What no one tells you about grades – and why you shouldn’t focus on them.

Here’s what’s missing from most narratives and analyses on the topic:

❌ No systemic or political analysis whatsoever

The issue is entirely individualized (parent, teacher, student), while key aspects are made invisible:

– The structural stakes of evaluation (exams, orientation, academic hierarchy)
– Unequal treatment (biases based on gender, background, academic history)
– The very function of grading (to regulate flows, assign trajectories, and produce docility)

👉 Grades aren’t a historical accident.
They’re a deliberately constructed tool of population management, designed to classify and filter – not to support or encourage.

❌ No critique of grading itself
(I develop such a critique in my book “HPI vs. School”)

The assumption is that we should simply “value effort” in addition to grades.
But this doesn’t go far enough.

– Why do we still believe we need to measure individuals with a fixed number?

👉 No one questions the actual utility of grades, nor explores the existing alternatives
(formative assessment, mastery levels, skill-based evaluations, portfolios, etc.).

❌ A disguised infantilization of parents

Under a veneer of kindness, parents are made emotionally responsible for managing grades and homework – without ever naming:

– The symbolic violence of certain educational structures
– The implicit delegation of educational tasks to families
– The double burden they bear (not understanding grades + feeling guilty for being a “bad parent/instructor”)

In short: we reassure parents… while making them emotionally accountable for mechanisms they never chose.

What’s urgently needed for parents’ well-being:

– Exposing how grading is used to assign and filter students from an early age
– Deconstructing the myth that school failure is about the student, rather than a stratified educational system
– Showing that valuing effort is meaningless if the evaluation system remains normative and anxiety-inducing
– Shifting the focus from individual kindness to the architecture of institutional power

🧠 In conclusion:

👉 The real issue – which is never named – is this:

Grading is not a neutral tool we can just make “nicer.”
It’s a power device that naturalizes inequality, imposes symbolic submission, and restricts life trajectories.

In fact, several studies have shown that the same paper can receive vastly different grades depending on the evaluator – or even the time of day it’s assessed by the same person.

🔎 It’s not a reliable system. It’s a belief system.

And it’s precisely because it’s “simple to understand” that it’s so effective at hiding the harm it causes.