Staying up till 3 a.m. and waking up at 6 a.m. is not healthy. Kids have to stay up late almost every night to keep up with school, sports, clubs, jobs, social life, and family. How are kids supposed to be active in school if they are living on of 3-5 hours of sleep? 59% of teenagers report that managing their time to balance all activities is a somewhat or very significant stressor.

“I struggle to manage all of my activities during the day. I stay up late at night to do homework just to be tired all day at school the next day. Its like a cycle every day.” freshman Lauren Lenson said.

All of these hours of studying and stress lead to one sole problem: grades.

Grades should be eliminated because they bring out a competitive nature in students that causes cheating. Everyone wants to please their parents and have a good future, so they turn to cheating to keep their grades in line. Kids also text the answers to homework to their friends all the time and do not realize that it is cheating. If kids have jobs, clubs, and practice after school, how are they going to get it done? They text their friend and they send the answers. Let’s say a student walks into class and it turns out he has a test and forgot to study for it. This student may see that the smart kid one seat ahead is already half way done with the test and it would be so easy to just copy down his answers.

What other choice does he have? His parents will kill him if he fails this test because this test will make or break his grade from a B to a C. For the people that get C’s and D’s, school is more stressful for them. They may study for hours for a test and still get a bad grade. They are trying just as hard and are not rewarded for their hard work. Grades can really lower a kids self-esteem and make things even worse at school and at home.

We can solve this major issue by eliminating grades altogether. Schools can still take tests to see how well are students understanding the material, but there just will not be as much stress to get the good grade. Now most schools would not agree to getting rid of grades but they can take some stress off kids by assigning less homework so that they are not stressed out of their minds.

Opposing views say that grades can be a motivating force and provide goals to work towards. Yes, grades do give motivation to have a better future, but this “motivation” can be too much for people. This motivation drives people to work till it is early in the morning or having no social life because they are stuck in their room doing schoolwork. College is very big and intimidating goal. For a junior or senior in high school, that’s all they think about. They do not think of their friends or family or sports, they sit at home and think of the loads upon loads of homework sitting in their backpack.

Should grades be dropped? Stress causes kids to not perform well in school, sports, to their friends and family. People always say, “Oh, you’re such a teenager,” when they are grumpy and whiney. This is because they never get any sleep! We can get rid of all this stress and negativity if we can eliminate grades.