Word: processes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...power to give grades provides professors with a sanction for the exercise of authority in the educational process. Grades promote acquiescence and conformity among students and exempt teachers from the necessity of being relevant, interesting and well-prepared in their classes. Students refrain from criticizing mediocrity and dullness in part because of the fear of jeopardizing their grades, and in part because the process of grading has diverted attention away from learning itself. (We do not raise here the possibility the grades inspire political conformity between students and professors.) In general, the authoritarian relationship between teachers and students...
...need to identify the students they most prefer and the ones they least prefer. Grades provide employers and graduate schools with a cost-less means of ranking students for their own purposes. But education should not be made subservient to their needs, particularly since grades interfere with the learning process. Graduate schools and employers could device their own mechanisms of evaluation and selection if students were not graded, as already happens with students from a number of colleges, such as Antioch, which do not grade...
...courses as guidelines for admitting students to their own course. The administration uses grades in allocating financial aid. Although we object to this last use of grades we do feel that information on student performance can be useful both to the student and to the teacher in the education process. The use of a summary letter grade is simply not the best means for fulfilling such informational needs...
...these reasons, we find the grading process abhorrent, and we intend to substitute other mechanisms to perform those functions of grades that we feel should be retained. In our course we will prepare written evaluation of each student's work. The evaluation will be available to the student and to others if the student so requests. Further, we plan to arrange individual meetings between student and instructor during the semester. Finally, the organization of the course into small sections automatically provides continuous feedback to the students...
...grading requirement be removed from our course. Further, we ask for a public hearing with the C.E.P. concerning our petition and the general role of grades at Harvard. We would like to raise at the point the arguments for the complete elimination of grades from the Harvard educational process...