[pemulis]

That's the problem with standardized education. Critical thinking and creative thinking are stifled, because it's much, much easier to assign grades when every test and project is based on a simple set of criteria. The students either fulfill the criteria, or they don't. Standardized education is good at teaching students how to memorize information and follow instructions, but that's almost all it's good at. That was fine when schools were preparing students to work in factories, but for our current economic system, it's a complete disaster.

If the education system was based on creative projects, employers and colleges would have recognize that the grades are subjective, and not the best signal to judge a candidate by. In fact, grades already a pretty weak signal, since they indicate skills (memorization, ability to follow specific instructions) that aren't nearly as important as they used to be. The most important thing wouldn't be the student's GPA, it would be their portfolio. That's already the case for creative fields, but it's easy to imagine how it could apply to other fields. A portfolio of critical papers for academics, a portfolio of business plans (or, better yet, real businesses) for business students, an investment portfolio (real or virtual) for finance students, etc.