Mike Scoles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > An excellent description of grade inflation and what is wrong > with it appeared in the April 6 Chronicle. Here is a link. > > http://chronicle.merit.edu/free/v47/i30/30b02401.htm
I agree that this essay by Harvard Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield is worth reading. However it should be noted that evidence against Prof. Mansfield's most controversial speculation has since been presented by Harvard Professor of Computer Science and Dean Harry R. Lewis: http://www.harvardmagazine.com/archive/01ja/ja01_dept_letters.html Mansfield wrote: Grade inflation has resulted from the emphasis in American education on the notion of self-esteem. According to that therapeutic notion, the purpose of education is to make students feel capable and empowered. So to grade them, or to grade them strictly, is cruel and dehumanizing.... At colleges, self-esteem often goes hand in hand with multiculturalism or sensitivity to people of diverse races and ethnicities -- meaning that professors must avoid offending the identities (still another name for self-esteem) of victimized groups.... [W]hen grade inflation got started, in the late 60's and early 70's, white professors, imbibing the spirit of affirmative action, stopped giving low or average grades to black students and, to justify or conceal it, stopped giving those grades to white students as well. Lewis responded: As early as 1894, a special "Committee on Raising the Standard" complained that "in the present practice Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily,--Grade A for work of no very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity."... [C]ontrary to Mansfield's claim that grade inflation resulted from the admission of significant numbers of black students starting around 1970, the 15-year period starting in 1970 was actually a period of no increase in grades--indeed, the only such period of that length in the data all the way back to 1921. --Charles Charles S. Harris, PhD [EMAIL PROTECTED] webmaster, The Nurture Assumption home page: http://home.att.net/~xchar/tna/ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
