Those Intruding Grades... ...Serve A Function

There is unanimous agreement that the Government Department should not unilaterally abolish tutorial grades, and thereby penalizes Gov majors. The departments should agree. But they should agree to place more emphasis on grades in "99" courses, not less.

To contend that "99" grades should be eliminated because senior tutorial "is hardly in need of incentives" is to assume that the primary purpose of grades is to act as incentives. But considerable evidence indicates that grades are not good incentives. The success of the very experiments mentioned in the editorial shows that students work without grades. The gamesmanship resulting from the "incentives" of grades, and the "marketing personality" that they induce in students--knowledge is sought for its market value on examinations rather than its intrinsic value--show that grades are often destructive of desirable ends when used as incentives.

Grades do have a function, however. They are an indication for graduate and professional schools of how well students have performed the tasks assigned to them. And there is no reason why "99" courses should not give such evaluations while other courses continue to. Having met with a student an hour a week, the tutor should have a good idea of his level of performance by the end of the first semester--in time for graduate schools to see the grades.

To the objection that A's and B's are "automatic" in "99" courses, it may be answered that most courses populated mainly by honors students, such as Physics 13 and Gov 106, have curves considerably higher than those in other courses. In most cases, a student devoting the same energy to a course that he did to his thesis would get an A or a B. By writing a thesis, then, a student may be hurting his February grade average.

A student's performance in his "99" course should be included in the evaluation of him by graduate and professional schools. But they never know what student gets on his thesis. Neither, in most cases, do they know his mark in the "99" course, for most departments do not give the mark until the end of the year. Only in a few departments, such as philosophy, is a grade given on the Ferurary transcript. Only in such departments do students' grade averages not suffer from their choosing to write theses. This model more nearly meets the goal of a student's grade average reflecting his performance in courses. This is the model that should be imitated by the other departments, including government.

The above represents the view of a minority of the editorial board.