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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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