There are other ways to grade. The point system has always been lazy, about as effective at predicting competence and success as standardized testing. What really predicts success is how rich your parents are. Sure there are rich fuckups, but not having to take care of parents or younger siblings while living on the poverty line sure helps.
It's not an easy problem to solve, and this idea of "tough love, kick them in the ass" is basically perpetuating the idea of working yourself to death and hating yourself because that's what the smartest guy on hacker news says should happen. Hell 80% of the graduates are gonna be burger flippers, Walmart greeters, street cleaners, and all the jobs that aren't elite hacker positions.
*It's not like a straight A student is going to stop getting straight A's because we didn't punish the poor kids and underachievers hard enough.*
The hate directed at this article is endemic of fear. Absolute fear that someone will get more than you. Something they don't deserve, so punish them hard and punish them early. Which is disgusting, and is the narrative the far right has been pushing for the past four decades. From welfare queens to demonizing SNAP. It's all the same cycle of hate.
I personally know people who had poor parents and succeeded by education and hard work, don't dismiss what you don't know.
> The hate directed at this article is endemic of fear. Absolute fear that someone will get more than you.
No, it's your comment that's hateful. You think little of the individual, only the family and identity groups matter. That's why you are against tests and grades.
I think movements who value abstract ideas (critical justice, religion, communism, nationalism) over real flesh and blood humans, who over-generalise and ignore the specifics of each case, are leading us towards the reign of terror.
They all want uniformity, the individual dissolved into the group identity, all united in the same ideology. Like soldiers.
I am an example of that. But speaking of parents, they cared about my education and pushed me to learn.
What really predicts success is how <pushy> your parents are. But also how hard you work, how gifted you are and what kind of people you meet in school. It's not 100% the parents. There are plenty of rich parents with children with low educational results. They don't care.