Last month I had the pleasure of representing students in a College Curriculum Council meeting where administrators, faculty, staff and other students discussed the addition of pluses and minuses to Brown's grading system. Some say the UCS representatives, of which I was one, left the meeting with a victory because the Council decided to postpone their vote. Yet this success is only transitory. Every student who enjoys the academic freedom Brown provides should be against the additions to the grading policy.
The CCC tells us that the vast majority of faculty and graduate students favors the change. Proponents argue that it will help remedy grade inflation, offer finer and more accurate academic assessment, and improve the external competitiveness of Brown students in both the job market and graduate school application process. While these are all reasonable concerns, the addition of plus/minus grading does little to solve them; in fact, it threatens the very viability of Brown's Open Curriculum.
As far as grade inflation is concerned, the CCC reported in 2003 that it "saw no substantial reason to believe that changing to a plus/minus system would have a major effect on grade inflation." Therefore, that problem can be set aside as a separate one. Second, grades will forever be subjective and prone to inaccuracy; more gradation will only prompt more grade disputes, not greater precision. It is possible, as Brown's history reveals, to demostrate students' academic accomplishments without placing primary emphasis on detailed grades. It is suspect whether Brown students have suffered upon graduation because of an absence of plus/minus undergraduate grading. Changing Brown's grading policy based on these unsupported hypotheses, whether to mirror our peers or to accommodate the job market and graduate schools, would sacrifice our academic mission to a vapid careerist one. It seems, then, that most arguments supporting the changes are misguided.
Although it is doubtful that the proposed curriculum changes will produce the aforementioned positive results, undoubtedly they will produce significant detrimental consequences. The primary purpose of undergraduate education at Brown is the intellectual and personal development of the student. The goal of the University must be the establishment of an environment in which these processes are inseparable, in which the advancement of one fosters the growth of the other. Our students are properly motivated; Brown University does not need to use grades as an inducement to study. Such measures are inconsistent with Brown's academic philosophy. The new system of pluses and minuses would increase the overall emphasis on grading for both professors and students while removing emphasis on personal development as the true focus of our education. This will occur as students and professors become concerned about gradations, one's place within them, less room for error, and greater emphasis on margins and individual assessments.
Should the CCC approve the addition of plus/minus grading, many of us, through no fault of our own, would succumb to greater pressures of grading competition. Currently, from anecdotal evidence, Brown generally does not suffer from a high-pressure competitive culture approaching those of our peer schools. Brown's New Curriculum fosters a genuine passion for learning for learning's sake. Grading changes will force Brown to regress into a disturbingly familiar system, the stifling system we mastered in high school but were so eager to leave behind as we crossed through the Van Wickle Gates. We will cut corners to ratchet up our grades, and push ourselves more for grade points and less for ourselves. Our fellow students will do the same, and we will adapt to the culture of grading frenzy and GPA adulation that pervades other institutions. Brown's culture will not bear a stressful, de facto emphasis on grading and competition.
Yes, under the proposed changes, the philosophy of the Brown Curriculum will remain intact as students will continue to take an active role in their education, but it will no longer place the same emphasis on learning or possess the robust commitment to the development of the individual student. We do not need plus/minus grades to spur competition and undermine our passion for intellectual endeavor.
Despite the desire of the faculty and graduate students, plus/minus grading is the wrong direction for the University. It is the wrong direction because it is wrong for students. It is a step toward competitiveness and the dampening - not the emboldening - of the Brown Curriculum. It is a step backwards that we mustn't take.
As an alternative to the proposed changes, I argue that we should swing our grading policy in the opposite direction. We should consider adopting a model similar to that of Yale Law School. There they have three gradations: Honors, Pass and Low Pass, with honors being near impossible to receive. This policy would remove the implications of the letters we currently use - letters that unfortunately hark back to our high school years. What we have now - no pluses and minuses, no Ds, and NCs not on our external transcript - was merely a half-measure. The architects of the New Curriculum had to compromise to achieve faculty acceptance. We've had forty years of success - let's take the next step.
Zachary Townsend '08 just wants to pretend he goes to Yale Law.
