Nielsen, Nadia

Nørgaard, Asta

Rosenkjær, Malou Marquard

The following paper will investigate two gymnasium students’ experiences of being a gymnasium student at Københavns Åbne Gymnasium (Copenhagen’s Open Gymnasium) and what level of significance receiving or not receiving grades has for their being and everyday life. The paper is based on a reflection on whether grade-giving is problematic. This is a topic we have come across in articles, media and personal experience, and we have found that several gymnasiums have started experimenting with handing out fewer grades. Through an eclectic method the paper will use two theoretical aspects: existential psychology explained by Bjarne Jacobsen and critical theory explained by Hartmut Rosa. The paper is phenomenologically inspired to obtain the best possible insight into our informers’ life world. In a discussing analysis of our informers’ statements, we have divided the informers’ ongoing topics into themes: “A nut in this machine of society”, “Free to choose” and “Why this damn number means so much”. The themes will be analyzed using terms from existential psychology and critical theory. Through analyzing, we found that grades are important to both informers, and that meaningful aspects like self-understanding, shame, pride, choices, possibilities and verification play a big part in their reflections on life as a gymnasium student and grades. A discussion will include an interview with a teacher and leader of education from Københavns Åbne Gymnasium with the experiences and focal points we have gathered through our interviews which we could use to generalize, to a certain degree, some of the students’ contemplations. The paper concludes that grades have a significant impact on our researched informers’ everyday lives because the grades can give them insight into “where they lie” (on the grade scale) and therefore give them a better understanding of what opportunities they have in the future. In the absence of grades, an existential wondering upon the significance of the grades was achieved

To be a gymnasium student, and the thing about grades

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Roskilde Universitet