Under the harboring stress that each student faces, it all seems worth it once they receive their report card with a string of A’s and B’s. Yet, now that those students gained their desired grade,  the knowledge learned is left unimportant and neglected. So what does that say about the goals of schools?

Over the years, high school has become an atmosphere filled with anxiety towards making a decent grade. For students, it is relatively more common to ask a question about their grades, rather than a question based on pure curiosity of the subject.

Junior Tacey Hedberg adds, “All we care about is getting our score done and having the grade so that we can get through high school.”

This objective comes from the high pressures implemented on the student body, where teens are faced with keeping their dream college in view and their parents proud.

Hedberg added that there is stress from parents, “because all they see is a report card.”

In agreement, teachers do consider that parents impose some sort of influence on their student’s grades.

Honors Geometry and Algebra 2 teacher, Keith Castillo, notes how much worry parents have over grades comments, “Parents aren’t really interested in the material, they are more interested in the grade.”

With this, there are some parents who completely monitor their child’s grades, while others are a little less hands-on.

AP Statistics and Precalculus teacher Jennifer Falk explained some of her encounters with parents who are, “letting their student take the lead and are trusting them to do well.”

In doing so, this can add as much pressure than to a student who is under strict regulation of grades by their parents, for it gives the child just as much responsibility to monitor themselves.

This additionally presents why students concern over their grades in all levels of learning. From AP, to honors, to on-level, every student is occupied over the achievement of good grades. Even with that, they are not the only ones who strain over scores.

Though students are filled with pressure, teachers are also preoccupied with making sure their students do well in their class and on exams.

Falk related her reason for putting pressure on herself saying, “On a personal level I want to see good grades, so that way I know my students are understanding.”

With good grades, a teacher will be better to define if their students are recognizing what they are being taught and using this knowledge to do better on tests.

However, the stress over these scores can be beneficial, but it also imposes unhealthy aftereffects for some, by taking the time away from actually learning genuine content, that can broaden one’s mind.

Though grades are seen to be too focused on, for the students there is little thought on what could be done to change this system.

Castillo concludes that, “There has to be some sort of external indicator of how much you learned. I don’t believe that a grade is the best way, but I don’t have another solution.”

With that, all that can be done is simply to try to keep some of the content absorbed and not to fully neglect it later in life.