This article in the NYT reminded me of some of our earlier discussions. If you read it you will notice that the crucial question - "What are grades for?" - is ignored.
When I read it, I can understand the students' point of view - which isn't very well described in the article. Here's how I would put it:
1. Our intelligence and academic preparation were considered acceptable by the college or else they would have rejected us.
2. I am going to college so I can make a career - I can't have below a certain GPA without endangering scholarships, parental support, and grad school chances.
3. I am paying a lot of money to the college.
4. If, in addition to my tuition, I also try hard to accomplish what professors ask of me, then I am upholding my end of the exchange. The college needs to provide decent teaching, decent grades, and a diploma - that is their end of the exchange.
5. If, despite my trying hard and doing what I'm told to do, the college gives me a poor grade then they should give me my damn money and time back.
What the quoted professors are really saying is, "We don't care about your deal with the admissions office, financial aid office, parents, or administrators. We run these courses and we categorize the students' work based on the quality of that work. We don't want to hear about anything else." And that's a position that I feel a lot of sympathy for - a rejection of the "Price is Right" delusional America that believes everything is for sale and that nothing is sacred and that if you pay for a ballet lesson and throw in lots of sweaty hip thrusts that the teacher should shake your hand and thank you for your exceptional efforts. The professors are working from a framework of apprenticeship and mentoring - mostly disappeared in our culture except in martial arts. But the students are operating from a business/contract model. Marx's theory of Base/Superstructure would predict that the students will eventually win this struggle - and higher education will become more and more completely a commodity.
How does this compare to our HS situation? The students, deeply shaped by capitalist culture, still approach HS the same way as the students in those colleges. They feel that if they basically do what the school tells them then they deserve a B and a leg up to the next stage in their career prep. If they work at all extra they think they deserve an A. Most students want effort to be the main differentiation and they want it in basically an A or B or C range. But as teachers in a state-provided and state-coordinated institution we don't have to follow capitalist logic quite the same way. Nonetheless I think this quid-pro-quo dynamic is a major one we have to be aware of in trying to create a coherent institutional culture - even if only as a model to be explicitly debated and challenged.
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This article, and your analysis, really make me continue to question effective grading practices. When I'm teaching at NYU, grade consciousness seems to be more apparent for my undergraduate students than my graduate students; I wonder if this is because the graduate students have less of the concern for applying for the next degree, etc. But as the article vaguely alluded to "grading criteria," for my NYU students, I now have a section of the syllabus that names the categories for assessment, but without percentages, stating that the grading will be holistic. I think this allows me the freedom to tailor grades according to the individual student rather than arbitrary percentages.
ReplyDeleteAt SOF, however, it is more difficult; dealing with percentages and exact numbers has (I'm sure!) driven us all crazy at times. I do not agree with a pass/fail system because I worry this encourages some students to not push themselves, however, I also can't say that I believe in grading against a standard, especially now that we value differentiation so much. If I differentiate my assignments to promote success with my diverse array of learners, this in turn alters the standards anyway. So is my grade to reflect a student's level of progress in my class, or to reflect their performance against the vague city/state standards? If the push is to differentiate learning, then we need grading systems that reflect holistic, non-standards based achievement. At the same time, if I do that, am I setting students up for "failure" or disappointment when they get to a college classroom where a professor might choose to grade against a standard? Urgh, the saga continues...
The historical legacy of schooling is a factory model framed by Taylorism. Schools were designed to sort students according to their perceived efficiency within our factory modeled industrialized economy. They were given IQ tests-that purported to "test" a student’s ability level, however, these tests and rational for sorting students was based on faulty logic and naive or nefarious intentions. They were sorted along racial and class lines.
ReplyDeleteSince 1890, school was designed to socialize the masses into a capitalistic, highly industrialized culture. Actual skills and ability was secondary to teaching obedience to authority, demonstrating good discipline, and developing a strong work ethic. The structure of school still operates along these historical models. Ever since mass schooling began, there was a swelling of students who teachers wanted out of their classrooms and labeled them mentally deficient. Separate tracks were developed to funnel kids into vocational ed courses. School leaders at that time made their beliefs and intentions explicit regarding the purpose of schooling.
Only recently have we expected all kids to succeed with a liberal education. The hidden curriculum (obedience, discipline, social oder)remains unstated but obvious. It seems that there is a disproportionate amount of middle and upper class students who succeed within the confines of liberal education. This makes sense, if you have two parents at home, especially one who doesn't work, and they have training in liberal education themselves then their values will focus on teaching their children the requirements of this style of education(exceptions occur, but this is applicable to the vast majority). Our society has said "liberal education is the goal and all schools should be modeled on this, and all students should go to college that enforces this ideal. We've socially constructed the belief that a person's societal status is dependant on his/her attainment of a college education(and now masters degree). However, there are a host of factors that lead to a student’s success with liberal education and our society pretends that by just going to school and working hard then success is just around the corner. Race, class, gender, and a host of other confounding factors complicate realizing this success. So, students are trained in a system that was originally designed to reward effort and obedience, reinforce social class, but when they get to college (or some high schools) they are behind their peers and can’t actually do the work that a professor or teacher thinks they should, and then they wonder why the rules and evaluation criteria has changed.
I read the article, and your analysis of it, and I have to say, even before reading your perspective, I thought that these supposedly mature college students are basically whining. As far as I can see, they expect a clap on the back and a smile for just trying to do good work and are surprised when their mediocre assignments are judged as such.
ReplyDeleteIt's a problem I have seen in our class as well, students having been conditioned that effort is a factor in grading. As if how hard you tried makes up for how badly you did. It seems to me like a last resort argument meant to guilt people into looking the other way in their grades.
The only reason that this argument has worked for so long is that teachers cannot really identify a single way of grading quality of work. Effort is much simpler to categorize, and that is why it is such an easy target for students to pick at.
Isn't it just the truth that we need labels, numbers, terms to understand self in the larger context? I understand the importance of grades for most of our student population on a micro and macro level; however, at what point do we realize that the grades that are given and received are perceived by an individual student. It is not the most important factor and yet it is considered everything when it comes down to success in our current societal structure. The question I ponder constantly is how much does effort and work habits impact the outcome of a grade? I think it is important to take into account all aspects of learning. Some people don't need as much practice; those that do and find the will to work hard typically succeed. There is a fine line between intact smartness and the drive to learn, who can determine by a single grade which is more important? I wish to one day to find an answer, yet if it hasn't been solve yet, I doubt it will ever be. My goal as an educator is to give students a fair shot to develop and grow and learn from their successes and failures. Perseverance accounts for something, whininess doesn’t.
ReplyDeleteI'm with all of you. I think students have perpetuated an orientation towards schooling that shirks responsibility and self-development. I frustratedly desire to find a way of dealing with grades that coherently and functionally addresses these contradictions. And I believe that fundamentally the ideology and structure contradict.
ReplyDelete