Re: grades

Kenneth Robert Wright (kright@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU)
Thu, 22 Aug 1996 22:17:47 -0700

I think that what you point out, Linda, is very important: students need
grades because society requires that they be judged by those grades. I
am against grading, but I always give grades because I don't feel it's
right to place my powerless students in the position of bucking a
powerful societal norm. In fact, IMHO, I question the ethics of forcing a
change in grading practices by way of our students. I fear that we will
harm many of them in terms of their desires before we convince the
academy or society to abandon grading. We should start at the
academy/societal end first.

Kenneth R Wright
kright@oregon.uoregon.edu

On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Linda Driskill wrote:

> Although grades may be odious to some of us, students rely on them to
> decide whether to drop courses and at our university a professor who does
> not give students reasonable feedback about how they are doing in the
> course before the drop deadline is considered to be negligent. Indeed, one
> young woman threatened to sue because a professor had chosen not to give
> grades and she had not dropped a course in which she was a making a grade
> that would not help her get into medical school. This is a somewhat
> different twist on the usual positions attributed to students.
>