It's hard to know where to begin. From getting kicked out of my first
job at Minnesota in 1971-2 for having first given all A's, then asking
to offer courses pass/fail, I have tried and keep experimenting with a
number of options. In my "smaller" classes (now ca. 30), I give a
grade for the number of satisfactory essays people write rather than
grading each. My time on this net began with my latest experiment in
the bigger class--the syllabus for Alternative Social Control Systems
this fall. I have for some time put exam questions in the syllabus
and traded answers with students constantly. They can also re-write
their midterms.
Thanks to all the selfconsciousness about the class as a social
control system, as reflected in three of four exam questions this
semester, and thanks I believe also to including student study groups
in the process, students know in about half the discussion sections
have taken to rewriting the exam questions themselves to make them
meaningful to themselves.
Meanwhile too, I make students and my associate instructors who grade
well aware of my own belief that grades have so many possible meanings
to different people that I have no stake in the grades representing
what students "truly" have learned. I do have an interest in having
it happen that as many students, ai's and I share a perception that
the student has learned something worthwhile. They are asked on exams
inter alia to reflect on the meaning of the grade for themselves.
I think I have written before that I consider "final solution" to be a
redundancy; the notion of solving anything implies violent finality as
far as I can see. I cannot make attachment of importance to grades go
away, but I do have a clear conscience about using the grading process
to try to loosen that attachment and supplant it with teacher-student
curiosity as best I can through experimentation.
The process of altering the definition of my situation with students
so that they inquire with me as peers rather than taking my
hierarchical position as all-defining stretches from grades to such
control elements as when and whether I sit or stand during lecture and
to other aspects of body language. Some students who catch fire with
ideas in the classroom and forget the grades are conscious of what
they have done, especially when I ask them to compare how they
experience learning in my class to learning in other classes.
A number of us at criminology and humanist sociology meetings I attend
discuss these matters at length. It is a rich area for exploring the
possibilities of redefining control situations. l&p hal