You need a metric to measure performance. It's hard to get such a metric right. You need this metric because the government institutionalized schooling and need

You need a metric to measure performance. It's hard to get such a metric right. You need this metric because the government institutionalized schooling and need to have aggregate data on performance. However, for the student, it'd be better if they'd focus on the intersection of what they're interested in and what is societally relevant and not to be graded at all. I know a friend of mine who went to a school for 1 year where he didn't get graded, all he learned was soft business skills. I can clearly see that he grew a lot from it. But I can also see that it is tough for anyone else to see that he learned anything at all. Partially this is because he isn't graded and the behaviors he picked up are now natural to him and it just looks like it was always there.