Research shows that grades have three effects.

One, they make students less interested in whatever they're learning for a grade.

Two, they become less likely to pick something more difficult.

After all, if the point is to get an A, you're going to choose the shortest book or the easiest project, because that makes it more likely you'll get the A.

And three, when students are graded, they tend to do things in a more shallow or superficial fashion.

They're less likely to really push and reflect, and more likely to say, do we have to know this?

Is this going to be on the test?

That's why the best schools do not grade students, and the best teachers do everything in their power to help students forget that grades exist, and sometimes let students pick their own grades.

So we live in a society now where people don't get it.

They ignore this research, and they use grades to compel students to do stuff that they understandably have little interest in doing.

If I'm a teacher, and I don't have the skill to authentically engage students in science or history or literature, then I have to fall back on bribes and threats to make them do it.

And that's what grades are about.

Not assessment, not a necessary way of reporting results.

They're about coercion.

And when students get caught up in this trap, arguing about or worried about tenths of a point on their GPA, then they're going to make bad choices about which courses to take and how to allocate their time.

I think it is true that students who, for all of their career, have been told, this is going to be on the midterm, folks, or you better listen up, this counts for your grade, get the idea that that's the reason to do stuff, is to get a grade, and don't bother doing stuff that isn't graded.

It would be amazing if students were immune to that constant drumbeat.

But the reality is, every time they think in terms of, what am I going to do for a grade, they lose something as people and as learners.

And so, a teacher who has any sense of integrity and commitment to learning is going to spend most of his or her career trying to help students overcome this addiction.

Not just by telling them, forget about the grade, but by making grades less and less relevant and important.

So that the natural desire to do stuff that really provides a sense of satisfaction can be rediscovered by students who sometimes have forgotten what gives them pleasure.

I think that's critical, otherwise you have a bunch of grade grubbers, and I don't blame the students for that, I blame the adults who told them that this is the reason to do stuff.

I hear from students all the time who have finally shaken free of this and said, screw it, I am sacrificing my entire high school career in search of the almighty A here.

The result is, I'm cutting corners ethically by cheating, and I'm not being true to myself.

I forget that I even really liked photography or whatever.

I didn't sign up for it because it doesn't give me an extra point.

I'm not going to do that anymore.

This is now going to be about learning.

It's not going to be about chasing a grade.

And in fact, we can look at schools, including some high schools in the U.S., that have gotten rid of grades, and those students are not only a lot happier, they're a lot better prepared for careers and for college, precisely because they've spent their high school years sampling, exploring, discovering, figuring stuff out without worrying all the time, what is this going to mean for my GPA?

So we have not just good theory, but good practice to show that the abolition of grades would do nothing but good.

It would only make life more complicated for bad teachers who would now have no lever to compel kids to do stuff that doesn't make sense to do in the first place.