Getting good grades shows proficiency.
Getting a good grade doesn’t demonstrate to the world that you can effectively deploy what you have learned.
We would hope it does, but study after study has demonstrated that academic achievements bear little relation to later success in life.
I think education should concern itself more with teaching people how to apply an area of knowledge to solve a problem rather than just making sure the person has the knowledge.
The problem is, its very easy to teach a subject through rote learning and then test and measure a student’s recall of the lessons than it is to teach a student how to use knowledge and information to make the world better.
The easy option measures your ability to teach someone how to recall simple facts.
The hard option measures how effective the student can be after you have taught them to think.