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Date:         Sun, 22 Nov 1992 15:19:17 -0500
From:         Nick.Carbone@WRITING.UMASS.EDU
Subject:      Gettinag a Reasonable C

Wing--
   It's nice to have an undergraduate's view of grades.  Part of the problem
for me as a teacher is what to do with a university grading system that
demands a letter grade when my belief is that grades are reductive, subject-
d
ive, and false indicators.  Part of the disgruntling I have comes from
the multiple audiences that grades go out to: students, colleagues, other
teachers ("You got a B in writing and you write like this?"), grad. schools,
employers...and on.
      What they picture a B meaning and what it meant may be different things.
The assumptions about what's behind a grade aren't the same.   One of the
ironies in my class, and many others I'd imagine, is that on the one hand
I want my students to come to some understanding of writing, of how well
their writing is going, of how're they're doing, and I want that understand-
ing to come independent of me, to come from their own sense of reading their
own work, or hearing their classmate's talk about it.  On the other,
I sign the grade sheet, set up the syllabus, etc.
     To work to undo some of that conflict I don't grade any paper at all.
Nor do grade at midterm--I give written evaluations, more descriptive than
evaluative for each essay, but only in response to a written evaluation
that each student does for themselves first.  I respond to what students
see as important.  Of course, I provide them with an evaluation guide--a
descriptive prompt that asks them to look at certain things--audience, what
they like best, what least, to describe the writing/revision of the piece,
what they would change and why, how they see the piece doing what they came
to want it to do.
     So we enter a dialogue on the paper.  They're final essay for the
year is to write a persuasive essay that argues for the grade they
deserve in the course.  I set in the syllabus a minimum guarantee--I guarantee
a C if all the work is done on time and no more than three classes are
missed, but I allow space in the seventh essay for students to argue why
that guarantee is not enough or should be changed.  I also let them
prioritize the writing--if journal writing helped them more, and became
more important to them in the course, then they can argue that their
journals should count for more than say their essays.
     Our final conference of the year is held during final exam week.  The
student and I meet to talk about their last essay, and to come to
a grade that we can both agree on.  I don't kid myself--I have more
power in the equation--in fact I remind of that--I remind them to take
that into account.
     If you or anyone is interested in the details of all this,
let me know and I can send you the relevant documents that my students
get from me on this.
     Placing this activity in the context of the thread on
arguing and reason, whether monologic or dialogic.  On one level,
the institutional, the activity is monologic--the school still gets
a grade sheet, the transcript still records a grade for employers and
grad. schools, but closer in, within the class, and allowing for the
unequal stature vis a vis institutional power between my students and me,
there is a dialogue, an exchange that is reasonable, mediative.  At least
my students know why they have the grade they do, what it meant to them
as learners, what it meant to me as a learner/teacher, and to what degree
they laid the rationale for the grade.
    The image I have in mind is one taken from drawings on perception.
You're asked to look at a zig zagged line up close, and of course you
can see a zig zag in it, just as me to student there is some degree of
dialogue and exchange, but if you pull back from the zig zag, the details
become blurred and line seems more and more straight, from that perspective,
the one held by grad. schools and employers perhaps, the grade appears as
a given, a monologic factoid.
      I hate grading is the first thing my students here from me on the subject.
I like to work to where they have the last word--or at least last words
that we can agree on.

nick.carbone@writing.umass.edu
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU