Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What Ralph Emerson was saying in this quote is that you should not want to be the one following, but the one leading.

 Education is the most precious thing you can obtain.  It is very delicate and you should want to hold on to it.

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

James A. Baldwin


I agree with this quote, only because I can actually can testify to this quote.  I understand that I have a long ways to go on building my knowledge of wisdom and on education.  Everyone should have an independent mind of their own or at least want to have one.  In James Baldwin's, "A Talk to Teachers," he explains how he is not an educator, but his morals shows that he knows what he is talking about.

Why We SHOULD NOT Abolish Grading

 Why We SHOULD NOT Abolish Grading

If all grading in the world were to be abolished, how would we ever know where we stand and where we want to get to.  Abolishing grading would be the number one error in our society education.  According to Paul Goodman, writer of A Proposal to Abolish Grading, we should abolishing grading.  He states, "What a grim waste of young life and teacherly effort."  I totally disagree with this statement.  If we did not have grading, we would not have any structure in our schools.  Grading help us students to want to achieve more. For instance, if I go home with a C or a B, I am going to obviously want an A, because far as I know, that is the highest ranking in basically saying, "I have achieved this subject."

A grade of an A, B. C, D, could have standards as high as the teacher want them to be.  Even though you may have to stay in that range of letters, they could stand for whatever you want them to stand for.  The students can always go above and beyond what is required of them.  Its up to them to make that grade what it is really worth. 

Paul Goodman- "But I submit that this set up itself makes it impossible for the student to become a master, to have grown up, and to commence his own."  As I stated before, it is up to the student to go above and beyond.  Who says that the grading scale holds students back.  Its only true if the student themselves think it.