Damnation from Inflation

During Tuesday's discussion, we talked about grade inflation and the mostly negative effects it has on students.  Although a simple thing like adding a few points to a test or average may seem harmless, it has the potential to do what I'm going to call "misdirecting the students."  Grade inflation misdirects the students because it gives them a false sense of accomplishment and confidence.

When students get good grades, the natural reaction is for them to be proud of themselves and feel accomplished because they did what they were supposed to do.  So if a student's grade is inflated, they didn’t actually do what was needed to be done in order to obtain that grade.  While students are going above and beyond and working hard for that A, some students end up getting the same grade or close to it only because of the inflation of their grade.  That misdirects students into a false understanding of what is needed to be done in order to be a successful student and therefore will never fully comprehend what a good student does.

Grade inflation also gives students a false sense of confidence which could be found directly after the sense of accomplishment they think they have.  After the student receives the grade that has been inflated, they see the mark on the paper, feel accomplished and then think that they did a really good job.  This leads to the students being confident in what they are thinking is excellent work while it just may be average work.  They become confident in thinking that what they did qualified as good work, so they will maintain that same level of confidence by producing the same level of work.  This could lead to bad performance in the real working world due to the false understanding of quality work.