I have found the grading discussion interesting but also a bit of
what casey stengel called deja vue all over again.
My first point is the near absence of comment on what we think the status
of "student" is in the overarching scheme of one's choice (e.g. latent
reserve army of labour, element of age graded "division of labour", individual
maximization (optimization) of labour/leisure tradeoff, reproduction of
the ...well you get the idea) Instead of looking at these people surrounding
us in the lecture halls in a literal fashion, I would have thought that
the force of abstraction might be applied to the phenomenon we find ourselves
part of.
Second, if the student's are, say, part of the social division of labour,
what is it that they are supposed to do, socially?
Third, If they are (continuing this thread) supposed to be socialized
into and skilled for business as usual, why is there are quota (e.g. a
curve) on the number who pass the test? Are we accepting that there is
a quota on the number of places available to them in the "adult" non
student division of labour?
One anecdote: When I was teaching in an urban, open admissions college
it came to my attention that in order for minority students to get a
part time job at McDonalds, they needed to be enrolled as a student.
Actually, not just at McDonalds and not just minority students, really.
The "informal" screening for part time employment involved being a
student somewhere. Since part time was generally over 30 hours a week
and full time status was flexible, on average students could get a job
upon leaving high school only if they added the burden of being a student
which meant taking a course of two each year. It normally took 5-6 years
to complete a degree and that usually led to a full time job doing paper
work that anyone with an 8th grade education could do. Given that,
after a year or two, those not winnowed out by personal circumstances,
one began a Master's degree at night which may have led to (or been a
requirement of promotion).
In that context the issue of marking student's work seemed to me to
be labour management by proxy. Because they were not in jobs in which
judgment could be made regarding their skills, that was my job. But
of course, the skills I was assigned to observe were the one's that
I, implicitly, was in a position to define. And they, being hip to
the jive (as one might say) were perfectly clear that the main skill
was psyching out me. But even more complexly, if I "curved" the exam,
their skill lay in determining the average expectation of skill held
by their classmates. As Keynes wrote about another arena, a beauty contest
of the fourth degree.
I don't have any answers on how to make each class experience a fair game.
The student's are aware that they "grade" us via student evaluations and
they use this petty power as best they can to intervene on our powers to
grade them. They enjoy a good class; they endure the bad ones, just like
we do. And I suspect the reason that the shifting and inconsistent standards
of evaluation to which they are subject across the courses they take over
the now 5 years it takes most of them to get a degree are training enough
for the society and workplace they will enter.
Penny Ciancanelli
Manchester UK
