Friday, March 07, 2008
Grades
People sometimes ask me about grades, specifically what I think about students who study for the sake of grades. My view is that whether this is to be praised depends on what it is compared to: the realities of the world around us or the ideals we may espouse. Certainly it is better that a student study than that she not study, and if grades are the only incentive that is effective then at least they are a motivation that indeed will be effective. To the extent a student does homework, attends class, takes notes, engages in discussion with colleagues, reviews for exams, and does everything else that she ought to do as a matter of course, because she hopes for high marks, well, there are worse problems with which we can be concerned. Yet it would best if a student wished to gain knowledge for it’s own sake, though such purity of purpose turns out to be rather rare in any context.
One of the most disheartening experiences I have ever had as a teacher was trying to persuade students at an elite institution, almost all of whom had spent most of their formative years excelling in academic pursuits as measured by their transcripts, that they should disregard the very criteria by which they had been selected, as was known by all. The exercise was as frustrating for them as well, I am sure, even if a few individuals were persuaded or hadn’t needed to be lectured to about the matter to begin with. It made me understand the need to work within the community norms, even if modest efforts were made to reform those norms.
Perhaps the compromise toward which we can aspire is to make our evaluation as fair as possible, recognizing one its primary purposes is to perform a necessary task of sorting people into categories, and along the way we can nurture some skepticism. To the extent grades are used for the purpose of sorting, if they are to distinguish meaningfully among talented people, it must be impossible for every one to earn an “A.” Ironically, the more uniformly talented a group is, the more important it is to make fine distinctions that may not correlate well to any practical differences. So best to bear in mind that in the end grades are predictors of performance, not merit in itself.
