you may find that you have to tweak your syllabus as you go
Having the mindset of being open to change is so important! It creates a better class environment and alllows for students to provide more honest feedback to the professor. Which the professor can than choose to implement to improve the course for future students.
rather, it’s due to having been led for years to work for grades.
It's not just about working for grades for some students, but working for parent/caretaker approval and working towards getting into college. It is not just about the current grade, but may have long term aspects to it.
how grades function as a mechanism for controlling students rather than as a necessary or constructive way to report information about their performance.
In general, I thought of grades as being a form of critique on how well you did within the course, however thinking of it as a way to control students if definitely interesting! It's not something I had really considered before, but I can definitely see how that can be applied.
It’s not enough to tell students in advance exactly what’s expected of them.
As a student, I have always preferred that teachers tell me what they expect. I think that there are often teachers who have an idea of what they expect students to turn and when that is not turned in, the student gets marked down. As a student who had a teacher that set little to no expectations, it was frustrating at times because we were still getting graded on a rubric, we just were not aware of what it was. Now, if the aspect of grades were removed, then an argument for not needing to tell students what exactly is expected of them could be helpful. It would provide students creative freedom and thinking outside the box.