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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure arresting him was justified but other than that I agree with the University.

He might not like grades but they are a basis by which employers judge job candidates. They represent a skill (hard work among other things) that employer's value. By doing away with them in his classroom he is compromising that whole system.

University teachers like this one need to realize that they have two tasks. To open student's minds AND to ensure they are qualified to function in society. He's completely ignored the second task and thinks he's a hero for having done so.

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I'd dispute the statement that good grades are a useful measurement of ability to function in society. All grades really measure is students' abilities to get good grades. There are lots of factors that can go into getting a good grade, especially in courses where the grading process is necessarily subjective: writing in a style which appeals to the grader, building a relationship with the grader, studying in an optimal way for taking exams, being dedicated to your studies, etc.

Parts of this skillset are obviously useful in general. A person who is able to figure out how to appeal to their audience will do well in many fields. Some are more tricky; for instance, one might assume that someone who studies optimally for their exams will be able to figure how to perform other tasks optimally as well, but this is often not the case. One particularly misleading thing about grades is that they are often seen as an indicator of how dedicated/good of a worker students are. This might sometimes be the case; some students get good grades primarily because they work very hard. But some students get good grades without much effort, some only work hard because they have someone driving them (such as their parents), and some do well in an academic atmosphere but will burn out in a more job-oriented one. The biggest of these fallacies is that a student with low grades is a poor worker or bad in their subject; there are students who worked hard but just had a bad teacher, students who are overworked, students who prioritize certain classes over others, and students who are disenchanted with academic work but who will do well in a "real-world" atmosphere".

As an anecdote: I go to a fairly alternative liberal arts school that is nonetheless highly ranked (not that rankings are good judges of schools, but here's the US News page: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/items/... ). My school accepts a fair number of students who in high school did not perform well academically. Many of these students pick up their grades while here; nearly all of these students are very smart and capable.

The problem with grades is that they fail to provide any breakdown of the factors which contribute to them, which is the truly useful information. Even in the cases where a student got all A+'s or all F's, where it seems that the student is probably overall competent or incompetent respectively, there are still external motivations which are not taken into account but which are nonetheless vitally important.

Another big problem with grades is that they fail to take into account differences between environments, school policies, and graders; that is, even when grading policies are objective, they differ from place to place but are compared nonetheless. Different graders grade differently; some may give A's to everyone who is qualified, while some may give them to only those who are most qualified. Some of these effects can be damped through normalization, but usefully normalizing grades seems difficult as well. Imagine trying to normalize grades between MIT and community college students. Additionally, the information required to do any significant statistical tricks is often not avaliable to those who could use it, and those who could use it would probably not take the time to even if they could.

Finally, I feel like you completely missed the professor's point. (I'm assuming he believes arguments similar to mine.) Since grades don't provide signifcant metrics of anything, using them to judge people is both discriminatory and a bad idea. Thus, the responsible thing to do would be to get rid of them altogether (or at least reform them so that they actually measured something). But since he doesn't have the power to do that, he does the closest thing he can: give everyone the best grade possible. This has several positive effects: it lessens the potential future discrimination against his students; it, as you said, "compromis[es] that whole system", making more obvious how arbitrary it is and hopefully leads to its undoing; and it (he believes) makes students learn better.

He hasn't ignored the second task at all.

Honestly, though I know you are well meaning, I think you (and hte professor) missed the point. You (and he) could be completely right about grades. But It's not his place to do away with a system simply because he believes it to be ineffective.

In fact, that mentality is nothing short of disasterous.

To give an example, I live about 2 miles from my work. In that 2 miles there are 9 stop lights. They are timed so that you hit each one. This was done on purpose to prevent speeding. I feel that's ineffective (they're timed at 45mph meaning speeders can go 65 mph and get greens).

But I don't run the lights. If he truely feels grades are ineffective he should lobby his industry and get things officially changed.

You're comparing apples and oranges. In many cases, it really is a bad idea to circumvent the current system. But there are a couple of big differences between traffic lights and school grades.

For one, traffic lights work. When people obey them, they (excepting a faulty light) don't get into wrecks. They may not be efficient, but they get the job done.

School grades don't work. Because people make comparisons between things that aren't really comparable, a lot of people get jobs when perhaps they shouldn't or don't when they should. This is much more like a system where traffic lights are sometimes all green than ones which are timed in an annoying way.

What's the right thing to do when traffic lights are malfunctioning this way? The first thing you should do, obviously, is call the authorities. But what if the authorities don't believe you? You tell them that the lights are all green, but they know their system works perfectly.

This is further complicated in the case of grading, because there isn't one central authority. There are thousands of schools and employers who all work with this system; getting them all to switch is no mean feat. So let's instead imagine that every traffic light is independently owned and operated, and that while the traffic light operators feel like they are all working together, there are some subtle differences between their algorithms which obviously lead to screwups.

Since the people who run the traffic lights aren't responding to you, what should you do? Obviously, for your own safety and the safety of those around you you should stop at every intersection regardless of the light color. And if you have the ability, it would probably be a good idea to climb up and cover up the lights yourself, so that others who come to the broken intersection don't get confused.

Again though, the whole basis for your argument is that you are unquestionably right. Many people believe grades work just as well as traffic lights. I'd argue the majority of people in academia do (since they haven't been abolished). Employers hire based on grades so many of them do too.

The only way your argument makes sense is if we take your contention that "grades don't work" and treat it like gospel

(For the record, I'm not a believer in the grading system. I agree with much of what you are saying. I simply don't believe my opinion justifies throwing out the rules in and of itself)

I see what you mean, but I don't think I agree. For one, direct action seems to often be the best way to at least get started the sort of revolution that would have to occur to get this change made. (I'd argue that the only reason that the majority of people who believe in grades do is that they haven't taken much time to think about them.)

In addition, this isn't a case of, say, someone believing that people would be better off if they were occasionally hit with water balloons and thus deciding to throw them at random passerbys. (Whether that person would be justified in pelting everyone is subject to debate.) Instead, this is a case which only effects the people who chose to become his students. And how is he hurting them?

He isn't hurting their future prospects of getting a job (though I guess that maybe you could argue that he is diminishing his school's reputation or something like that). He isn't hurting their ability to learn--I think he's right that not using grades helps students learn better, and either way we generally give teachers the right to choose how to teach their students, since they're usually the most qualified to make that decision. The only possible way that he's hurting anyone is if later on one of his students get hired when they shouldn't have (or visa-versa), and arguably that decision isn't on him; if he's truly wrong about grades, then the rest of the students' grades should reflect that.

(Perhaps you could say that if some of the students wanted a grade, they should be given one, but I feel like he would be willing to give them feedback/change their grades if they asked him.)

I broke up the points here:

On Direct Action: Action can mean a lot of things. Maybe...MAYBE if he’d worked for years to abolish the grading system and gone out and debated proponents of the system and still failed...then maybe his actions might be justified. But he hasn’t done that.

People who act unilaterally aren’t trying to start debate they’re afraid of it.

On hurting the Students: The question was never "is he diminishing the prospects of his students" it’s "is he diminishing the prospects of other students." His students are getting A+ grades so it’s unlikely they’ll be hurt? But what about the person from another university who is trying to get a job where grades matter? What if that person got a B at their university and is competing against one of this professor’s students who got an unjustified A+?

Systems exist to create a scale by which people judge. Even if that scale is as flawed as you contend it’s the scale that exists and he doesn’t have the right to tip it based solely on his own arrogance.

There are a number of people who have worked to abolish grades over the years, so I don't think your direct action point makes much sense. Additionally, this seems like the sort of issue that, simply due to inertia, won't be changed without some sort of revolution.

Again, I'd argue that he's not diminishing the prospects of other students (assuming most other graders grade "normally"), simply because other grades will balance them out. One A+ isn't going to make or break an interview. Besides, this sort of thing happens constantly anyways, simply due to the fact that different graders grade differently.

I think your last point comes down to a moral value judgment. You say that he doesn't have the right to try to fix the system on his own; I'd say that he has not only the right but the responsibility. I think this especially makes sense when you consider that, if grading is as flawed as I say it is, using grades to judge is discrimination (and I mean it in the pejorative sense).

Think of it like racism. If there really is an intelligence gap between different races, and you are supposed to label peoples' races so that employers could judge them, then my moral intuition would line up with yours; it would be wrong for you to label everyone as white (or whatever the best race was supposed to be) just because you believed that race was a good indicator of intelligence.

But if race isn't an accurate indicator of intelligence, but people were using it as a measurement of intelligence anyways, then my moral intuition says that you would have a responsibility to do everything you could to fight against racism, which could include labeling everyone as white.

Actually, it seems a rather sticky point.

I think we’re going around in circles at this point but I would make two final points.

First, I don’t see an attempt to fix the system on his part nor do I see any significant movement over the last few years to abolish grades. I just did a Google search for one (under "Abolish grades in universities" and didn’t come up with any such organization. So obviously the people who have been trying for years aren’t trying all that hard.

Surely there has to be some distinction between trying to fix the system and simply deciding to ignore it. I think to a certain extent you’re projecting in that, though I still disagree with you, you’ve at least thought this issue out. I’m not sure you can say that about this professor (he didn’t seem to give an intelligent counter argument in the article)

Second, and somewhat related to the first, the one thing no one’s answered here is how this professor’s actions are going to change anything. Saying he’s trying to fix the system is contingent on his actions following some kind of logical progression that leads to a changing of the system? From what I can see his tactless approach has done more harm than good (since any teacher who agreed with him would now have to fear suspension). If this sparks any actual change in the future I’ll happily eat my words but I don’t see it happening.

One last point. Again, having done a Google Search I couldn't find a page that even debated the issue as much as we have here.

So if there's no record of the issue being debated even as much as we have in the last 6 hours or so how can people claim it's time for drastic action?

Try Googling "Alfie Kohn." He's an educator who's a big fan of abolishing letter grades, and also homework.

Why should Universities feel bound to fulfill your second task? Do you also think that Universities are similarly bound to not allow students to major in fields that aren't useful for functioning in the workforce?

It is, of course, the University's (and in particular the deparment's) prerogative to set basic expectations for grading that their professors must follow. But I don't see how the University itself owes anything to employers. Until 1997, UC Santa Cruz didn't give out any letter grades. If students were worried that this would make it harder for them to get employed, they were welcome to enroll elsewhere.

You're honestly saying Universities should feel no obligation to prepare students to function in the workforce? I honestly don't even know how to respond to that.

I guess, because the workforce only exists for the furtherence of society. So if a University's stated goal is to improve society than they owe it to society to prepare students for the workforce

Yes. If you want to be trained for the workforce go to a vocational school. You're stating that the only way for a university to improve society is by providing a workforce. This is A way for a university to improve society but it shouldn't be the way.

OK, one more clarification question then, do you (or anyone else who has this argument) believe the majority of people share your opinion? In other words, when the majority of parents pay their kids tuition do you think they're primary goal is to "open their childs mind" or to "prepare them for a career"?

I think the majority of people go to university now a days because they think everyone else is and that they will lose a certain amount of status if they don't. They aren't preparing for a career when most don't have a clue about what they want to do and they aren't opening their minds as most don't care about their education beyond grades.

I think you’re evading the question. If people are going to University because everyone else is than they are in turn going to University based on what they think everyone else's reasoning is. So "because everyone else does" can't be their specific purpose.

The purpose of my question was to make this point: Universities exist to serve society. It’s Government, Donors and Tuition payers who keep Universities open and their opinion of the University’s purpose is its purpose (if not than the University is fraudulently taking their money)

So if we assume the majority of tax payers and donors are also those who went to College (and hence paid tuition) than that group determines the University’s purpose. If the majority of those people believe that purpose is to prepare people for a career than that is what the University’s purpose is.

If people are going to University because everyone else is than they are in turn going to University based on what they think everyone else's reasoning is.

Doing something because everyone else does it doesn't imply any consideration for everyone else's reasons. It indeed suggests the opposite.

How so? Let's take what most would consider a shallow action. Say a high school student start wearing a certain type of shoes because everyone else is wearing that type of shoes. In that example the crowd's motivation for wearing those shoes is to look cool. Wasn't the high school student who wore them because everyone else did also trying to look cool?

Or for a more adult example, take the last election. There were people on my corner holding up Barack Obama signs. Signs, by their nature, are an act of peer pressure (since you can't make a full, reasoned argument on a sign). So the question is this, would those people with the signs be happy if I joined them in holding up a sign but then turned around and voted for McCain? Of course not, because their goal was to get me to adopt their cause not just mindlessly follow them.

I disagree with you on professors having those two tasks personally. Preparing people for the workforce shouldn't even be on a university professors mind. Open students minds, and advance research in their area of expertise should be their two roles.

Too many people go to university now for the wrong reasons so I can see why you would think it should be about getting a job(because that's what 90% go for) but it really shouldn't be about that at all.

Was Socrates bound by an obligation to Society to teach Plato a vocation? It appears to me there are a lot of similarities between this situation and that one (ignoring the fact that this guy probably isn't Socrates, and that arresting is slightly different than executing).

Arresting him for entering the university area? In Sweden the police would have refused to do that.

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