{"id":1199,"date":"2005-06-13T09:56:53","date_gmt":"2005-06-13T13:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/06\/13\/but-i-worked-really-hard\/"},"modified":"2005-06-13T09:56:53","modified_gmt":"2005-06-13T13:56:53","slug":"but-i-worked-really-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/06\/13\/but-i-worked-really-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"But I worked really hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Alicia Shepard writes about being a teacher in an era of grade inflation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

John Watson, who teaches journalism ethics and communications law at
\nAmerican, has noticed another phenomenon: Many students, he says,
\nbelieve that simply working hard — though not necessarily doing
\nexcellent work — entitles them to an A. “I can’t tell you how many
\ntimes I’ve heard a student dispute a grade, not on the basis of
\nin-class performance,” says Watson, “but on the basis of how hard they
\ntried. I appreciate the effort, and it always produces positive
\nresults, but not always the exact results the student wants. We all
\nhave different levels of talent.”<\/p>\n

It’s a concept that many
\nstudents (and their parents) have a hard time grasping. Working hard,
\nespecially the night before a test or a paper due date, does not
\nnecessarily produce good grades.<\/p>\n

“At the age of 50, if I work
\nextremely hard, I can run a mile in eight minutes,” says Watson. “I
\nhave students who can jog through a mile in seven minutes and barely
\nsweat. They will always finish before me and that’s not fair. Or is it?”\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This resonates.  I can’t tell you how often students come to me
\nto express disappointment with a grade, saying that they worked really
\nhard.  I offer to find out the number of hours everyone in the
\nclass worked and assign grades based on who spent the greatest number
\nof hours.  Generally, they look puzzled as to why we might do it
\nthat way.  But it’s the same as if I give credit for “effort.”\n<\/p>\n

I’m diappointed to say that I think my average grade works out to
\nbeing between a B+ and B, which I think is high.  But since the
\nmean grade at Harvard College is 3.4 (where a B+ is a 3.3), I’m still
\nsomewhat tough for this milieu.  I’d like to be tougher, but I’m
\nnot really in charge of the grading standard.\n<\/p>\n

\n

And then there’s consumerism, he says. Pure and simple, tuition at a
\nprivate college runs, on average, nearly $28,000 a year. If parents pay
\nthat much, they expect nothing less than A’s in return. “Therefore, if
\nthe teacher gives you a B, that’s not acceptable,” says Levine,
\n“because the teacher works for you. I expect A’s, and if I’m getting
\nB’s, I’m not getting my money’s worth.”<\/p>\n

Rojstaczer agrees: “We’ve
\nmade a transition where attending college is no longer a privilege and
\nan honor; instead college is a consumer product. One of the negative
\naspects of this transition is that the role of a college-level teacher
\nhas been transformed into that of a service employee.”<\/p>\n

Levine
\nargues that we “service employees” are doing students a disservice if
\nwe cave in to the demand for top grades. “One of the things an
\neducation should do is let you know what you do well in and what you
\ndon’t,” he says. “If everybody gets high grades, you don’t learn that.”\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I hate having to tell students that their $28,000 buys them a right
\nto sit in a class and be taught by the people who know the most about
\nwhat they are teaching of anyone in the world.  But nothing more
\nthan that.\n<\/p>\n

Finally, I haven’t been able to find an effective way to tell
\nstudents that failing to get an A does not mean they did anything
\n“wrong.”  They want to know what they lack, and now that I think
\nabout it, my grading comments have often focused on what their papers
\nlacked.  But a non-A grade does not mean one has done wrong, but
\nrather that one’s work was not of the highest quality.  Any grade
\nis like a movie review, in a sense.  It’s (or should be) an
\nindicator of how a particular paper measures up to a standard of
\nideals, and if the student comes close to those standards, s\/he should
\nget an A.  Few students get to this standard.  Which is all
\nright.  Some students are Mozarts, but many, many more are
\nSalieris.\n<\/p>\n

And lest one think that our standards are capricious whim, they are
\nnot.  Most of the grad students and professors I know work very
\nhard, talking with colleagues and teaching staffs and thinking on the
\nmatter, to establish some sort of grading standard.  I’ve spent a
\nlot of time in teaching staff meetings talking about what should get
\nwhat grades.  We take this seriously, and many of us want to be
\nrigorous, because we want the best for our students.  We want them
\nto work hard at thinking and writing, even if the grade doesn’t account
\nfor that, because we want them to learn habits that will allow them to
\ndo the best they can do.\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alicia Shepard writes about being a teacher in an era of grade inflation. John Watson, who teaches journalism ethics and communications law at American, has noticed another phenomenon: Many students, he says, believe that simply working hard — though not necessarily doing excellent work — entitles them to an A. “I can’t tell you how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ivorytower"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-jl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}