23+ Pros and Cons of Good Grades (Explained)

Most parents want their children to succeed in life. Be it in their careers, goals, ambitions, love interests, etc. However, some parents go the extra mile to ensure that their child achieves success with all the advantages in the world.

This could be done by adopting nefarious methods or simply by forcing the child to submit to the parent’s demands. Sometimes this is successful, but mostly, it just ends with disastrous consequences in the long term.

Sometimes, pressure creates diamonds, but usually, the result is rubble. So should you or should you not pressure kids to get good grades?

Getting Good Grades: Pros And Cons

Pros Of Getting Good Grades	Cons of Getting Good Grades
Creates a Sense of Competition	Causes Acute Mental Stress
Sets a Good Precedent for the future	Creates Humans Who Care Only About Material Achievements, and Not Humanity
Serves as Strong Motivation	Creates a False Sense of Superiority
Good Grades Ensure Better Schools	Kills Off Any Sign of Creativity
Improves Work Ethic	Good Grades Are Not Everything
Higher Stations/ Positions at Work	The Grading System is Ableist and Exclusionary
Good Grades Ensure the Respect of Your Peers	Life balance may suffer with a concentrate on schoolwork.

✔️ Advantages of Getting Good Grades

Creates a sense of competition

Creating a competitive and nurturing environment for your child ensures they work hard to achieve their goals. Competing with one’s peers will make sure that your child will be motivated to score better than the others and that they will not lag behind or be unfocused.

This sets a good precedent for the future

Make your child understand that good grades are something that they should strive to achieve. This will give them the impetus to work hard and set a good example for their future selves where they will work to achieve their goals.

Serves as strong motivation

When kids get good grades, they study harder and focus better on their work. Good grades automatically boost one’s position in the eyes of peers and faculty, and hard work is applauded by all.

The child will try to keep up by using the boost provided by his grades as motivation to work better.

Good grades ensure better schools

Good grades boost a child’s overall performance. When they want to apply to the college of their dreams, these grades can make or break their application.

College admissions take thousands of applications, and keep an eye out for the most well-rounded student, meaning grades will improve your child’s chances of being accepted at colleges.

Improves work ethics

Good grades require constant hard work. A child must allow the maximum time to continue pursuing good grades.

This helps develop irreproachable work ethics and will help your child do good work at their jobs in the long run. Therefore, good grades improve work ethics.

Higher stations/ positions at work

If you help your child by studying to get good grades, they will get the boost to study in the college of their dreams. This, in turn, will ensure that after they finish studying and enter the workforce, they start out at higher work positions.

Good grades ensure the respect of your peers

Forcing your child to get good grades ensures that their peers respect them for their academic achievements. Good grades warrant respect, which motivates your child to do better to be respected amongst their classmates.

❌ Disadvantages of Getting Good Grades

Causes acute mental stress

A child pressured into constantly studying to get good grades suffers from anxiety, depression, and mental stress.

They are likelier to fail at their achievements in the long run, and this toxic system of pressuring them to get good grades will lead to their downfall.

Creates humans who care only about material achievements and not humanity

The pressure to get good grades forces children into a trap wherein they are forced to focus on the material world. Qualities like human kindness, friendship, and creating bonds are forgone for the drive to work to suit only the self.

This creates a race of selfish humans who don’t care about anything or anyone other than themselves.

Creates a false sense of superiority

Good grades have no further use after school. In life, people who were forced to get good grades by their parents become workhorses, and their incapability to achieve much leads them to feel a sense of inferiority.

Good grades create a false sense of superiority, leading to broken hearts and minds.

Kills Off Any Sign of Creativity

Grades are only marked on academic subjects. This means that creative abilities are not given little to no importance. Creative skills are vital in the long run and help shape a child’s personality and career choices.

Parents force children to abandon hobbies and creative skills in this race of achieving the best grades possible.

Good Grades Are Not Everything

Getting good grades does not automatically make someone a better person. Inculcating good habits and behaviors ensures you have decency and basic humanity. Good grades might get you to a high point, but that can only take you so far.

The grading system is ableist and exclusionary

The grading system operates on the principle that all students are able-bodied persons who start off equally with all the advantages in life. This is a very idealist way of grading, which excludes those who do not fall under either category.

Students who have reading disabilities, or are physically disabled, are excluded from receiving good marks, and so are students who come from dysfunctional or poverty-stricken homes and do not have the advantages of peers.

Good grades surely help a child to do better in school. However, it is detrimental to their health, growth, and overall development if they are pressured to work in a youth sweatshop for good grades.

If you are pressuring your child to achieve good marks, first understand if that is what you want for them or if it is some unfulfilled desire stemming from your unresolved issues.