We've discussed the nature of grading a few times. This article discusses how letter grades get in the way of the "pursuit" of knowledge.

During his (Chomsky) junior high school years, he went to an experimental school run by Temple University's education department. With no grades or competition, each student was simply encouraged to do his or her best. Chomsky recollects this school as a wonderful and influential experience.

His parents then sent him to a competitive high school for college-bound students. Chomsky realized that grades and success were all that mattered, and school suddenly became a scary place that he admits he hated: "If I got a B in something, it was tragic," he writes in a letter. "I even got a D once - in English grammar, a subject that made no sense at all as far as I could figure out."

Since joining the linguistics faculty at MIT in 1955, he has changed the face of linguistics, and especially the English language, with his theories on generative grammar. The point here: Grades aren't everything; excellence is.