"Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force."

When reading these chapters of Zen, it highly impacted my idea of the grading system. In the past, I have doubted the effectiveness of it and entertained thoughts of how achievement would be measured without it. However, whenever I thought about it I would normally in the end excuse grades as being a necessary part of school that without them there would be no motivation. But when reading this chapter, this idea was questioned. Chapter 16 discusses Phaedrus' experiment with his no grade class. It discusses his thought process behind it and the pros and con of no grades. The thing that got me questioning if a no grade system would really work was a reference to how the students had been trained to learn. The had had at least 12 years of learning how o work the system before entering college. My question is if we instill a love for learning that is motivated by merely wanting to know more as a child, would that affect the success of a no grading system? My question involves going back to the root of the issue to reteach people how to learn and the reason for learning. If this is done successfully, then the grading system would not be needed and people would be learning to learn rather than to work the system.

I believe this concept is important to society because it would force people to learn what they care about. It would result in the people being there really wanting to learn. Also, the learning would be different. It would not be for a grade but for the preciousness of knowledge. I'm still not quite sure what I think about the whole thing but I am glad I got the opportunity to see it in a different light.