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%GRADE ADDICTION 780424 Grade addiction is a disease promoted by traditional institutional education. Victims of the disease become dependent upon institutional formal evaluations which can be summarized by a single symbol selected from a very limited list; e.g., from the list: "A", "B", "C", "D", "F". Students are trained to value receipt of symbols early in the list, and to fear receipt of symbols late in the list. The students who most often succeed in "earning" symbols early in the list tend to become most addicted to the grade disease. Their lives come to revolve around the rituals required to buy the desired symbols---to the exclusion of intimate open personal relationships with friends and members of their family. Grade addiction tends to occasion the development of barriers to the free flow of dialogue between addicts and non-addicts. Educational institutions promote grade addiction of students up to a prescribed age associated with a ritual called "graduation". The graduation ritual corresponds to the drug-culture's ritual called "cold-turkey", in which the drug addict is suddenly deprived of the object of addiction. Following the graduation ritual students find themselves in contexts which do not offer them familiar letter symbols of encouragement. The experience can be the source of great confusion and bafflement. Many grade addicts avoid the withdrawal symptoms which follow a graduation by entering another educational institution which will supply them with the much desired symbols. Such educational institutions are successful through grade-pushing. They promote the desire for the high quality grades that may be acquired only through exclusive behavior which makes acquiring high quality grades the top priority. The most addicted students are encouraged to push the desire for high quality grades by seducing other students into the addiction---and so providing more business to the grade-pushers. Genuine liberal education would liberate students from grade-addiction and from the manipulations of grade pushers---encouraging them to become free in balanced and varied life-styles appropriate to their unique potentialities. (c) 1997 by Paul A. Smith in "Search for Integrity and Honesty" (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)