Get Herald RSSAt yesterday's meeting of the College Curriculum Council, Luther Spoehr, lecturer in education and vice chair of the CCC, said the faculty must, through any means, find out why the addition of pluses and minuses to the University's grading system "is such a big issue" for many students. In response, CCC member Lynne deBenedette, senior lecturer in Slavic languages, made a valid observation: many students see the issue of pluses and minuses as tied to the open curriculum in a way that faculty don't seem to.
Many students will try to convince faculty of this point at the two March forums scheduled by the CCC to discuss pluses and minuses. We believe, however, that professors questioning the significance of Brown's grading system need only drop by the Rockefeller Library or the Sciences Library on a Friday evening - there won't be many students around.
This is not because Brown students aren't diligent; we just aren't, in general, transcript- or career-obsessed, and the New Curriculum makes a hyper-competitive academic atmosphere impossible. Travel to the libraries at the University of Chicago or Johns Hopkins University, schools that have stronger pre-professional cultures, and you would probably be more likely to find pallid, sun-deprived undergraduates hunched over books on a Friday evening.
So what does the ABC/NC grading system have to do with this?
Not only is the current system in fact part of the New Curriculum - it was ushered in with the other 1969 reforms collectively known by that name - but it also helps achieve the same ends as the lack of a core curriculum and the policy of not displaying NC's on transcripts. Especially given that C's accounted for less than 5 percent of grades awarded last year, the ABC/NC grading system, in the spirit of the New Curriculum, de-emphasizes the importance of a rigid system of evaluation in learning. Students are more likely to expand their horizons and take a course they might not otherwise because they know hard work will probably earn them an A or a B, regardless of their background in the subject matter.
The ABC/NC grading system means there is less anxiety in the weeks after exams when students are waiting for the registrar to post their grades. It also means that students are more likely to help each other and less likely to have a breakdown over a few points on an exam - though the paradox is that many Brown students will work just as hard. The imprecision of the current system has definite pressure-reducing effects, and, in the end, faculty members will have to decide if they want to give that up in return for heightened clarity.
