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The Curve doesn’t Kill People; People Confusing Grades with Personal Worth Kills People. | | |
originally By ScottThurman? - 26 Feb 2009 | |
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< | We’ve reached a stage in our academic lives where the vast majority of us are, for possibly the first time, working toward something other than yet another degree. Just like every stage before it, however, there remains a need to differentiate between the relative achievement of the student body. The necessity of achieving high grades in seeking employment does not seem much different than the route from high school to college, or that from undergrad to law school. The term achievement is intended to encompass not the internal level of understanding of a given subject, but rather the need for some manner in which to express this newfound competence. At this juncture it seems petty to suddenly quibble with a system that, judging from your current locale, you have apparently taken full advantage of. | >
> | We’ve reached a stage in our academic lives where the vast majority of us are, for possibly the first time, working toward something other than yet another degree. Just like every stage before it, however, there remains a need to differentiate between the relative achievement of the student body.. The necessity of achieving high grades in seeking employment does not seem much different than the route from high school to college, or that from undergrad to law school. The term achievement is intended to encompass not the internal level of understanding of a given subject, but rather the need for some manner in which to express this newfound competence. At this juncture it seems petty to suddenly quibble with a system that, judging from your current locale, you have apparently taken full advantage of.
- Not grammatical or comprehensible. Perhaps if you had tried to say it simply you'd have encountered an intellectual issue rather than a grammatical snare.
| | | Practical Imperfection
A lifetime of education broken down into numbers, percentages, and ranks can never stake a claim to telling the full story about an individual’s worth. A grade cannot reveal all that any individual student actually knows, can know, or can do. More arbitrarily, and more personally, grades correspond to a set of individual, if not controllable, characteristics: our capacities for memorization and oral and verbal retention, the speed with which our synapses make connections, our physical reactions to stress. This appears well and proper, as we long ago outgrew the need for everyone to “win” a medal or for spelling tests to have gold stars and exclamatory statements with appropriately animated punctuation. A grade in a law school class, after all, unequivocally says something about an individual’s academic abilities, whether this statement is imperfect or incomplete. While the medium for the expression of ability may be lacking, the student who can do the most within this possibly inadequate framework expresses a great deal about his or her ability to adapt. For instance, the last minute cramming of the “natural test taker” may show an aptitude for figuring out that the quickest distance between law school and a firm job is a straight line. | | | Given our current role as devoted fulltime students, much of what we are working towards achieving is to some degree wrapped up in these grades we receive. Abolishing the grading system or flattening the curve would likely force students to find other ways to individualize themselves. Students’ legal education would risk becoming overwhelmed with volunteering, resume filler, and empty activities as they sought a means to separate themselves from their peers. As it stands, there are a limited number of jobs students normally seek, and there exists a rational desire for both sides of the equation to distinguish between candidates.
In terms of sheer academic development, it is certainly true that other forms of grading and other forms of testing may allow for better feedback, and ultimately academic growth. I find it hard to believe, however, that this prospect actually arouses much interest in the average law student, however grand it may at first appear. Separate from pure academic learning, as long as average law students remain career driven realists without need or want for extra bullshit, and employers remain concerned above all else with covering their bottom line: the curve retains its utility.
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- I think the edit sacrifices clarity in order to avoid issues raised by the much more unambiguous first draft. You do feel free, on the other hand, to depart from the original draft by hortatory engagement with the reader. It's not clear why you think exhortation is reliable: my own experience, as you will have noticed, is that there is no point whatever in exhorting law students to consult their psychic and intellectual interests by demanding the end of grades.
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