There's a Word for That!

I just attended an hour-long seminar on student-centered teaching at my university. It was actually pretty good -- good enough to replace a little of my cynicism with optimism, because I found that some of my colleagues not only care about their students learning, but are really thinking and working hard to figure out how to help them learn. So it was good.

Then, as I was getting up to leave, I heard a colleague say, "I disagree with him [the presenter] about grades. No matter how much a student knows, an 'A' means 'exceptional,' so you can't have everyone getting A's." This is the MIB version of grading -- you're looking for the best of the best of the best (sir!). In other words, grades must, above all else, accomplish a sorting of students -- ideally, based on what they've learned, but a sorting there must be.

And certainly a lot of the system works that way. We are sorted into piles for entrance to graduate schools, professional schools, jobs, and so forth. But I've never been comfortable with doing the sorting as part of my teaching. I always thought, and still think, that my job is to help students learn, and not to sort them. I actually feel quite strongly about this, but until today I didn't know quite why I felt it was such a moral issue.

It came to me as I was processing that comment from my colleague. When you sort, you are emphasizing differences. When you grade to sort, you may care about learning, but you care much more about differences in learning.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone” (pp. 109–110).

President Ezra Taft Benson quoted this line in his famous discourse about the dangers of pride. He said, "The proud make every man their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents, or any other worldly measuring device against others."

And, I would add, grading as sorting does nothing more than encourage, play into, and make possible this pride. By taking away the focus from the knowledge students have gained -- and putting it on how much more knowledge they have than their fellow travelers, we are putting the focus squarely on pride.

As President Benson said, "Pride is the universal sin, the great vice. Yes, pride is the universal sin, the great vice."

Now it's possible that people could go through the grading-as-sorting process and remain unaffected. After all, you don't have to be prideful even if you are sorted. But it's an invitation, and it's certainly a message about what we find important. And to be honest, I can't think of a single advantage to the grading-as-sorting system, and certainly nothing that makes it worth sending the message that what's most important about learning is where you stand in relation to others.

That may be the nature of the fallen world, and I may have to be in it, but I sure as heck don't have to be of it.