14 aprile 2023
Legal Representative as well as founder of the S. Freud Private School, Dr. Daniele Nappo, discusses the topic of grades, a very important issue in schooling. Numerical grading is a controlling tool that can lead students to hate school or even drop out. The solution could be a descriptive assessment, which has the virtue of making the grade understandable to both the student and his or her family and being a powerful motivator of learning.
Those who work in schools continually find themselves in the need to make evaluations in their subject from the pedagogical aspect. The teacher finds himself having to reflect on the character of his activity while trying to be objective: characteristics and conditions must be defined, that is, a well-identified yardstick. A clear method, understandable by both the one who examines (the teacher) and the one being judged (the student). Descriptive assessment is always more appropriate and more effective than numerical grading, because it enables understanding and growth through learning. In school, evaluation must not be punitive: even if communicated through a grade it must be a means and not the end of the relationship between teacher and student and, above all, it must not be humiliating by reducing the person to the grade given.Unfortunately, however, this is too often the case. The problem actually is not the grade, but the fact that what is needed is to give information to students, families, the educational community, to have informative elements to teach better and learn better. Certainly if the instructional planning is not clear, if the class work plan is not clear, the grade cannot be clear in whatever way it is given. Whenever one debates the form by which one grades, one cannot do so without questioning the way one thinks and teaches. There should be a full discussion of replacing grades and using the opportunity of formative assessment: students should not have their abilities or prowess measured by grades alone; it cannot be the sole tool. The little number is not proof of the existence of pedagogy and didactics. Today more than in the past, the merit school, the one that distributes rewards and punishments, is the cornerstone of our educational system. Experimenting with forms of evaluation without a grade should not appear to be a mistake of lese majesty. We must act now with less timidity: numerical grading, as a means of control, has remained for those who consider teaching a mere exercise of power.
