Word: mansfields
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...read with some amusement the recent article regarding Kenan Professor of Government Harvey "C-Minus" Mansfield '53 and the issue of inflated grades (News, "Mansfield To Give Two Grades...
Last week, Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 announced that students enrolled in his class, Government 1061: "Modern Political Thought," will receive two separate grades. The first will reflect the grade that Mansfield thinks the student deserved, the second is the one that will actually appear on the student's transcript. Ostensibly, this allows Mansfield to maintain his principled stance against what he describes as "Harvard's system of inflated grades" without penalizing students who elect to take Mansfield's class instead of one with a more generous grading curve...
...real problem with Mansfield's theory is the deeper assumption that Harvard grades--inflated, corrected or otherwise calibrated--are actually accurate measures of a student's academic achievement. They are not, at least not in the way that most of us think they...
...point of all this is not to disparage students with high academic records, or even to suggest that traditional course grading schemes should be abandoned. Rather, it is a plea to be honest with ourselves about what grades actually mean. If Mansfield wants to give his students two grades, so be it. But there is nothing about Mansfield's non-inflated grades that make them any more accurate as gauges of learning or knowledge. Saying otherwise is simply misleading...
...other walk of life would you say that nearly one quarter of practitioners are worthy of A's," Mansfield said. "Nobody who knows anything about grades gives anything as generous as that which the Harvard Faculty gives...