In French schools, 16/20 is a perfect score!?

School tests. Getting a perfect score is incredibly satisfying, right? That feeling transcends borders. Just as Japanese children rejoice over a "100," Russian children celebrate a "5," and American children cheer for an "A."

Whether it's a number or a letter, the common thread is that it represents the highest possible score.

However, even for the same "highest score," different countries seem to have different philosophies: some favor giving out many top marks, while others avoid it as much as possible. I noticed this after transferring to a French school. No matter how well you did on a test, getting above 16/20 was quite difficult. This tendency was especially noticeable in subjects like French, where many questions didn't have a single correct answer.

One day, I asked my teacher about it. She replied, "A perfect score means perfection, but perfection is a state that rarely occurs unless something extraordinary happens. It's not something you easily encounter every day or even every week. It's something that happens only a few times in a lifetime."

I see. True, my answers might have been good, but if you asked if they were perfect, they didn't move me to tears. I understood. Yet, from that moment, I began to wonder what kind of answer would truly move my teacher, and I wanted to give one someday.

In that sense, France tends to treat children the same as adults. They explain why, teaching that life doesn't just hand out wonderful things easily and that effort is needed. But conversely, they also teach that doing 80% is wonderful.

I felt the opposite in America. You get praised no matter what. Even if you only get half of it, the teacher finds something good and praises you. "You worked so hard!" they'd say, sticking cute stickers in your notebook. And you could keep trying until you got everything right—meaning a perfect score. The idea is that "I can get a perfect score too!" builds confidence, motivating kids to try harder. But some kids start thinking, "Oh, that's good enough." Maybe that's why advanced classes and skipping grades exist.

Russia takes the opposite approach to "praise." Getting good grades is important, but more than that, everyone fears getting bad grades. In their five-point grading system, "1" is almost never given. That means "2" is the lowest possible score. It's equivalent to an "F" in the American system. Because the shape resembles a swan, students often get scolded by their mothers: "Another swan swam to you!?" Furthermore, there's a term for someone who consistently gets twos, and since no one wants to be called that, students think, "I really don't want to get a 2," motivating them to study at least minimally.

Grading systems. They might just look like numbers or letters. But do you nurture with praise or with strictness? Do you establish the concept of a "perfect score" or not? Actually, all of this profoundly influences attitudes toward learning. By flexibly adjusting grading systems, we might be able to steadily draw out children's motivation.