Did you understand "grades" as a kid?

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I never really understood that getting an "F" or a "D" was a bad thing until I was in high school. I was homeschooled for high school and went to a credit recovery program. So the traditional high school experience I never had but I did eventually understand that an "A" was good and an "F" was bad by eighth or ninth grade.

But before then, I never understood why other kids were so upset or ecstatic over a letter on their paper. They could write whatever letter they wanted on it when they got home. I needed something tangible to let me know I had done what was expected of me. I don't remember much of my early childhood, but I do remember some lady from my preschool coming over to the house to "work with me". I wonder if she used some ABA-esque techniques with me.

My mom did try behavior charts and the like when I was younger but eventually stopped using them and says she stopped because all it does is train kids to seek a reward for everything instead of internal satisfaction. I could only experience internal satisfaction if it was something I wanted to do for MYSELF and not something someone else wanted me to do. But having any kind of letter on a paper or project wasn't reinforcing. Especially when most of the time, I didn't want to do the paper or project in the first place.

Yes, I did. I was always afraid of getting a grade lower than a C, so much so that I sometimes didn't even look at my report cards.

^ I too dreaded looking at my report card. I'm not kidding: I stopped on the stairs the day I got it and pulled open the envelope feeling nervous, almost sick, and read it with a fast beating heart.
I also feared negative feedback being written there.
Which is kind of weird since I didn't exactly love school to start with. But then again, I always had some anxiousness.


I never had any problems understanding grades or that it was a good thing to get good grades as a kid.

I understood the concept of grades but I was just happy to get a D instead of an F cuz I knew that Ds passed. I really s#cked in school due to dyslexia, ADD, & a rare low vision disorder that wasn't diagnosed till my senior year of high-skewl. I just wanted to be done with school since I started kindergarten & never had any desire to go to college. I did my best in class but didn't really care what my grades were as long as I passed.

I did understand grades from the start, but we were never graded with letters, it's not a thing here until in the end of highschool.

In the beginning of school we had a point system in tests. At the top there was the number of maximum points you could get from the whole test and at the end of every problem the maximum amount of points you could get from that problem. Then, when the teacher had looked over the test an we got them back we could not only see how much points we got in total but also where we had messed up.

When we got older, we moved to a certain kind of weird number system I still don't really get, but the grades were from 4 to 10.
4 = Failed
5 = Passed with great difficulty
6 = Passed with some difficulty
7 = Tolerable
8 = Good
9 = Great
10 = Excellent
Maybe those aren't the exact explanations teachers would use but you get the point... of course, you could also get -8, +8 or 8½ (and the "8" could be any other number, too.) -8 is slightly worse than eight but better than 7½, +8 is slightly better than 8 but under 8½ and 8½ is under -9.

And while I studied business, our grading was from I to 3 + S.
I = Failed
1 = Barely passed
2 = Passed
3 = The best grade so obviously passed.
S = A grade for some courses that were mostly about attendance and paying attention. Unlike others, I got this grade from physical education because I had a separate class no one supervised since the teachers thought my disability would make it too dangerous for me to go with the others to the normal lessons.

I got that there are good grades and bad grades, and the correlation between my performance and the grade. But I never really understood the criteria for them, unless it said very specifically what I was supposed to be able to do to achieve a certain grade. But mostly they were really diffuse, like "The student can discuss and refer to a written text" and for the higher grade "The student can well discuss and refer to a written text". Seems like it was just up to the teacher if you did good or not.
I never cared about my grades, and also thought it was ridiculous of my classmates to get so worked up about them.

When I started Junior High, it was downright scary to know we are getting a real grade now and not just "VG" (very good) and "G" (good). I remember being physically sick the week before report cards (or any tests). Any test mark or mark my report card below 80 and I knew I was going to get yelled at. I was completely TERRIFIED of failure (below 80%) at that age. I realized the "grades" were BS in High School when I got a 78 in Geography. I angrily crumpled it up and told her teacher "78? WTF? I know more about this subject than you do!" After all, it was my obsessive interest in my early teens.

Finally, Mom relented when I started bringing home 60s in High School and arranged a polite meeting between the teacher and us rather than just screaming at me for being lazy. Having a brother with a genius level intelligence meant there were sky high expectations for me: expectations in which I completely crumbled for fear of failure. What's really ironic is that most my parents barely passed high school and Mom has a serious, documented learning disability!