Students are labeled as pesky when they pester their teachers with questions about their quiz and exercise scores. They are viewed as annoying when, near the end of a semester or shortly after final exams, they email their teachers or call to inquire about their grades.

Teachers say that students are desperate when, after seeing their report cards, they move heaven and earth to make the former reconsider the grades they have given and possibly award higher marks, citing 101 reasons why it must be done. Reasons they give range from queer to valid.

How many times have some teachers violated established rules on testing and measurement, rolling the correction tape over the grades they gave because they were moved either by student appeals or by pressure from the academic gods and goddesses?

Students are often criticized for being so grade-conscious.

But is it their fault?

No!

Students are grade-conscious not because they want to be, but because societal standards force them to be. The policies and procedures in the academe instill that kind of mindset in students’ consciousness. They are seemingly programmed to become grade-conscious.

It all begins at home. Parents keep reminding their children to study hard and get good grades. When the children get to school, the indoctrination goes into full swing. Teachers give a battery of tests and exercises, telling students to perform well if they want to pass the subject — and that, if they want to be on the honor roll, they need to earn high scores.

Parents tell students to study hard; the teachers tell them to study harder. Day and night, students are told that they must get good grades. After school, parents would even acquire the services of a tutor to further improve the academic performance of their children.

That’s how the “getting-good-grades-is-a-must” mentality gets ingrained in the consciousness of the poor little kids.

Companies and corporations deliver the coup de grâce by frequently advertising that they hire only the best and the brightest. And what’s the tangible measurement of these superlatives — best and brightest? Grades. A+, or 1, or 5, or whatever the system calls it.

Society has assigned grades as proof of excellence. Students’ academic performance is measured by their grades. The higher the grades, the more excellent the student. That’s how it goes. Result? The students become grade-conscious. The grades they receive are a microscope, and they are the specimen on the slide. Their academic marks are lenses used to magnify the contents of the shell between their ears.

The parents want them to work hard for their grades — yes, perhaps for the children’s sake, but the grades they receive are also an instrument the parents use to monitor their investment. They want to make sure their children are not wasting the money being spent on their education.

Parents get so mad when their children bring home unsatisfactory academic marks. And of course, when their children perform well academically, they are elated no end. It is a boost to their pride, a feather in their caps.

Schools in any country push their students to the limits of academic achievement because passing standardized examinations administered by their governments redounds to their benefit. It’s good for ranking and accreditation purposes. It’s a boost to their reputation, resulting in more government funding and more enrollees flocking to their gates, with parents more than willing to pay so their children can take a bite of the academic excellence pie.

Parents and teachers keep telling children that good grades are a prerequisite to success, the only way to get a good job. And so the students come to think that the purpose of education is purely economic — to prepare them for a job. And if they fail to get good marks, they believe their future is doomed. They will not succeed.

This is how students are brainwashed into achieving the highest possible marks. This is what has developed among students: tunnel vision about education — that it’s all about getting good grades to be among the best and the brightest, the ones to whom big companies would give a chance at a high-paying job.

Grades have seemingly become a curse. They take the joy out of learning. They make students prisoners in the classroom and the teachers the unforgiving, unrelenting prison guards.

Grades put blinders on students, preventing them from seeing the bigger picture — that education is more than getting good grades, and that its purpose goes beyond getting a job… that education is a preparation for life.

It’s sad that both parents and educators themselves are the ones putting the blinders on the students. They are the ones who put enormous pressure on students to get good grades.

There is nothing wrong with inculcating excellence among students. That’s what schools ought to be doing. There is nothing wrong, either, with encouraging students to get the highest marks possible. But both teachers and parents must not forget to tell them that grades are not the be-all and end-all of schooling. Students need to be told that the world does not end if they don’t receive an A+ (or a 1, or a 5).

Schools must not forget that they exist to prepare students not only to find a job after graduation, but to live life and be productive members of society and humanity.