Grade point average has always been a difficult concept for me. It seems to be very important. There’s the honor roll, the high honor roll, the National Honor Society, valedictorian, salutatorian, academic excellence awards in sports, and the satisfaction any of those titles can impart to your parents. But it’s been hard for me to understand why it’s important. There have always been discrepancies that made G.P.A. seem inaccurate: In fifth grade, the girl who sat near me in social studies had fantastic grades, but asked questions that clearly demonstrated a lack of understanding and original thought (the same phenomenon also happened seven years later in my literature class). My friend passed AP US History by resubmitting her older sister’s assignments, and studying from her tests. There were countless projects that, regardless of quality, were worth 50% “late” at 9:05 instead of “on time” at 9:00.

The educational system presents G.P.A. as a measure of potential. The reality is that G.P.A. is comprised of so many arbitrary factors it can (and often does) completely fail to display intelligence, capability, or mastery of material: all the copied assignments, points docked for barely late work, the disparities between the grade on the final exam and the grade in the class, the forgotten homework, the grades given on effort, and the cheating on tests too directly affect G.P.A. for it to accurately measure academic progress. It definitely doesn’t acknowledge outside factors such as the massive role of teachers (not just in instruction, but in determining how G.P.A. will be tallied) or differences in culture between schools and classes.

G.P.A. actually measures self-discipline and effort. A study done by two researchers showed the correlation between G.P.A. and self-discipline to be 67%, more than twice the correlation between G.P.A. and intelligence at 32%. What’s more, the part of the brain most associated with self-discipline, the pre-frontal cortex, doesn’t finish developing until around age 25. Not only does G.P.A. misrepresent academic achievement and intelligence, it reflects skills that the majority of people are not biologically capable of mastering until most have completely finished their schooling.

Christina Hunter of the University of Denver Admissions Office told me “G.P.A. and test scores are the biggest part of [admissions.]” Scores “need to be looked at in a greater context,” — essays, letters of recommendation, school rigor, etc. — but the context plays a minor role after quantitative data has made most decisions. Competitive students are acutely aware of that fact, and the college’s obsession with G.P.A. becomes their own. It has to: a good high school G.P.A. means a good college and eventually a good living (supposedly). This G.P.A. worship, the compulsion to achieve the highest possible number, rules and subsequently ruins education. It is the pursuit of the number that compels teachers to simplify material to protect student grades, that causes students to cheat in order to dominate their massive course and activity load, and that places creativity and independent, critical thinking behind impressive results.

America is falling behind on a global scale in terms of education and innovation, and the problem is the strict focus on results instead of performance. It’s similar to China’s GDP worship, the Chinese obsession with economic growth, and it’s why Chinese government officials have had to slow down to improve “growth quality.” They built a nation using artificial stimulants with no regard to sustainability, and rightfully feared the collapse of a skyscraper built with matchsticks.

The focus in education has been on results, not actual learning, for a long time. Teachers are criticized for “teaching to the test,” but it’s understandable when those results dictate school funding and job security and have no relation to student development. You can’t even blame the students. They’re under equal pressure to collect titles like valedictorian, to get the important and distinguished scholarships, to get everything lined up just right to impress the colleges that they think will dictate their success in life. We have made the final number of a student’s G.P.A. the only thing that matters, and no one cares how they attain it. A report from a Stanford professor states 75–98% of his students admitted to cheating in high school. That’s not the students struggling to get by: Stanford students have higher scores than most in the country. For many students, earning a high score vastly outweighs learning the material or any dated notion of academic integrity.

The focus on results stems from the apathetic pretense that we need an easily quantifiable scale to compare students, and the ridiculous notion that one does, or even can, exist. It cannot, and it’s ridiculous to keep pretending otherwise. The arbitrary factors I mentioned earlier are too many and play too large a role. What are students actually learning between our broken measurement system and their manipulation of it? Those students who retain the knowledge have it as long as they can remember it, but for the most part, our system lacks the ability to impart more than easily researchable information. I never bought the textbook for Economics 1020, but I snagged an A thanks to google and some powerpoint slides. You can only measure a student within the context of their own education and what they’ve chosen to do with it: how they’ve applied it, or created something new with it; how they have demonstrated actual intelligence, growth and development and a potential for them.

However, those traits are not easy to demonstrate. It’s not easy for each student to create something new, to have an original concept and the ability to follow through with it, but I suppose that’s the point I’m coming to. Most students don’t have the critical thinking skills to identify problems or opportunities, let alone the creativity and resolve to address them. The system we currently have, centered on using G.P.A., is a very efficient one for filling students with different bits of knowledge and programming them with instructions. Beyond that, their utility is limited. The majority of students are ill-equipped for a world that will change more in the next ten years than it has in the past thirty, they can’t be a valuable part of a critical and well-informed electorate (feel free to challenge this point if you’re a fan of congress’s efficiency), and it’s willfully ignorant to continue educating through an outdated system that barely worked in the first place.

Unfortunately for our schools, education and learning haven’t meant the same thing in a long time. The goal of education is not to test a student’s dedication to an imperfect system, or their strict ability to control themselves. The goal of education is to learn: to improve, understand, and to arm ourselves; it’s supposed to create and inspire independent thinkers, not cast shadows on the wall for us to chase. Real learning is what allowed our ancestors to excel past the neanderthals, and it’s the solution to the world’s many unsolvable problems.

Yes, the system has not failed everyone. Brilliance survives through those lucky enough to be born with some of it and hard-working enough to find the rest. But they are far from the norm, and most people are far from the inherent potential they possess. This isn’t a debate between idealism and realism, or a liberal system and a conservative system, optimism and cynicism, or anything else. There is no need for that debate, because whatever system we have now does not work. This is a series of incredibly simple statements:

• When we fail to properly educate students, the students will be uneducated.
• An uneducated populace cannot excel, adapt, or ultimately survive.
• We are failing.
• In order to stop failing, it will take a concerted nationwide effort to seriously change how we educate.
• It is time to change.