Esther Wojcicki raised 2 successful CEOs and a doctor—here's why she thinks good grades don't matter

The grades you got successful schoolhouse don't truly matter, says pedagogue and bestselling writer Esther Wojcicki.

Speaking precocious at the World Government Summit successful Dubai, Wojcicki said acquisition successful the U.S. — and different countries with akin systems — is flawed due to the fact that it discourages "kids who are ace originative but who are not pursuing each of the rules."

"How bash we proceed to promote them?" she asked. "The fig 1 mode I deliberation we request to [encourage originative students] is we request to chopped the value of grades."

Wojcicki, 81, taught astatine Palo Alto High School successful California for much than 3 decades. She's besides the parent of a doc and 2 CEOs: Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe, and Susan Wojcicki, who announced connected Thursday that she's stepping down arsenic CEO of YouTube aft much than 20 years astatine Google.

Wojcicki's decades of teaching precocious schoolhouse taught her that bully grades are overrated, and not a important indicator of a child's aboriginal success. Yet they're an important origin successful however the country's acquisition strategy views students' occurrence and determines their aboriginal opportunities, she said successful Dubai.

"Everybody is warring for grades and those grades pb to college, and if you don't person those grades you cannot go," Wojcicki said.

Valuing grades supra each other encourages students to "memorize" facts to execute good connected tests, sometimes leaving down intelligent and originative students who who don't excel astatine memorization, she added.

Some neurologists reason that memorization has benefits similar exercising your brain, and that remembering information is the archetypal measurement to knowing it.

But acquisition experts contend that prioritizing precocious trial scores — alternatively than demonstrating heavy knowing of materials — fails to thatch important learning skills.

"Today's multi-tasking, over-stimulated kids person fewer learning skills," William Klemm, a prof of neuroscience astatine Texas A&M University, told Texas A&M Today successful 2017. "Schools are truthful obsessed with teaching to the trial that they neglect to thatch students however to learn."

In Dubai, Wojcicki pushed for partial but meaningful changes to the American acquisition system, de-emphasizing grades successful favour of fostering students' creativity and innovation skills. 

"How astir each kid [has] a people successful innovation, erstwhile a week oregon possibly erstwhile a day? Something wherever they tin really travel up with ideas that substance to the full planet, not conscionable to the U.S. [but] everywhere," Wojcicki suggested.

"We request kids to beryllium capable to deliberation our mode retired of the problems that look our world. And school, arsenic it is acceptable up today, does not bash that ... particularly successful the U.S." she added.

When teachers spot a greater absorption connected creativity successful schoolroom assignments, students are much apt to larn occupation solving and captious reasoning skills — and clasp much of what they learn, a 2019 Gallup survey of U.S. teachers and students found.

Last year, parenting adept Margot Machol Bisnow wrote astir her experience interviewing 70 parents of palmy entrepreneurs for CNBC Make It. The 1 accomplishment each genitor taught their kids was curiosity, which allowed them to deliberation critically "and get astatine much originative solutions," she noted.

Wojcicki said her ain daughters excelled successful school, earning beardown capable grades to be schools similar Harvard, Yale and Stanford. But she inactive made definite they "did not cringe erstwhile they got a atrocious grade," she said.

"The No. 1 happening you request to do, not lone for your children but for your students, is person them judge successful themselves," she said. "And you don't judge successful yourself arsenic agelong arsenic you get truly atrocious grades and past you spell location and your parents outcry astatine you. That doesn't work."

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