Making the Grade

Abstract

Like many schools, the university where I teach has made all classes pass/fail optional. Months ago, before Covid-19 sent my students home for the semester, I was designing a new undergraduate class. Against convention, I requested its designation be mandatory pass-fail. Why? I love to teach but hate to grade. I know that sizing up what students know and can do serves a function, but I hate it all the same. One reason is that grades are assigned to individuals, not groups—inadvertently implying that achievement is a solo sport. Think about it. You're anointed the valedictorian if you outperform everyone in your graduating class. To graduate summa cum laude, you edge out classmates who earned magna cum laude—who in turn beat those who made cum laude, not to mention those who walk across the stage and accept their diploma without any extra frills at all. The psychologist Abraham Maslow once observed that “self-­actualizing people are, without one single exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside of themselves.”