On Wed, 22 Dec 1999, Peter Westfall wrote:
>
> Your comment implies that the goal of the system should be to rank, to assign
> labels to people, essentially to weed - a kind of social Darwinism. This is
> where Deming would disagree - he would say that the goal is to educate people
> for their own good and for the good of society. I think he would have said that
> the use of grading to do this is lazy, inefficient, and ultimately destructive.
> It could be done instead by more careful admissions processes, advising, and so
> on. He also would have said that this is not going to be easy, much like
> learning to play the piano!
While more careful admissions processes would certainly limit the
variability in students, and therefor grading, how is it any different
from grading? If you are going to be more careful with admissions you
need a ranking system of some sort to determine who will succeed and who
will fail. This is just puts the Social Darwinism issue at a different
stage of the process.
In Deming's world of industrial quality control no raw materials entered
the system unless they were of acceptably, and uniformly, high quality.
If we were to admit only the top 10% or so of students to colleges we
might be in a situation where we had uniform raw materials.
But, in a democratic society this is seen as terribly undemocratic.
Everyone should get a chance (equal opportunity). This is fine by me, the
world is full of late bloomers, who wouldn't make the initial cut if the
bar was set to high, and lazy, but very bright individuals who fail to
accomplish much of anything but would "succeed" in an ungraded system. In
either of these cases the admissions process would have failed. So, one
reason for grading and ranking students is to refine the admissions
process as additional information is gathered about the individual.
While educating people is certainly about improving the individuals and
society as a whole, the belief that we can homogonize the outcome of
education ignores the massive variability of the raw materials. Some
folks just do not have the same potential as others. Grading, or other
forms of ranking, simply recogizes these difference. I am happy to
support the idea of encouraging and educating everyone to their fullest
potential. But, I want to make sure that the people designing bridges or
performing surgery are the best available for those tasks. And, that
doesn't happen without some sort of a ranking system in place.
Grading may not be perfect, and I am perfectly willing to support
improvement of grading, but it is the best system we have.
Michael
>
> Thanks for the continuing discussion!
>
> Peter
>
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*******************************************************************
Michael M. Granaas
Associate Professor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology
University of South Dakota Phone: (605) 677-5295
Vermillion, SD 57069 FAX: (605) 677-6604
*******************************************************************
All views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of the University of South Dakota, or the South
Dakota Board of Regents.
