Keith Hudson wrote:
>
> Lawry,
>
> You're lucky that grade creep ('grade inflation' over here) has not
> affected students in the *whole* country as it has affected us here because
> of centralised control of our university entrance system and the wish to
> show that governmental policy is producing better educational results from
> year to year.
[snip]
I'm not sure grade inflation is good, but I am also not
at all sure that a rigorous grading system would be
good.
Who will grade the grading system in terms of alternatives
other than grading?
And, even if a grading system is good for some, who will
shuttle those for whom something else is good to the
alternative that would be good for them?
--
There is a form of cultural self-formation (AKA education)
which is alien to grading: the leisured pursuit
of mutual interests by ones who have much experience and
ones who seek to gain experience -- for instance, perhaps, young
Alexander and Aristotle. Grading kills dialog. Grading
kills free imaginative elaboration -- at least until the
day comes when one passes the last exam and at last
becomes a free person (if one still has a soul left
to be able to *use* and even *enjoy* freedom!).
When I was about 25, I dropped out of a PhD program
in philosophy because I could no longer do the alienated
labor of reading assigned books and writing assigned
papers, etc. One of my former teachers at Yale,
John Wild, in writing a recommendation for me to seek
paid labor work in the private sector, wrote as a
personal comment to me that he was very sad to see that
I would not be able to complete my PhD, because, once
I got it, he wrote, I would be: "a free man". I just could
not hold my breath long enough. I just could not produce
the meaningless-to-me
products of alienated labor to get over the last
hurdle. I was not good enough. I was road kill on the
education credentialling superhighway.
Prof. Wild was right: I have never been a free man. And here's
a piece of the irony: At the time, my self-opinion, like
Freire's illiterate Brazilian peasants, was so low, that I never had
thought to ask Prof. Wild if he could help me become
a free man -- I just presumed that because I wasn't
doiiung well at doing the alienated labor, I wasn't
any good and there was no hope (I did not
ahve parents who could have helped my
self-image and self-understanding). I will never know
if there was a hope which I, like Kafka's man who
waits before the entrance to the Law, never even had
the wits to try.... (Learn from my mistakes.)
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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