In Defense of Grading

I have to say I found the Elbow article a bit melodramatic. As one of those who has been "conditioned or even addicted to ranking over the years" (Elbow 6), I must say that I am rather skeptical of his overblown rhetoric. I have managed, despite the fierce cruelty and injustice of this "crude, oversimple way of representing judgment," to develop and succeed within the framework that it provides. I have neither compromised my own integrity for the sake of a grade nor suffered an ego crisis as the result of a sub-par "mark." And I have found that, despite the apparent inability of evaluators to agree upon the quality of a paper outside of small subsets, I have generally received "fair grades" by my own lights.

Despite some of the theoretical problems that attend the process of grading, I see no real reason that a "crude, black mark" is necessarily a bad thing -- so long as it is accompanied by the type of "evaluation" that Elbow emphasizes. Actually, and it feels strange to say this as one who is eminently unpractical, I think it is foolish to shield and protect students from "judgment" and "comparison." They will be both judged and compared -- particularly when they graduate and enter a world that is structured upon "pecking orders," and controlling hierarchies. Unpleasant as it may be to consider, this is the world in which we live. Do we really want to shelter students from something they will face in their professional lives? Might such protection not just make it more difficult to adjust later on?

Ultimately, I think one can grade "fairly" by the standards that he or she provides. The exercise we did for this week -- designing an evaluation rubric -- gives me confidence that we can arrive at fair grades by the criteria we provide. Whether or not these criteria will be adopted across the academic spectrum by all teachers is not my concern. I hope only to be fair by the standards that I establish. Hopefully, beyond all the logistical confusion, my classes will prove useful to students -- and not too traumatic.