Word: grading
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...week ago when the Faculty adopted Dean Elder's proposals to reduce course requirements in graduate study. The conflict will recur, for the feeling grows that Harvard's educational methods are unimaginative and old-fashioned, that some or even many students are retarded by the complex of exams, papers, grade-sheets, and course requirements...
...other defense upholds the importance and validity of grades, as they are. Dean Leighton says, "You must have some measure of academic performance," and he believes that grades are perfectly suitable. Showing grade curves which correlate with scores on Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Interpretations of this sort do not go unquestioned, however, for John U. Monro '34, director of Financial Aid, argues that while the percentage of students on Dean's List has risen over the years, it has not kept pace with the concurrent rise in SAT scores...
...these statistics actually reflect is the quality of prediction afforded by SAT scores, in terms of later grades. They say nothing about what a grade is intended to measure, or how consistently it measures even that unknown...
...belief that grades must be retained rests upon more than the fear that without them there would be no criteria for awarding fellowships or admitting students to graduate schools. More important is the apprehension that without a recurrent check in the form of grade-sheets there would be no impulse for students to do any work at all, and the structure of Harvard education would come tumbling down...
European students may survive without frequent grading but some feel that the different cultural background of the American makes this impractical. As Monro notes, "people have an awful time shedding their grade consciousness when they get here, after having it through their earlier schooling in the form of report cards, achievement tests, vocational tests, scholarship tests, and College Boards." He points to some high schools where competition for college admission is intense and observes, "This is where the gradefactories really begin...