The grading system in schools is one of the biggest problems in this regard; it conditions people into thinking that you have to always get good grades and never slip up in order to achieve anything, effectively turning us into paper-pushing machines. Mastery and understanding (which come from doing and failing) should be focused on rather than a numerical abstraction of what we think knowledge is. We should embrace failure as something to bounce back and learn from, not as something we need to avoid.
Discussion
In the education biz, we distinguish between "formative" and "summative" assessment. A well-designed course will have lots of low-stakes assignments/quizzes so that students get valuable feedback that helps them learn as they "do and fail". Summative assessment (stuff like final exams, final drafts of a research paper, a recital, etc.) are intended to measure the *outcome* of the learning process, so those are typically weighted more heavily in a course grade.
We do need summative assessment. For one thing, it's how teachers know whether students are actually learning what we claim to be teaching them. At the same time, the days when students take a college class and get graded on, say, just two exams are long gone. We provide much more opportunities for summative assessment than when I was an undergrad!
But all of that is useless if students don't engage with those low stakes tasks in order to actually learn the things whose mastery they're being graded on.
Another reason that students feel pressure to be perfect today is grade inflation. Check out gradeinflation.com for some eye-opening statistics. If half your class is getting an A, an A- looks really bad!
It is not the grading system. It's about incentives and the harmful memes dominating schools:
In today's schools the starting point is that they set up the almighty authorities to judge your understanding, and in most cases, also your overall behavior. They completely dismiss values of criticism: The trial-and-error method which is the only way to progress reliably. Don't question their ways, OR ...
Compliance is deeply baked into it which incentivizes conformity, suppressing critical thinking and creativity. Fostering creativity is very hard, it's an artform. It cannot be centrally planned as children are very different.
Facilitating peer dynamics while staying out of the way mostly, with a gentle touch of guidance. Do you think today's teachers are capable of that? Very few I would guess, and it is *despite* the environment they have to work in.
Why do you think there had not been any substantial improvement despite spending an exorbitant amount of money on different proposals? Perhaps there are fundamental problems not addressed is why. Every time I see discussions around possible changes in the school system I see how it resembles new monetary and fiscal policy discussions around the fiat system.
Tweaking this profoundly disfunctional system is totally useless, regardless of grades or lack thereof, because institutions and educators are utterly captured by static dogmas. The teachers will always be guided by incentives that enforces an authoritative mode of operation. No amount of retraining changes this.
Schools that don't have to make money directly from students or even if part of their strategy is taking money from a corrupt institution like government should be avoided therefore. Misaligned incentives just like with the advertising model, only here the government propaganda is the ad pushed.
The upshot for me is:
#Unschooling and real-life experiences is the way. Align yourself as close to reality as possible and avoid these kind of schools.
I could be wrong. But I take rational criticism seriously, so I have hope for improvement.