Grade -Obsessed

While taking pride in getting good grades and graduating with flying colors is not a bad thing in general, the level at which City Highers have become dependent on this as a determinant of success is detrimental.

As it forces them to focus on their academic achievements and the sense of ego that medals and certificates provide them, they lose sight of the primary reason they go to school—to embark on a learning adventure and bring the pieces of knowledge acquired from this journey into play—and instead become obsessed with trying to measure up to a subjective standard made by society.

Because of this uncontrollable obsession, City Highers do things that transgress the honor code of SCNHS.

Cheat Cheating in the classroom is no longer a new issue—whether in the form of peeking through crib notes in the middle of a test or taking a dekko at the answer sheet of the person seated in front. In an online article published by Tim Walker (2012), a freelance feature writer, the factors that make students cheat have been on the brink of discussion. According to him, while one known reason cheating happens is that learners struggle to comprehend the lessons taught by their teachers, high-achieving students also cheat as much as other students because of pressure.

Plagiarize

With the advent of technology, plagiarism is as simple as pressing the “Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V” buttons of a computer. This technological advancement, despite its advantages, encourages many City Highers to exert little to no effort in their work at all, killing their creative capacity to build their ideas from scratch.

Aside from cheating and plagiarizing, City Highers also do things contrary to their personal choices and beliefs.

With this happening even in real life, studying has become tantamount to doing the only things pleasing to teachers. This way, ensuring that their grades will not get affected in the worst way possible is also a task easy to accomplish.

Participate in Extracurricular Activities Even if Doing So Is Against Your Will

If “one point is life” is a song, it will be the anthem sung by Lira (not her actual name), an SCNHS learner participating in extracurricular activities. Oddly enough, though, even if these activities boost her academic performance and improve her grades, the physical strains and amount of pressure these can give her outweigh the merits mentioned. Nonetheless, Lira still chooses to overwork herself and even ignore what ought to be her priority—studying—to get an additional point straight to her report card.

Do Not Argue With Your Teachers Even if They Are in the Wrong

In the thirteenth chapter of El Filibusterismo, there was a scene where Father Millón attacked one of his students after misspeaking the mechanisms mirrors were made of and not giving him the answer he expected. The scene shows a recurring pattern of do-not-raise-questions-toor-argue-with-your-teacher stimulus-response that deteriorates the self-esteem of young learners who are in the phase of finding their worth in every ounce of social validation granted to them.

With this happening even in real life, studying has become tantamount to doing the only things pleasing to teachers. This way, ensuring that their grades will not get affected in the worst way possible is also a task easy to accomplish.

While getting good grades plays an immense role in a student’s motivation to work harder and achieve a higher level of success, the critical problems surrounding the grading system in our country have continued to deteriorate the value of learning, calling for systematic reform—an education that values the application of the learning gained more than the mere accumulation of points.