Grading

Reading books and reflecting on them have been slowed by the onerous professional duty of grading. Aside from the hopeless boredom of poring over examination papers, which are universally written in a style that repels attention, there is also the problem of criteria. Most schoolroom grading is ad hoc. Not only are there no criteria upon which teachers of the same subject have agreed; there is no institutional mechanism or opportunity, and even less will, for reaching an agreement. Unlike the sorting of apples or eggs, schoolroom grading is not a cooperative activity. Teachers sit alone with their examination papers, drumming their fingers in annoyance within the halo of a desk lamp at three in the morning. They are obliged to grade against a historical criterion, but over time they find themselves closing their eyes to errors and blemishes that they would have lowrated earlier in their careers. A student who earns an A from them after they have been teaching for two decades might have earned a C twenty years before.

The thing I hate most, though, is the uses to which my grades are put. Would-be employers demand a college transcript, or students pin a grade-point average to the top of their resumés, and my grade is read in comparison to other grades in other classes—even though, in the absence of agreed-upon criteria, such comparisons are vacuous. Against my will, I am forced to grade a student’s general academic promise. The pressure on professors to inflate grades, accordingly, is enormous. My C could keep a kid from getting into medical school. But isn’t it just possible that someone might have a genius for medicine and yet founder helplessly in literature or philosophy or history? What sense does it make to assume that the best candidates take home A’s in every subject? That is the widespread assumption, however. And should I then award an A to an otherwise intelligent and hardworking student who just doesn’t “get” literature?

Every semester I tell my students that my grading of them should be no different from a doctor’s diagnosis or a lawyer’s advice. It should be confidential. In the absence of public and cooperative standards, it can only be an assessment of our mutual success—mine in teaching them, theirs in learning what I have to teach. Because it is not that, however, they are discouraged from taking intellectual risks, trying their minds against an unfamiliar way of thinking. What is encouraged is sameness—straight A’s, students who confine themselves to the tried-and-true methods for earning A’s. As a consequence, there is no—repeat, no—intellectual distinction to be encountered in schoolrooms. There is only the continual repetition of familiar performances.

Is it any wonder that examination papers are so boring?