A grade with an expiry date

School culture easily turns a mark for one assignment into a description of a person: top student, C-grade kid, capable, lazy. In fact a mark measures the performance of a specific piece of work under specific conditions — sometimes fairly accurately, sometimes along with the handwriting, the obedience and the mood of whoever was marking.

Either way it does not measure the whole person.

A high mark can mean good understanding, lucky preparation or too easy a task. A low one can mean a gap in knowledge, an unclear question, too little time, anxiety, or a day when nothing was willing to cooperate.

So a mark is useful as a signal and dangerous as an identity.

Top marks do not prove there is nothing left to learn. A fail does not report that the person is stupid. Both marks pose the next question:

What exactly was measured here?

If the work was done well, you can try something harder. If badly, find the source of the error. Sometimes the topic has to be repeated. Sometimes the method of preparation has to change. Sometimes you need a night’s sleep. Sometimes you have to accept that the question was written by a person in a long-running conflict with punctuation and common sense.

A mark should help to adjust the learning. Once it has turned into a verdict, almost none of its usefulness is left.

A mark, like a certificate, has a validity period and a scope. A C in chemistry in year eight describes a fourteen-year-old who that year had his first love and a substitute teacher. Twenty years later it describes nothing, but the person keeps carrying it around and using it to explain why he does not understand what is in his medicines and does not want to. The document expired long ago, and the stamp still looks convincing.

The easiest way to test a mark is to ask what it contained: what exactly was measured — understanding of the topic, neatness of the notebook, speed, or a willingness not to argue with the teacher. Usually it turns out that everything was measured at once, which means nothing in particular was.