Grades are not everything, is a common statement often said to reassure student's academic anxiety. Even though there may be some truth which exists in this statement, to a large majority, it is wrong.
Grades are everything; they form the foundation of your success in the future, especially within the academic realm. Do you want to be a doctor, lawyer, nurse, teacher, etc.? Maybe or maybe not. But for the ones who do, you are only recognized as a number to academic institutions -- even though it may feel unjustified or corrupt, that's how our current North American post-secondary is standardized. As a student, your self value as a learner is non-proportionately due to academic grading. The reality is that if you perform academically poor or satisfactory, one's hope of potential opportunities are eroded. Marks can abraid or boaster the foundation of occupational possibilities, whether one likes it or not. Our cultural system is founded on the empirical worth of one individual's capability to perform within schools are based on one's subjective assessment of inequality. The one's which can adapt to the teacher strives, while the one's who struggle against compliance and proficiency of arbitrary test fails; inequality of intelligence is profusely ingraining the notions of what is considered a smart and dumb student.

A grading system implemented at the educational level reinforces the concept of operant conditionings. Good grade equate to positive enforcement while bad grade equate to negative enforcement. Our education systems assigns the black and white ideas of right and wrong to every individuals. Whether external rewards of grades if the justified and practical method of assessing students, it decreases the instrinsic value to learn: our goal is please the teacher, not learning or expanding beyond the classroom. By focusing on inquiry based and progress learning of each individual, it may be more reflective an holistic approach to academically assess students. However, this radical idea would require a cultural change to be enabled to integrate this concept within school systems which may not be widely accepted. By utilizing this model in teaching, each student may