I was not surprised at the content of Harry's intervention but would also have liked to have had (tense anyone?) a more taylor-made (hmm) reply to the pen-l debate. To wit: What is going on now with the students in our various schools that shapes the reported practices and self observations many of us are going through during the exam and paper ritual? One of the reasons for my intervention was to shake up the policy mavens with detailed accounting prescriptions for how to do something which patently makes no emotional (and I would argue) little functional sense. Plumbers always find comfort in discussions with other plumbers about the latest duct tape for repairing leaks but they also find time for reflection on the effects of speed up in house construction on the quality of the pipes and on the effects of the fiscal crisis on the sewage capacity in the newer suburbs. Moreover they also know that no matter how good the materials, finding all the hidden leaks is more important than repairing the one you can see. Learning is a private, sujective activity. Teaching is a social one. The divergence between what I thought I taught and what my students reveal they know is clearest when I read what they have written on their exams or papers. Were we, I ask, in the same room at the same time? Did he/she hear what I think I said? In an ongoing dialogue with the students, remedying those gaps is possible to the extent that the number of students is small and none of them are afraid. The true character of this sham solidarity is exposed with grading or any other symbolic method of "quality" control. Increasingly my students are four square in favour of fear and quality control. Nutured on dreams of competitive success and tormented by the fear that their mediocrity will be discovered, they want a fair game THEY WILL WIN. So we gather, in the lecture room, me pressured to get with the knowledge power program of apologizing in style; they pressured to find out the rules of my game and how to win. Do I object to a certain conceptual framework? They think, does she want me to repeat that rubbish? Why does she sound ironical? Why does she call on that berk? Does sucking up to her "work?" And as well, more dreamy eyed innocents, inquisitive, too naive to cut their questions to the lecturer's cloth finding a question to run with for many years. Such dreams as those fall on barren soil in today's universities, don't they? Not always and not necessarily. The personal intervenes; we like and get along with some of these people and not with others. Education occurs in spite of the institution through the dialogue we have the time, energy and interest to engage in. Unlike Harry, I don't have a specific program on grading at universities even though I am largely in sympathy with the overall perspective he takes on the issue.The reason I don't is that I am not sure what makes sense at the practical level of organizing against the daily incursions of crackpot realism into academic study. Maybe it does make sense to forward a demand that stimulates strong discussion (and surely the proposal to abolish grades would have that effect, although on pen-l it seems to have had the opposite effect, e.g. silence...and how should that silence be understood?) I do think that our own lack of organization and our own refusual to use the organizations we have at hand (AAUP, URPE< AEA, etc) to mount discussion and debate on this crucial issue leaves us with only our private policies which, with all the bad conscience at our leisure we can fine tune. I do think, and on this there could be important debate, that it is absolutely the case that the "quality control" agenda, the management by proxy and all the rest are in line with the political agenda of the right to impose work in every increasing quantities at all levels of the social division of labour and that the effect of this is to cultivate differences and reproduce existing differentiations of power so that our collective power is weak and growing weaker. Back to work Penny Ciancanelli Manchester UK ----- End forwarded message ----- End forwarded message
