Yes, Your Teen Is Fooling You When They Say They Don’t Care About Their Grades. Explanation and Neuroscience Insights…

Only students who get bad grades say or act as if they don’t care. And this applies regardless of the link between effort and the amount of work. It’s tied to the system.

In reality, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of human psychology to believe that someone, in a grading system, truly doesn’t care about a bad grade when they are in competition with others. That’s precisely the point of this system, that’s exactly why it exists. Numerous psychological studies have demonstrated that to foster engagement and competition, you just need to put individuals in competition with measurable performance or efficiency indicators. Dr. Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist at University College London and a visiting professor at Harvard, has even presented her research in a TEDx talk, worth watching to understand the subject in an accessible format (link in Bibliography).

So let’s be clear, I consider this grading system for evaluating knowledge to be absurd, and I have written about it many times before, but as long as it remains unchanged, students have no choice but to adapt to it.

However, different strategies come into play at the level of posture and perception.

What the teen might say: "Anyway, I’m bad at this," "There’s no point in learning this," "The teacher sucks," "I didn’t write it down."

Each time, it’s an attempt to disconnect grades, self-esteem, and work effort and redirect the pressure they experience in this system.

Their goal is to avoid working more, and since the parent is the one pushing them to do so, they attempt to create a dissociation between work and grades. If the parent falls for it, mission accomplished.

The reasons can vary, but most often, it’s about convincing the parent that there’s nothing to be done and that working more wouldn’t change anything.

In short, justifying their grade without acknowledging the connection to their effort (neither in terms of quality nor quantity).

We can imagine many different scenarios that highlight different psychological mechanisms, each with its own underlying objectives.

Protecting their ego: saying "I don’t work" helps mask a real difficulty or avoid the pain of failing after making an effort.
Cognitive dissonance: if they put in effort and the grade doesn’t reflect it, it’s easier to reject the grading system than to question their own study methods.
Avoiding parental conflict: pretending not to care can defuse tensions with demanding or disappointed parents.
Fear of social judgment: in some peer groups, it’s better to be seen as a "lazy genius" than as a "mediocre hard worker."
Learned helplessness: after several failed attempts, they may start believing that "working is pointless."
Alternative motivations: some students are not motivated by grades but by the subject itself, recognition from a teacher, or a future project.
Need for control: refusing to play the school game can be a way to assert independence and exist outside the imposed structure.
Family context: if their surroundings don’t value academic results, grades become a non-issue.

These insights can help in finding solutions, but the idea that parents should pretend not to care about grades and make that clear to their teen is a mistake.

The idea that a teen might unconsciously seek attention by failing is sometimes true, but extremely rare. If a teenager is disengaging from school, it’s not necessarily because they want more parental presence.

In my opinion, here are the key elements to consider:

The perceived absence of a link between effort and results: why invest time and energy if working hard doesn’t guarantee success?
The lack of meaning in learning and goal-setting: a student who doesn’t understand the purpose of what they’re learning will struggle to engage.

In a system where grades are emphasized over comprehension, it’s not uncommon for students to disengage—not because they don’t care, but because they’ve never been taught how to structure their learning effectively.

Sometimes we look for external explanations, but the idea that a teen avoids excelling to avoid being excluded from their social circle is, in some cases, real—but certainly not universal. More often than not, it’s a convenient belief that prevents deeper analysis.

And above all, it doesn’t lead to effective solutions.

The real question isn’t whether their friends will judge them, but rather: "How does the student perceive academic success?"

If it’s a source of personal pride, they will invest in it regardless of social pressure.
If it’s seen as an external constraint, they will tend to reject it.

Valuing effort is essential, but completely ignoring tangible results in a grading system can be a mistake. Grades, as flawed as they are, remain a concrete marker of progress.

A student cannot progress with vague feedback like "Great, you made an effort!" without understanding what actually works and what needs improvement in their organization, environment, or study methods.
They need to grasp the connection between what they do (or don’t do) and what they achieve.

The key, then, is not to ignore grades but to learn how to interpret them. Because they are part of a crucial interconnected element: expectations.

Expectations are what they will face in life, in their future careers, in relationships. And in any production system, expectations are linked to output. Think of a master’s thesis or a doctoral dissertation. The output must align with the expected standard.

No, no one will tell a PhD student, "Great job, nice effort!"
Especially not if their work is completely off the mark for a dissertation and of poor quality on top of that.

And in the workplace, do you think your manager will value effort over results? Will they care more about the fact that the report was submitted, or about its quality and the sales it generates?

Effort, in itself, is meaningless without a goal and a framework of expectations and output—and by extension, without grades.

Do you follow me?

If a student analyzes and understands why they got a bad grade, they can figure out how to improve.

If all the focus is on effort alone, they can stagnate without method and, more importantly, without an objective.

Effort is not the same as automatic progress!

Another common misconception: the more effort you put in, the better your grades.
In reality, it’s not the quantity of work that matters, but how it’s invested. And I’ve seen this firsthand for 20 years while coaching students on their study methods and learning environments.

A student can spend hours on their homework without improvement if they don’t have the right learning strategies.

And it goes beyond that—sometimes, you have to examine their diet, sleep schedule, or screen time to identify the real issues.

For effort to pay off, it must be paired with:

An effective organization (time management, planning).
A study method adapted to their cognitive functioning.
Clear and measurable objectives to prevent demotivation.

So, failure isn’t just due to a lack of effort—it’s often due to a lack of proper tools and strategies.

The key takeaway?

Instead of ignoring grades (which makes no sense), they need to be put into perspective, analyzed, and understood for what they truly represent. Then, the student must learn to connect their goal, the quality of their work, the time spent studying, and the expectations placed upon them.

Here are five bibliographic references for further reading on the impact of grading systems on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, as well as competition:

Nicolle, G. (2016). Influence des notes sur la motivation des élèves. Mémoire de Master, Université de Caen Normandie.

Merle, P. (2012). L'évaluation par les notes : quelle fiabilité et quelles réformes. Regards croisés sur l'économie, 2(12), 218-229.

Bourgeois, N. & Saint-Pierre, H. (1997). La compétition et la motivation aux études en milieu universitaire. Revue des sciences de l’éducation, 23(2), 327–343.

Micha, E., Sekar, S., & Shah, N. (2024). What is Best for Students, Numerical Scores or Letter Grades? arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.15405.

Merle, P. (2024). Revoir la notation des élèves. Constructif, (2), 56-61.

T. Sharot (2014). Motivate and change behaviors (not original title). See TEDx video on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/xp0O2vi8DX4