Allow me, gentle reader, to tell you a brief story. It happened at Yale, where I was an MA student and first-time TA in a large lecture class. My fellow TA and I had just graded and returned 100 midterms when one of my students approached me. He radiated a quiet fury and might have been a little intimidating were he not wearing flip-flops. (It was February.)
He half-strutted, half-waddled up to me in a comically percussive manner, like a Western gunslinger with maracas for shoes, and thrust a blue exercise book under my nose.
"You gave me a C," he growled.
"Yes I did," I agreed in as even a tone as I could manage.
"But I studied all weekend for this exam!"
"Ye-eees?"
"So I don't understand why you gave me a C."
I thought about pointing out that understanding things didn't appear to be one of his stronger suits, but thought better of it. Someone who wore flip-flops in the filthy street-slush that passes for snow in New Haven evidently was of solid physical stock. "Look," I said, with that kindly authority with which we Englishmen are born. "Let's sit down and go through the exam. I'll show you how I graded each question and you can argue your case if you think I was unfair."
"No, s'ok," he muttered, before slinking off, flip-flops beating a somber tattoo out of the lecture hall and down the corridor.
Alas, my point here is not about the atmospheric dimensions of footwear choice in our post-Havaiana age, although I suspect someone in a cultural studies department somewhere is writing a whole dissertation on the topic. What concerns me is that this young man seemed genuinely to feel that studying material for "an entire weekend" before an exam entitled him to a good grade. And let me tell you this: at Brown he would have got at least a B, no questions asked. When a student knows he or she can turn in a piece of work that shows little engagement with anything other than Wikipedia and a cup of coffee and receive a B at the very worst, what motivation is there to try any harder?
Recently the editorial board of this esteemed publication came out against action on grade inflation ("Editorial: If it ain't broke, don't fix it," Oct. 18). As it happens, I agree with the authors that the dread Princeton's "expectation" that no more than 35 percent of any class should receive top grades isn't an ideal approach. Students deserve good grades for different reasons and flexibility is important.
Take a section with three students — don't laugh, I've taught one myself. Imagine that one student is diligent in undertaking original research, another an innovative thinker and still another a brilliant writer. Each exemplifies the highest standards of student work: Who is to say that one should be penalized because it would look wrong to give everyone an A?
To say, however, that "[g]rade inflation is simply an indication that students are meeting and exceeding professors' expectations" is nonsense. Academic teachers tend to be observant (if poorly-dressed) types. If students constantly were exceeding expectations, those expectations would change over time. Are we being asked to believe that every successive class of students produces better work than its predecessor?
Unlike, say, "Glee," the broad appeal of the status quo isn't hard to grasp. Students are safe knowing that they'll seldom have to demonstrate much ingenuity to get their A or — heaven forbid! — their B (which usually gets converted into an S in any case). Parents expect that their increasingly exorbitant outlays won't come back to bite them in the form of an under-performing child. Teachers can "give ‘em an A, send ‘em away," and get back to their own absurd workloads as researchers, writers and administrators. In this age of budget-slashing, any move to buck the trend at a personal or departmental level would be dangerous: As recent events at Middlesex University in the UK and the University of Nevada at Reno attest, the department that alienates its "customers" puts its own future in jeopardy.
The editorial concludes that there is "absolutely no reason to do anything radical." Respectfully — and I mean that — I disagree. Isn't Brown supposed to be the radical of the Ivy League? The current mess of a grading system is like a restaurant with a binder-length menu of mediocre dishes. Either Brown should take the letter system seriously, bringing in pluses and minuses and allowing for more than just As and Bs, or it should adopt the S/NC system completely.
Or — bear with me — we could honor the New Curriculum and do away with grades altogether. If Brown's application system is so faultlessly selective, why not remove the temptation to pick and choose cynically among classes and allow students to follow their noses? As it is, the current system is both a sop to those fixated on law school applications and an invitation to follow one's intellectual curiosity. I fear that it trips students up on both tracks, regardless of footwear.
Stephen Wicken GS, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, favors boat shoes year-round. He can be reached at stephen_wicken@brown.edu.
