SUSAN D. BLUM
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Selected Publications
  • Good Learning
  • Events
  • Media

Supersigns

2/7/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
I have been thinking a lot lately about money and grades. Not for the reasons you may think: that I want more and better of both (or to “give” tough grades). But because they share interesting qualities. My thinking is analytical rather than greedy.

Money and grades, I propose, are both supersigns.

[Also see this and comments on PopAnth: Hot Buttered Humanity]
A+
A
A/A-
A-
A-/B+



I have been thinking a lot lately about money and grades. Not for the reasons you may think: that I want more and better of both (or to “give” tough grades). But because they share interesting qualities. My thinking is analytical rather than greedy.

Money and grades, I propose, are both supersigns.

[Also see this and comments on PopAnth: Hot Buttered Humanity]

Clearly, however we think of them, they are signs. Marx did a bang-up job in the nineteenth century analyzing money, and showing that it is a stand-in for things that have real value, things we can use, like shoes and fish. In and of itself, no matter what its form, money has no value other than for exchange, and that of course comes about because of agreement within society. When using money to make money, one arrives at capital. The primary goal of capital is to produce more money.

Grades, too, are signs. They signify achievement, in some specified realm. They are not quite as solid as money in the sense that there is less agreement about what they indicate. Is one student rewarded for promptness, obedience, and extroversion, and another for coasting on innate abilities? Is the grade measuring effort or achievement? Is the default beginning point perfection, from which one might fall, or is the default mediocrity, from which one might, with difficulty, rise? Are “good” grades limited? Pre-specified?

But grades and money share many characteristics, and one of the interesting ones is that they not only, however vaguely, are considered to “stand for” something else—in the classic semiotic notion of a sign. They also have other properties.

Some have to do with the practical: You have more money, you can exchange it for better food. You have better high school grades, you go to a better college. [Actually the connection between good grades in school and success, at least financial, in life is extremely tenuous.] You get good grades in college, you accumulate credits, which can be exchanged for a degree, which can be exchanged for a job, which can be exchanged for money….Which can be exchanged for tutoring for one’s children, which can be exchanged for better grades.

But exchange is not the only noteworthy property of money and grades.

Some properties are what the Peircian analysts would call indexical. The signs index or are associated with certain people and by this association come to seem desirable. More money makes people more able to buy prestige goods and appear more like cultural idols, perhaps movie stars. Better grades makes people more like upper-middle-class folks.

And yet another set of properties is the conventionally symbolic: We imbue these abstractions with power. They can become cultural shorthand; they can adorn clothing and accessories. They are assumed to bring with them vast understanding. We speak about them constantly and with reverence or fear. They have mystical and magical properties: Popular books show that by visualizing money supplicants can bring it to them. At temples throughout the world, people pray for good grades and scores.

And finally both money and grades enter the person’s deepest psyche and relationships: People without money agonize, plot, obsess, lose sleep. Marriages are destroyed by the different notions the partners have about money. Bad grades can send children to doctors and other curers, and many parents punish or reward children for them. A raise in salary, even for people with adequate means, signifies admiration. A high grade for a high-achieving student is further validation of self-worth, and becomes addictive; anything less can produce terror.

Because of the multiple levels at which these two signs operate, all efforts to reduce their power are doomed. People who are “off the grid” and operate in a barter economy are regarded as threatening and antisocial. Professors or colleges that aim to reduce the tyranny of grades are seen—by students, administrators, the public—as shirking their roles. (University of California, Santa Cruz, after decades of using narrative evaluations rather than conventional grades, joined the mainstream in 2001, to the consternation of some.)

Supersigns show the power of human beings to spin fantasies and then make them consequential. The invented becomes real. This is a wondrous capability of ours—we don’t believe that chimps or dogs have it, for instance—but it can also lead to unnecessary baroque considerations. The “credit default swaps” that precipitated the 2008 economic crisis and current panics over grade inflation, along with gaming the system in affluent schools, are examples of signs run amok.

I don’t expect to make a dent in the power of these supersigns precisely because they have such a firm purchase in so many realms and at so many levels. At least, though, I understand them a bit better, and I always have another fascinating set of human foibles to attend to.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    August 2019
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    6-4
    Academic Freedom
    Adhd
    Affect
    Agency
    Anthropology
    Anthropology Of Education
    Anti-intellectualism
    Arne Duncan
    Art
    Assessment
    Atlanta Teaching Scandal
    Attention
    Authentic Assessment
    Authenticity
    Authorship
    Badges
    Banking Model
    Barack Obama Election
    Bilingualism
    Blum
    Catfish
    Censorship
    Cheating
    Chen Guangchen
    Childhood
    China
    China Bashing
    College
    College Admissions
    College Football
    Commencement
    Communication
    Competition
    Confucius Institutes
    Con Games
    Corruption
    Cost Of College
    Costs Of College
    Creativity
    Credentials
    Credits
    Critical Anthropology Of Education
    Cs Peirce
    Cultural Literacy
    Culture Of College
    Culture Of Poverty
    Curiosity
    Deception
    Decline In Reading
    Deep Learning
    Delayed Gratification
    Design Thinking
    Education
    Engagement
    Equality
    Ethics
    Evolution
    Exchange Value
    Executive Function
    Extrinsic Motivation
    Families
    Feminist Pedagogy
    Football
    Freedom
    Friday Classes
    Game Of School
    Gaming
    Gaokao
    Garden
    Gender
    Gender Ratio
    Goals Of College
    Goals Of Education
    Grades
    Grading
    Graduation
    Higher Education
    High School
    High Stakes Testing
    High-stakes Testing
    Homeschooling
    Hong Kong
    Honor Codes
    Human Nature
    Humor
    Inequality
    Intellectual Property
    Intelligence
    Intrinsic Motivation
    Jacques Dubochet
    Joshua Wong Hong Kong
    June 4
    June Fourth
    Language
    Language Gap
    Learning
    Linguistic Anthropology
    Literacy
    Literature
    Lying
    Malala
    Marx
    Meaning
    Medicalization
    Mental Illness
    Meritocracy
    Metaphor
    Money
    Mooc
    Moocs
    Morality
    Motivation
    Mo Yan
    Multilingualism
    Multimodality
    Music
    Neurobiology
    New Media
    New Year Resolutions
    Nobel Peace Prize
    Nobel Prize
    No Child Left Behind
    Notre Dame
    Nyu
    Occupy
    Paolo Freire
    Pedagogy
    Permaculture
    Plagiarism
    Play
    Pleasure
    Politics
    Praise
    Procrastination
    Questions
    Race To The Top
    Rand Paul
    Reading
    Reading Habits
    Return On Investment
    Sat Test
    School
    Schooling
    Self-censorship
    Semiotics
    Sign
    Sociality
    Socialization
    Soft Power
    Steven Mosher
    Student Centered Learning
    Student-centered Learning
    Student Revolutions
    Students
    Supersign
    Symbol
    Teaching
    Technophilia
    Technophobia
    Teenagers
    Term Paper Mills
    Testing
    Tiananmen
    Transcript
    Truth
    Unessay
    Ungrading
    Unschooling
    Use Value
    Verbal Play
    Wellbeing
    Wicked Problems
    William Ayers
    Writing
    Youth

    RSS Feed

​SusanBlum.com by Susan D. Blum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Books
  • Selected Publications
  • Good Learning
  • Events
  • Media