The Pre-Grading Golden Age
[photo by Thomas Levinson]
I couldn’t find the thread George mentions, but questions about our grading system and the invocation of William Farish are interesting to consider. The history of grading as we know it, as laid in the article that George links to, can use some expansion. In that article, we learn that Farish instituted his grading system in 1792 or later. But there is an interesting parallel (?) development outlined in a 1993 Educational Forum article:
The history of grading in American colleges was eloquently detailed by Mary Lovett Smallwood (1935). She related that marking, or grading, to differentiate students was first used at Yale. The scale was made up of descriptive adjectives and was included as a footnote to Stiles’s 1785 diary.
President Stiles wrote that 58 students were present at an examination, and they were graded as follows: “Twenty Optimi, sixteen second Optimi, 12 Inferiores (Boni), ten Pejores” (Stiles, 1901, vol. 3). In all probability, these may have been the very first collegiate “grades” given in the United States.
Yale took the initiative in formulating a scale. Smallwood quoted the following from the Book of Averages — Yale College: “Record of Examinations,” 1813 — 1839: Rules respecting this Book and its records, 1. This book shall be kept with the Senior Tutor of the College, whose duty it shall (be) to see that the following rules are carried into effect. 2. The average result of the examination of every student in each class shall be recorded in this book by the Senior Tutor of the class.
Also this very same book from Yale gives a reference to marking on a scale of 4. In all probability, this was the origin of the 4.0 system used by so many colleges and universities today. There was, however, still no connection to letter grades. .or example, an A was not a 4.0, for at this point in time, there was no A.
The gap of 28 years between President Stiles’s remarks of 1785 and Yale’s in 1813 is also interesting. It is hard to imagine there were not any records or statements concerning grading written during this time, but apparently none have been found.
The article goes on to outline dates of implementation of various numeric systems at Harvard, Mount Holyoke, etc.
Regardless, the point being made by George and the CCK08 participants is well-taken– grading systems of the kind we are familiar with are relatively new to education. If you could go back in time, you would look in vain for grading scales in the Platonic academies, letter grades in the Lyceum, or calculators (literally) feverishly working out GPAs in the monasteries.
But before we get all medieval (figuratively and literally) on the system, let’s remember that the previous system wasn’t without its flaws. Then, as now, there were charges of favoritism and corruption, cults of personality and pressures to push learners through for reasons other than merit. Frankly, I find the quote George highlights:
"When a student graduated, the most impressive thing she or he could share with a prospective employer was not a Grade Point Average (GPA) or even the name of the institution attended: it was the name of the teacher. Students of the great teachers of history often became famous themselves because of the thoroughness with which their mentors had inculcated knowledge, understanding, skill, and talent in them."
terrifying. Because the truth is that while some students in the past became famous themselves because of the names and thoroughness of the teachers, others became famous because of the names of their teachers end stop. Great names are not necessarily great teachers; studying with a great name doesn’t mean one has learned anything; great names– knowing that the system that their students tend to thrive in are not meritocracies– are under the same kinds of pressure with or without grades to assign.
I’m the last person to defend contemporary grading systems. I much prefer performance- and apprentice- based systems of evaluation and promotion. But in our struggle to fight the man we shouldn’t lose sight of the reality that when it comes to the conferring of value and the measure of learning that grading is meant to stand for, there are many ways to go wrong and a wealth of subjectivity that ultimately will work to a significant degree to undermine itself by virtue of being accepted enough to become a "system" in the first place.
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:17 am
Cf. Gould’s “The Mis-Measure of Man” which deals more with I.Q. theory (and fallacy) but the arguments of which seem applicable to “grading” in general.
I recall my stats teacher discussing the failure of most instructors to understand their business and the artificiality of grading on a smooth bell curve. He asserted that most often the numbers he looked at suggested a double-humped curve with humps peaking at C- and B- on the “normal” curve. That makes a kind of intuitive sense to me, if only because distribution is rarely smooth and even in nature.
Gould’s argument, in a nutshell, is that ranking, “ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale”, is fallacious per se. Makes sense to me.
October 2nd, 2008 at 2:33 am
[...] we are still on the core topic of education, I liked Chris Lott’s article on the pre-grading golden age. He reminds us that, in days gone by, students were recognized by the name of the teacher to which [...]
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:51 am
Makes sense to me too… but I don’t think that grading systems– even with letter grades and points– have to be considered a kind of ordering at all…
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
One of the things mentioned in Clay Burrell’s post on this topic was the extent to which assigning grades allowed education to become industrialized. Instead of a carefully written narrative describing a student’s learning (something like an academic recommendation) one could simply write a optimus, second optimus, inferior, or pejor in the book, making education much less individual. In some wasy the portfolio is an attempt to turn back the clock 250 years.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:28 am
Absolutely… on both sides, student and educator, there is much less reliance on complex performances.
I’m all for turning back the clock 2300 years or so in some ways– methods from the Platonic academy would be a welcome addition to the assessment repertoire.
Industrialization isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s somewhat different from mechanization, which is largely where things seem to have been going.
And thanks for the pointer to Clay Burrell’s article. Some real food for thought in the article and the discussion!