So my wife and I constantly have a debate on whether grades
matter or not. I stand by my verdict that good grades do not prove that a
person will be a better worker. This is something that I have seen through my
experience. I have seen people without a fancy degree do much better than a
person who has one.
A good example of grades do not matter are of course our
very own Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who were both dropouts. I do not deny that
education is useless. Education is a must and it serves as a catalyst to land
us in jobs. But, if you do not do well, do not worry; it is not the end of the
world. I strongly believe our education system is flawed as the focus is biased
towards academics and there is not much emphasis on other types of intelligence
be it music, arts, etc. A lot of our talents are going down the drain except a
select few who managed to make it in fields such as music and arts. This is
because they realized their talents and harnessed that capability. The others
however, let that talent slide because no one was there to guide them and they’re
most of time being called stupid because they do not do well in academics. This
is absolutely wrong and we need to have a more robust education system that
caters for individuals.
There needs to be a realization that everybody is an individual,
we cannot be lumped up and assumed to be able to cope with just one area of
education. I regret some of the people from my school before who got pushed to the
last classes because they were perceived to be not smart enough which is far
from true. Some of these guys when they get their hand on a guitar, can soothe
you with the melodies they play and that is very well a talent that was wasted
because believe me, the perception of being a musician to the average Malaysian
parent is a big no no. Every parent wants their children to be a lawyer, doctor,
engineer or some sort of “professional”. Very few will actually encourage their
children to do what their good at and that is a sad reality.
A point I would like to make in this article is that grades
do not determine intelligence nor does it make the individual better than the
rest. I honestly believe that a person needs to be “street smart” and that
means that they need to be exposed to the real world and deal with the
environment out there where text books cannot teach you. And this is what I
mean; Just swallowing all the information from a text book and vomiting it out
on a piece of paper will not help an individual. There needs to be a more
practical approach. This of course happens in most colleges and Universities
but not in school. This needs to be introduced in schools because it determines
whether an individual qualifies for tertiary education or not. Being oppressed
since school by painting a picture that an individual is not good enough
because they do not have good grades will only discourage the individual to
gain further knowledge. More needs to be done at the primary and secondary
school levels. Educationists need to recognize talent and develop it.
I leave you with a pole below to see what you think about
grades. Thanks.
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