Low-Grade
A new “guide” to getting grades needs some guidance counseling.
By Ben Adler
Wednesday September 13, 2006
“Don’t let some little voice in your head (or your friend’s head) tell you that only geeks and nerds care about grades.” Lynne F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman, authors of Professors’ Guide to Getting Good Grades in College, solemnly warn their readers in the new book’s first chapter. Unfortunately their whole premise is backwards: They seem to think that too many students spend too little time openly obsessing over grades, when in fact, the opposite is true.
One need only peruse the thick-necked multitudes of any top undergraduate business school or economics department to see that the focus on statistical score-keeping is hardly a condition that only afflicts nerds. If only nerds cared about grades, academia would be a much healthier place, where the rest of us could focus on what college is really supposed to be for (besides drinking)—education.
It’s a shame that two professors— ostensibly professional educators, not grade-giving automatons—subscribe to the notion that good grades and the tangible benefits they bring are the primary reason students ought to be taking their school work seriously in the first place. The advice these authors proffer is not anti-education, per se; “tips” for getting good grades included in this book, from using academic databases for research to outlining essays before writing, editing, and revising, are good advice for approaching academic work even if you’re taking a class pass/fail. But if Jacobs and Hyman really think getting good grades is so important, why don’t they offer practical advice like “only take classes in subjects you’re good at” or, “If you have trouble getting up in the morning, don’t take a class that meets before noon, no matter how interesting the topic, because some professors will dock your grade for lateness.”
Before even getting into the advice, Jacobs and Hyman feel the need to prove the validity of their purpose through a series of attacks of anti-grade-grubbing straw men. In their list of “common myths,” the authors completely misunderstand the contours of student life:
Myth #1: “It’s bad to be a grade grubber.” Students don’t subscribe to any such myth. Plenty of students are grade grubbers, like the 20 students in my freshman year section of Poli Sci 001, who earnestly, and repeatedly, inquired of the TA if it was “okay” that they didn’t complete an optional assignment.
“Myth #2: Why Try to Get Good Grades? All I Need Is That Piece of Paper.” Here Jacobs and Hyman deploy more irrelevant nativism and circular logic than Pat Buchanan himself. Watch out for “highly skilled workers in places like India to which jobs can be outsourced” if your grades aren’t high enough. This is inane. Your job may or may not move to Bangalore for economic structural reasons, but not because you got a B instead of an A in Accounting 101. The jobs move overseas because it’s cheaper to pay people there, and any individual’s higher grades will do nothing to change that.
Now for your circular logic: “Just aiming for the diploma will take you out of the running for internships, merit-based scholarships, and honors that could dress up your resume.” Well, sure. But many progressives believe that financial aid should be based entirely on need. (Merit-based scholarships skew wealthy and worsen educational inequality.) It’s true that there are fellowships and honors that do not even consider applicants below a certain GPA, but those too are a malignant force in education because they do not take into account the variation in competitiveness between different schools, different departments and different courses. So, Jacobs and Hyman encourage you to obsess over grades out of obeisance to an unfair and overly simplistic reward structure, rather than challenging this system. As for internships, any employer worth her salt knows that they should be granted on the basis of a holistic assessment of an applicant’s potential, of which GPA is, at most, a minor part. As someone who collected his fair share of competitive internships despite mediocre grades, and now hires interns on the basis of their cover letter, resume, interview and relevant course work without even looking at GPA, I can assure any nervous college student that daring to take that course with the notoriously steep curve will not be the end of your career.
Anyway, why must sensible advice on how to master college-level work be framed according to how it can increase an individual’s future earning potential? Are Hyman and Jacobs implying that students shouldn’t bother to outline an essay for a class they take pass/fail because there would be no punishment for turning in C level work?
This book is premised on a complete misdiagnosis of a major problem facing education in America. That problem is not a wanton disregard for the importance of getting A’s or a lack of obsession with the way one’s transcript will affect one’s future job prospects—it is precisely the opposite. As the steady shift towards pre-professional undergraduate majors continues, what we are seeing is actually an increase in the unhealthy attitude that college education is simply an investment in future earnings, rather than an end unto itself.
There is another educational model. For high school, I chose to attend St. Ann’s, a progressive New York City private school with no grades, and I have long since become accustomed to the startled expressions on the faces of my peers from high schools in upscale American suburbs. “Really, no grades? No class rank?” These were always the first words out of friends’ mouths when I described my high school. Among the problems they assumed a grade-less school would be plagued by were students not having any incentive to do schoolwork, and an inability to calculate your worth as a human being without a GPA to guide you. And then, of course comes the question Hyman and Jacobs would surely point to: “How do you get into college?”
Quite easily, as it turns out. Colleges have by and large found that St. Ann’s students excel, despite their lack of ingrained grade-obsession. How can this be so? Because rather than Jacobs and Hyman’s method of inculcating a commitment to work out of fear, St. Ann’s students develop a desire to learn for its own sake. Stimulating and challenging classes, coupled with teachers’ reports that detail the specific strengths and weaknesses of your performance allow students to enjoy learning and self-expression as their own reward. Written evaluations convey the nuances of a student’s strengths and weaknesses better than a grade ever can. After all, what is the precise grade for “Ben’s written work is fluid and articulate, but lacks sufficient research and evidence”? (Just to choose a random example.) And that’s for a critical essay, which is actually easier to grade than a poem or a painting.
Granted, the St. Ann’s model cannot in its entirety be spread far and wide. St. Ann’s students are disproportionately well-off and are only admitted if they score highly on an IQ test or demonstrate an artistic talent. But many of the college students Jacobs and Hyman are writing for meet these same qualifications. And if elimination of grades is not a feasible goal for American secondary and higher education, some steps in the direction of emphasizing learning for its own sake rather than artificial competition (eliminating honors and awards and class rankings) should be possible anywhere.
Getting an education and grade-grubbing are not mutually exclusive, but they aren’t necessarily mutually reinforcing either. It’s too bad that some professors don’t expect students to want to do their best in college for the right reasons.
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Fantastic piece. I’ve been looking into “alternative” K-12 schools, such as the exemplary Albany Free School. I’ll definitely have to check St. Ann’s out.
— Liberaltarian - Sep 19, 04:02 PM - #I find myself and many of my colleagues working for a grade. The problem with this, as you point out, is that students are not engaged in the learning process. Students are memorizing material instead of learning it. Students understand that this works sufficiently enough to attain a proficient mark. If you were to ask these students one week later material directly from a test that they just recently took; I suspect that they would be, for the most part, dumbfounded. Thanks for your words Ben.
— Joshua - Oct 16, 01:48 PM - #