round up her 92.5 grade to a 93, since, you know 92.5 rounds to 93, and the range for an A was 93-100. Then something similar happened in the math class, and teacher rolled his eyes, and drew a number line on the board and drew a point of the 92.5 outside the 93-100 range.

They're also more able to cry when they do this. I knew multiple girls when I was in school who openly admitted to making themselves cry when they asked a teacher for a better grade or to retake a test or something.

I was a (mostly) straight A student. I would ask teachers for extra credit if I was sitting right at the line of B/A. I think only one teacher told me no which I think was crap as a student should be able to increase their grade if they're able to demonstrate they've put forth additional effort and learned the content. Too bad I can't make myself cry.

They are grade grabbers because they can be.

Teachers let them, if a boy acted the way they did, well they'd just be shutdown.

As boy in a America, you learn fast, the only special treatment you get is hostility

Some people are definitely more willing than others to maximize grades for the sake of grades as opposed to learning for the sake of learning.

And unfortunately the education system encourages this. We all know that grades incorporate a lot of things besides understanding of the subject matter - typically you'll have multiple graded tests and quizzes which record the rate at which you learn material, often assignments are graded based at least in part on timely completion, most courses offer either a curve, extra credit, or both to boost grades, and of course there's a massive benefit to simply being a good test taker. Further, every teacher grades their classes differently such that A in one class can't be directly compared to another, even in the same subject matter. And yet, major life altering decisions such as what schools you can attend, what scholarships are available, what internships you can do, and where you'll be able to start your career after school are all heavily influenced by a single number which is determined solely by letter grades.

Of course in the real world we need cutoffs and there is no perfect way to measure understanding, it's just that we know grades to be such an obviously poor proxy, and it's way over used. We should have a way to distinguish "disciplined and hard working but doesn't know shit about this topic" from "clearly knows their stuff but snores a little too loud in the back"

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