The Grading Game

Dear Students:

I don’t like grading papers.

I do enjoy reading them.  My wife and I enjoyed reading and proof-reading many of your papers Tuesday afternoon at I-Hop.  A former English teacher herself, she especially enjoyed some of the 9/11 narratives.  “These have a breathless quality,” she said. “And guess what happened next!” And then her designated-English-teacher husband had to come along and put a C on some of them.  I do not like grading papers - for at least three reasons. 

First, grading is a notoriously subjective business.  You can submerge your subjective choices as to what students ought to know, and how they ought to show they know it, in multiple-guess quizzes that you call “objective.” Or you can rate their essays A, B, C, &c.  Your choices, your values, prevail in either case.  All you can hope is that they are halfway decent choices and values.

More to the point, because grades are subjective they are also pretty much arbitrary.  I discovered in my first two years of college, back when ATM was an abbreviation for “atmosphere,” that my major professor was going to rate my work B, whether the submission was the typed result of considerable library research and thought (B+) or four handwritten pages of reflections on a pair of novels composed two hours before class (B-).  He had decided that my stuff was “B - Spelling errors lower grade.”  It saved him trouble, and, after I caught on, it saved me trouble.  But who wants to be branded Second Rate? 

And that brings up the worst thing about grading papers: how those ratings affect the students:   

Here’s one of my colleagues talking to his own students about grades:

Excerpts from: “Reflections on Subjective Grading” by Matthew J. Smith, Ph.D.

“Grades are symbols intended to communicate levels of accomplishment. As such, they are subject to the same process of interpretation that all symbols are, and thus often subject to ambiguity. What a “C” means to an instructor assigning that grade (e.g., “competent”) and what it means to a student receiving it (e.g., “failure”) may be substantially different….

“Please note that in terms of subjective grading, I am responsible for grading your submissions, not you as a person. Good people, people I happen to like, often receive grades on their submissions that do not match the quality of person they are…

“[Regarding effort]:  Some people work hard and still get D and F grades, and some folks put forth little effort and manage B grades. However, in my experience those who put forth less effort rarely achieve much distinction. Therefore, I encourage you to invest your best effort.”

…

Prof. Smith does his best to convince his students that a C is nothing to be ashamed of.  And it’s not.  In some circles it’s called “The Gentleman’s C,” like President Bush’s C average at Yale.  But, to tell you the truth, I can’t look back on that “Gentleman’s C” I merited for cruising through high school, without hearing my mom sneer the word “Mediocre.”

The worst thing about grading papers is surveying the class after handing them back and seeing some faces hurt, some frustrated, some disheartened.

If you feel that you’ve submitted your best work and received a rejection slip, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.  As Prof. Smith said, “I am responsible for grading your submissions, not you as a person.”       

Prof. Smith makes another point about grades: that you’re going to be on the receiving end of subjective evaluations by employers in whatever profession you enter.  Some of you already know what an Employee Review is like.  As a teacher, I am subject to peer review and student evaluations.  So your chance to evaluate me will come at the end of the semester.

I have already begun to task you with evaluating one another’s work in groups; asking you to put the best essay on top, &c. Another, related, group assignment will be to devise the objective and short-answer portion of the Mid-Term exam, October 10 & 12. 

It is best to believe that, the moment one begins to critique a fellow fallible mortal, the Creator of the Universe is sizing one up with one’s very own yardstick.  But judging others is an inevitable part of life.  If you’re registered to vote, you will eventually receive a summons to Jury Duty.

Your Designated English Teacher,

Tom McClellan