Evening.

Normally, I don't really get bent out of shape about things, as I tend to be a pretty calm individual. Yet there is this thing that seems to be flooding schools in the province I live in (Alberta, Canada) called the 'No Grades, No Zeroes' system. This is an actual thing and it seems to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of...

Basically, what it means is that people who go into the schools, they are no longer allowed zeroes (so even if they get everything wrong, they need to be marked right on at least one thing) and, also coming up quickly, teachers are no longer allowed to give students actual grades. I'm not kidding. If they pass, it is 'acceptable' and failure is 'unacceptable'. They are no longer allowed to say how much they get right and wrong. This is an actual thing and it appears to be getting into quite a few schools up here. The county I schooled in as I was growing up has now taken on this system. It's implied that this system allows the schools to not have to work as hard to get maximum funding.

Personally, I think the very idea of this is moronic. How, exactly, is a university going to be able to tell if you should get in based off of 'Acceptable' and 'Unacceptable'?

Anyways though, I was wondering how widespread this was. Have you ever heard of anything like this in other countries or in different parts of Canada? I'd love to hear a few opinions. heh Thanks.

Its the over all pussification of western society as a whole. No one thinks people can handle failure anymore, yet they failed to realize that failure is actually what makes you stronger and better later on.

Newfoundlander here. I graduated from grade 12 two years ago now, however while I was there my last two years, we had a system where you could not give someone a zero if they did not hand anything in. Thus due dates were pointless. (If a student hands in all work the last day of school, the teacher has to correct it all without giving late penalties) I thought that was bad enough. But we still received exact number grades, and failing was a very real possibility, even with due dates essentially meaningless.

On a side note, Alberta needs to stop publicly funding religious based schools. Were a secular country, and if a school wants to declare itself loyal to a certain religion, they shouldn't be receiving tax payer dollars.

Where I went to Middle School, students weren't allowed any zeroes. Even if you didn't do the assignment. This wasn't implemented in the High School that I currently attend, though. If you don't do it, you get a 0% F. If you do it and get most of the answers wrong, you still get an F. They don't sugar coat things in my High School. (Especially for my Honors and AP classes.)

I think this is really unacceptable. If you do bad, you do bad. You get the grade you deserve.
- Florida.

Sounds like the 'No Zeroes' policy is pretty common then. Even that doesn't make much sense to me. The 'No Grades' thing just made me want to tear my hair out.

@ Superchunk

I think what drives me most insane about this is the fact that someone getting 100% will be judged equal to some shmoe who eeked through with 51%. Life is based on the very idea of being better and worse at things. Someone who is really exceptional at something does deserve recognition. To lump everyone into two groups might actually cause a regression of intelligence. Smart people are going to start thinking that the extra effort will mean precisely nothing.

Then we'll really be in trouble.

@ XBrawlX

Yeah, the teachers here are basically going to have to allow the same. They're going to have to deal with this crap and just take it. I could see some teachers quitting over this, cause there are those who actually want to help the really good students succeed. That might not be allowed now. Seriously.

Also, agreed, though there aren't actually a huge amount of religious schools here. Most end up going to public school, even here.

@ NintendoPie

I also think that if you do badly, you should be graded badly. There are those who have difficulty, yes, but there are classes for those with learning disabilities and what not. Honestly, when I was in school? The people who failed did so because they just didn't want to be there and couldn't care less. This entire thing seems like a method of ensuring maximum funding at the cost of ensuring the best and brightest coming out of the schools. The whole thing is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard.

It's almost pathetic how schools don't seem to care for education anymore. Bad teacher? Too bad! We're keeping them 'cause we have to. Don't want to do your assignments? Good for you! We'll reward you. 

I have AP Human Geography and Honors English. Comparing those to my Standard classes, it's a real eye-opener. They just don't care. 

My old co-worker is a teacher, he told me that parents actually came up to him and were like "Can you please fail my kid?" and he was like "I can't, they won't let me". The problem with not failing kids/youth is that you can't let them advance if they're not ready. Can you imagine if people couldn't fail engineering? We'd have a lot of buildings falling down. Failure shouldn't be seen as a negative, but seen as where you went wrong. If you don't care enough to walk into class and do work, then you're a failure in life and need to be put back on track. The only time I feel a student should maybe get by, is if they honestly tried their best and their teacher diligently worked to help them. I understand there are some things that people will just not understand, but if they made the effort I'd consider passing them.

I think this is generally a poor idea but when I studied medicine many of our examinations were pass/fail because they were competency-based. The pass-mark was high (70-80+%) but at the end of the day you didn't know if you got 75% or 95%. Not all exams were done this way but I can see there may be a role in some subjects, at some levels for pass/fail grading without a score.

When I was working as a lecturer in China I gave a whole bunch of my students zeroes because they plagiarised their assignments. The college informed me that I wasn't allowed to give zeroes to the students and even implied I should pass them anyway because they did hand something in and asked me to resubmit adjusted grades. I resubmitted the grades and simply didn't even list the students that cheated, and bumped up the scores of everyone who had done their assignment. If the scoring was going to be starting at 50%, not 0% then the students who had completed the task deserved higher scores but I wasn't going to be party to giving scores to people who had done literally no work. The college made up their own grades for the students who had cheated.

I will be homeschooling my child. Public school is a joke and its getting less funny by theyear. Before the department of education school was fucking HARD. Im going to be personally involved with my childs learning like a parent should. Www.ronpaulcurriculum.com

I'm glad this isn't in force in the state I live in because it would just be embarrassing to have a policy such as this one. What do they think they're doing, it's not helping anyone, in all honesty I think it would some kids feel a bit less of themselves if people have to sugar coat their grades like this.