Why Good Grades Don't Always Make Children Successful

credit: Photo courtesy to the Amador Ledger Dispatch

"The grades you got in school don't really matter," says educator and bestselling author Esther Wojcicki.

Speaking recently at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Wojcicki said education in the US is flawed because it discourages "kids who are super creative but who are not following all of the rules."

How do we continue to encourage them? "The number one way I think we need to [encourage creative students] is we need to cut the importance of grades," the 81-year-old California high school teacher said, per CNBC.

"Everybody is fighting for grades and those grades lead to college, and if you don't have those grades you cannot go," Wojcicki said.

"We need kids to be able to think our way out of the problems that face our world. School, as it is set up today, does not do that."

Some neurologists argue that memorization has benefits like exercising your brain, and that remembering information is the first step to understanding it.

But education experts contend that prioritizing high test scores rather than demonstrating deep understanding of materials fails to teach important learning skills.

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