Week 6

Vignette 5: Getting What They Deserve?

Well, in my humble opinion, Joan's stance is archaic. I'm in a phase of my education where I am questioning the validity of grades at all. I'm actually really excited to learn more about it (doing away with grades, that is!). Joan says that she wants to look at a mark and see a reflection of a student's academic achievement, but a grade is just a grade, and like a picture it is worth a thousand words. I think Joan is fighting the wrong battle here.

To approach this more literally, I do agree with Joan that while non-academic factors do inform their academic counterparts, they should be kept separate. At least this way if we see a low achievement mark we can immediately refer to the non-academic portion of the mark. As I wrote that last sentence, however, it occurred to me that looking at the non-academic mark can only lead to speculation about its effect on the academic portion, but that speculation may or may not be accurate. So what good does a non-academic portion of a mark even serve? Now that I think about it, it seems to just be a classroom management tool ("you'd better be good or you'll lose valuable participation marks).

Joan says that a mark is meaningless if the two components are not separated, but I fail to see the meaning even if they are separated. Gosh.