Re: grades

Bob King (kingbx@HAMLET.UNCG.EDU)
Mon, 2 Sep 1996 14:55:35 -0400


On Mon, 2 Sep 1996, Jeffrey R Galin wrote:
> I end up using Foucault to fill the gaps where
> Gramsci's incomplete notes trap him in the utopian Marxist arguments of
> the "intellectual-moral bloc which can "make politically possible the
> intellectual progress of the mass."

Jeff, it's because of adjustments-for-circumstance, such as those you
outline above in relation to Gramsci's life experience, that I end up
reading mainly to glean metaphors or conceptualizations that I can use in
my own circumstances to make sense of things.

One of Foucault's conceptualizations that has done work for me is
"discursive practice" -- encompassing as it does a networked field which
includes rules, politics, values, actions, original ideas, transgressive
opportunities, and so on.

I think Marcy has given a pretty amazing outline of the "discursive
practice" of teaching which she has arrived at. A complex feat because it
involves many seemingly extraneous factors and calculations. Giving such
an account is very different from stating a "grading policy" for example,
and "doing the discursive practice" is also much more complex than
"teaching about Foucault and Gramsci!" Her story has sort of completed
this thread for me anyway.

Y'all have one narrative archive already going re: tales of writing
process. For me, Marcy's account of her "quantitative method" of grading
(which is imo ingenious in turning the usual meaning and intent of
'quantitative' on its head, or back against itself, using its power) would
for me be a good start on a similar archive re: grading practices.

Bob