"so worrying about quality and assessment is like worrying about grabbing
the pet bird when the house is about to collapse from a earth quake. It's
an interesting diversion which avoids having to deal with the hard
questions."
I reckon Tom's onto something there. Many educators are all too
complacent about the robustness of the institution. Grading (and so
many other practices that make up the system) is such a quaint and
outmoded practice that by hanging onto it so tenaciously it almost looks
as if we *aspire* to our future marginalization.
--Blacksmiths in reconstructed frontier villages
--Civil war battle re-enactments
--Museums filled with primitive farm implements
--Model T cars trotted out for parades twice a year
--High education
Do we really want to reside on that list? Do we want to become a site for
nostalgics to revisit for a fix of the Good Old Days?
The hard questions Tom refers to might include: How does institutional
education serve society? How does it serve students? Does it function as
a site of learning, a place to pursue curiosity, to acquire skills and
knowledge? Does it perform those functions in a way that society *of the
next century* (not the previous) will find valuable?
And if grades (etc) do not contribute to the future shape of the
university, accepting them as inevitable just because they've been a
habit for a few decades seems like a mighty shortsighted thing to do. We
really don't have any time to mull these things. We'll be museum pieces
before you can blink.
--Eric Crump