Grades

Grades have had an important impact in schools. Anything students do are graded. The purpose of grades is so teachers can see that the students pay attention to what they are teaching in class. Another purpose is so the students have something to strive for. They have grades so the students try in school. If there weren't grades then students wouldn't do their homework, they wouldn't pay attention in class, and they wouldn't study or try on tests. Grades are there to keep students in line and make sure they pay attention, and learn as much as they can from the teacher. I think that the traditional grading system is that they use a 100 point scale, because they can split it up into letter grades. I think that they use letters so students can have the grade be represented by something. I don't think that the grading system accurately represents our learning and knowledge. For example, you can be an A-student in homework and class work; however, when you have to present something in the front of the class and you get a D. It doesn't show that you knew the topic or not. I think that we should combine both the standard-based grading and the traditional based grading. Then we can get the "best of both worlds." Grades have been important in schools since the beginning.

Creativity Crisis

All over America schools are killing creativity. The definition of creativity is the production of something original and useful. Not many schools have very creative class. Art can be one; however, with some schools budget, they fairly often cut, art and music first. Music can also be a creative class. You can express yourself though music and play whatever you want to.  In you average classes like, math, language arts, and science, there isn't much you can do. Most of the time you do what the teacher tells you to, and read from a textbook, or the novel. Not much creativity coming form those subjects. How are students suppose to be creative, all the classes they take do not involve them to be creative? We need a class in school that will help us express creativity, or we will lose it. Just like the saying "if you don't use it, you'll lose it."  Each year creativity test scores drop. Even though creativity is dropping in our country, there are still certain kids that have creativity. There are actually a few signs that show the child is creative. In the article "The Creativity Crisis" the author says that  pre-schoolers that spend a lot of their time doing role play tend to be highly creative. For example when my brother was little he use to pretend that he was fighting "bad guys" where ever he was. Playing in a baseball game he would just run around it the out field punching the air. It wouldn't matter where he was, if he was bored he would start, "acting". The article also says that from fouth grade and beyond creativity starts to suffer. I really belive that is true because you start getting more and more work, and you don't have time to draw or to be creative. For my brother, however, I believe that he is still very creative even though he is in fifth grade. Sooner or later creativity in children will disappear, unless we do something about it.