People kept asking me what I would do to improve things. And I said that if I could make one change, I would get rid of grades. [or read on Inside Higher Ed]
For the last decade and a half, I’ve engaged in anthropological research on higher education, identifying several challenges and mismatches between what we know about learning “in real life” and learning in college. In my most recent book, “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College, I identified a number of ways that formal education has led to a lack of learning. Colleges promote credentials, obedience and the sorting of haves and have-nots, but not necessarily learning. People kept asking me what I would do to improve things. And I said that if I could make one change, I would get rid of grades. I’d been making some efforts in that direction, but still I fretted over how to make my pedagogy align with my theoretical understanding of how people learn. “Fretted” may be too light a term; I wondered if I could actually keep teaching if I didn’t believe in the enterprise. Last summer, as I prepared my classes, deeply immersed in the thinking that had led to the book, I decided I would go all the way and get rid of grades. Or at least, get rid of them as much as I could -- all the way to the end of the semester. I had read many accounts of individual faculty members and whole colleges that were grade-free, but in mid-August, I discovered Starr Sackstein’s book Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, which gave me some cover in case students or administrators challenged this. My reasons for wanting to get rid of grades were numerous: I felt as if students are fixated on grades above all else. Most faculty conversations with students include some discussions of grades: What do you want? What do I have to do to get an A? How can I improve my grade? What are the criteria for grades? And the professor takes on the role of a judge. It felt like there was no space for adventure, zest, risk -- or even for genuine learning. Everything focused on pleasing the professor. And in my research on learning and education, I had learned a lot about grades, such as:
Extrinsic motivation leads to the minimax principle. If the only thing you care about is something beyond the activity itself -- an extrinsic reward such as the grade -- it is sensible to do as little as possible to procure the highest possible reward (grade), which Arie Kruglanski, Chana Stein and Aviah Riter dubbed in 1977 the “minimax strategy” in instrumental behavior. Cheating, shortcuts, cramming … all those make sense if the only goal is points or winning. Students treat college as a game. Games are fun, but if the goal is amassing points and winning at any price, then game is the wrong model for college -- at least if learning, not just winning, is the goal. Of course, games can also be absorbing and done for their own sake -- playing Words With Friends or Grand Theft Auto-- so those types of games are fine. Maybe the problem is when it is seen only as a survival course. Students see the rules as arbitrary and inconsistent. Different professors have different scoring -- participation, homework, teamwork or no teams, tests, showing your work, partial credit -- all of which appear to be plucked out of thin air and make no sense, as I found in my research on plagiarism. Citation? Sharing? Page length? Number of quotes? Consult notes or closed book? Students just have to figure out in each case what the professor wants. It all seems arbitrary, and therefore unconnected with anything meaningful or real. Students are taught to focus on schooling rather than learning. Is the goal of school, including college, primarily achievement, success, accomplishment? Is the focus on learning the actual skills people will need or want outside college? Whoever asks them, “What are you learning?” instead of “How are you doing?” Or “What’d you get?” In fact, people are consumed with curiosity and joy when they learn new things. Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s needed (as for a workplace that changes), but learning happens all around us all the time -- TED talks, podcasts, Nova, adult ed, learning from WikiHow, lectures at libraries, church study groups, knitting circles, work challenges. Grades encourage a fear of risk taking. Grades seem so consequential that students believe they can’t take a chance on anything unproven. In most college classes, a mistake is punished by a lower grade, which is then averaged into the other grades, even if the student completely gets it forever after that initial try. Yet mistakes are information and contribute to learning. In tasks like riding a bicycle or submitting an article for publication, feedback about shortcomings is information. This helps with improving. Solutions I have tried to address these problems with solutions. Some of the tactics I have used in my own classes include the following:
I enjoyed my relationship with my students; I loved the atmosphere of the classroom; I believe that the encouragement of learning and even risk taking in the service of growth have been successful. Students reflected that it allowed them to relax and focus on learning, perhaps for the first time. One student wrote in a reflection on one of my classes that used ungrading, “I honestly enjoyed writing for me, instead of necessarily for a professor or an outside source. I felt I had more freedom to express what I wanted to say, and I feel like I wasn’t focused too much on making claims that could get me points.” I am confident that at least some of the students were sincere in generating their own adventure in learning. Comments to Skeptics I know this seems idealistic and, for many classes and many professors, impossible. Here are my thoughts on that:
Here is one piece of evidence from a student who really trusted the process and responded honestly to the question “What assignment(s) pushed you to learn the most?” “While it ended up being one of my weaker pieces, I felt that my [project] was my most personally informative piece. I read so many different sources on the [topic] and really took a deep dive to explore the reasons why the [people do what] they do.” Isn’t that a beautiful, honest analysis of learning? I wanted students to believe that this education is for them, not for me. I can never go back!
7 Comments
9/17/2018 01:59:15 pm
There are some interesting points in time in this article but I don’t know if I see all of them center to heart. There is some validity but I will take hold opinion until I look into it further. Good article, thanks and we want more! Added to Feed Burner as well
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Engineering Prof
8/24/2021 12:10:16 pm
I sympathize, to a point, especially in research centered activities. On the other hand, do you want to be treated by a doctor who picked his own grades? Can you trust a bridge built by an engineer who "felt really good about his learning experiences". It seems to me that objective standards are necessary when the issue is understanding of proper procedures for dealing with reality. Our current pandemic may have been mitigated if people were less inclined spout their own medical theories, i.e. "drinking bleach" rather than listening to, and learning from dedicated experts.
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Jordan Pachter
8/30/2021 03:21:38 am
this article made me hate grades even more than i already do. Students treat school as if its a living or dying situation. If you pass the class you did great and are going to go far in life. But, if you fail happened to fali the class you are a failure and should drop out of school
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Engineering Prof
8/30/2021 08:56:56 am
Your reply reminds me why I enjoy having older students in my classes, particularly military veterans. As a rule, older students are interested in gaining skills, not receiving social validation. Many students fresh out of high school do not have the discipline required for hard majors, and that's okay... Some of my best students are back for their second undergraduate degree as older, more mature adults.
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P Malin
11/1/2021 05:58:44 pm
Dear engineering prof 2/3/2022 10:05:53 am
In my opinion i do not think grades matter , there is a lot of people who struggle with working on certain subjects and i am one of those people . When you struggle with working in a certain class and they help is not there like you need it you won't want to see how bad your grades are . I feel like as long as you try the grades do not matter . So in my opinion I do think grades should not be .
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