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At New College of Florida students take classes without grades and design their own curriculum - good idea or bad idea, and why ?
Great idea--I wish my younger sister had that option. She had a rough time working in the traditional and strict school structure.
From what I understand, in replacement of traditional letter grades, students get page-long evaluations of their performance from teachers. It will give much more detail on where they did well and where they didn't, much more detail than a simple letter grade.
It seems to me that eliminating grades would also eliminate a lot of the pressure that students have just to make an A, REGARDLESS of how they get it. (cheating, cramming,etc).
Classes without grades mean "No academic competition, no room for slacking, and no conventional way to assess how much work needs to be done for a given class. It typically means no multiple choice tests, no 500-person lecture classes, no graduation honors, and no cram sessions the night before. What you do get are smaller classes, boatloads of faculty attention, and usually a more discussion-based curriculum". (http://encarta.msn.com/collegearticleGoingWithoutGrades/GoingWithoutGrades.html)
Sounds good to me!
I took some grad school classes that were tough to get into (the professor only accepted the most motivated of students) but once in you had an automatic A. Not having to worry about tests and busy-work homework we were free to learn new things. It was a great experience though if all classes were that way many students would abuse it. I taught a few classes at my university. There were times when I'd be explaining a difficult concept and a student would raise their hand. Their question would be, "is this going to be on the test?" Since it was hard they didn't want to waste time on it if it wasn't going to be on the test. This sort of student wouldn't be a good candidate for such a free-form program but for self-motivated students who actually want to learn it would be ideal.
