EAKIN MARK E ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: While I do not grade on a curve, I feel that if reasons exist,it is more
: valid to adjust atypical grades distributions than not to adjust them.
: My reason for not grading on a curve is more for class harmony. Grading on
: a curve often means taking points away from some students while adding to
: others. I noticed that a class can suddenly become hostile if some
: students are treated better than others. This hostile environment can be
: detrimental to a class's performance also.
To put it even more bluntly, grading "on a curve" really means
establishing a budget of grade points and then distributing that budget
among the students, which means that the grade a particular student gets
depends not only on the distribution decisions but on the size of the
budget. Where on earth does this concept of a budget come from? It
implies at least two questionable, to say the least, underlying assumptions:
1) That the "total" of whatever it is that grades are supposed to measure
is a constant depending only on class size.
2) That it's possible to evaluate the collective performance of a group
on a task *before* they've performed that task.
The purpose of a budget is to make it possible to allocate limited
resources. Since when is academic performance a limited resource, or
even any sort of resource subject to allocation? What on earth does it
mean to say to a student "your performance would be an A, but that would
put me over budget so I can only give you a B" or "your performance would
be a D, but I've got some extra grade points left over so I can give you
a C"?
The disharmony you talk about is really the result of pitting students
against each other in such a way that each student's success depends on
other students' failure. Why would someone want to do this? If we're
not talking about allocating an inherently scarce resource, the only
reason I can think of is a deliberate desire to create disharmony in
order to use "divide and conquer" to prevent collective action. If the
students resent each other, they won't band together and hatch a plot to
murder the instructor, but they also won't band together and help each
other learn (in the Real World, sharing your knowledge with someone
doesn't "drain" you of knowledge; in fact, it often increases your store
of knowledge).
