Grades: A WORK IN PROGRESS

This is a collection of thoughts on a topic near and dear to all of us. It is a work-in-progress. And it probably is incoherent. Mail me if you want some clarification, or would like to share your own incoherent thoughts...

Grading is murky. Do I discover the grade, like some scientific principle, or do I create the grade? Are you intrinsically an A (or B or ...) student? Or do I make you one?

I have noticed strange language usage about grades: ``I got an A.'' ``He gave me a C.'' I have never heard ``I got a C.'' ``He gave me an A.'' This is just another reason for disliking the process; we don't even know how to talk about it.

I don't like to grade. Grading is about unthought, indoctrination, control, and is opposed to everything we think and believe about liberal education in a church-related context.

I do like sitting in my office with students and talking about their work. I do the same as Jerry Harvey: ``[I]...critique their thinking, curse their ineptitude, applaud their creativity, frown when they do work that is beneath them, and cheer their victories.''¹

I have heard this: ``I'm not grading students as people. I'm grading their work.'' Here's how Harvey answers that:

If you actually believe that normal human beings can separate themselves from the work they produce, particularly work that is important to them, then I have a suggestion. The next time you receive an appraisal and your boss says, ``I think that your work is lousy [or great], but please don't take my comments personally,'' then don't take them personally. Take them impersonally, because your boss's comments apparently don't relate to you as a living, breathing human being ...Bleuler, a famous psychoanalyst, points out that anyone who splits one's self off from one's self, in the manner that is required to divorce one's self from the quality of one's work, is generally deemed to be schizophrenic.

I agree.

For upper division courses, the exams have few questions. I grade each of these individually with the scale below. The student then receives a sequence of grades when the exam is returned. For lower division course, I still use points per problem, then when all is said and done I look at an ordering of the scores and assign/determine/create/discover the letter grade, which is the mark I record.

So, you ask: ``If you don't like grading so much, then why do it?'' Well, I try to get out of it every semester. I offer each class the following proposition on the first day: no programs, projects or exams and everyone gets/is assigned/earns/ a C. The riposte from the class is always the same: no programs, projects or exams and everyone gets/is assigned/earns/ an A. Get real. (I have had individual students ask for this grading scheme, and I don't have a good answer.)

Compelled beyond powers that I cannot control to create/assign grades, I start with the college catalogue: [page 51 in the 2002-2003 version]

A

Excellent. Denotes outstanding achievement and an unusual degree of intellectual initiative. It is the highest grade awarded.

B

Good. Denotes work which surpasses the objectives for the course. It is a mark of distinction.

C

Satisfactory. Denotes work which achieves the objectives for the course. It is the lowest grade given for an acceptable performance.

D

Unsatisfactory. Denotes work of an inferior quality compared to the objectives for the course. It is the lowest passing grade and a mark of inadequate performance.

F

Failure. Denotes inadequate work below minimal standards of competence required to pass the course. A course with this grade does not satisfy prerequisite or degree requirements.

So if you expect an A, you had better be prepared to argue that you showed an unusual degree of intellectual initiative and I missed it. Now try this one: does getting every question on every exam correct show an unusual degree of intellectual initiative? You expect an A for that. (BTW, you certainly can't show intellectual initiative on a multiple choice, true-false, matching, or any other of those high-school type exams; so if those are the only type of questions on the exams you take, you can't earn an A.)

I heard a colleague explaining his grading system. The course had 685 points (or some strange number that didn't end in 00). A B+ was awarded for 87.5% and a B for 87.49%. (Or something like that.) So, if you get 599.375 points you get a B+; for 599.374 points you get a B. Am I missing something here? The distinction is in the third decimal place. Even if we drop my pedantic distinction in the decimal places, what's the difference between a 600 and a 599? Each point in this class is 1/6 of 1%. Can anyone be that accurate in assessing intellectual performance?

A course grade is a summary judgment and cannot be distinguished in the third decimal.