[lit-ideas] Re: Grade inflation
- From: "Steven G. Cameron" <stevecam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 16:01:37 -0400
Torgeir Fjeld wrote:
> On 12 Apr 2004 at 7:56, Steven G. Cameron wrote:
>
>
>>**To help monitor plagiarism, often time is spent viewing copies of
>>previous students' papers in my files.
>
>
> I never understood what plagiarism is. Please explain. And don't plagiarize.
>
**Difficult to know if you're kidding, but simply: plagiarism might be
defined as using work from someone else without giving proper credit to
the source -- claiming everything you've written is your own, when it's not.
>
>>Rereading my comments in the margins, as well as the final ones to
>>them accompanying the grades at the bottom, it occurred to me that my
>>perspective is frequently different than my original impression.
>>Since this is so, isn't grading an incredibly subjective art --
>>undoubtedly many of the grades assigned by me would not be the same if
>>evaluated by another professor (or even me on different days). What,
>>therefore, is the value, of the grading procedure??
>
>
> I don't know, but does it have to be objective to have a value?
**No. But we ascribe immense importance to grades: scholarships,
promotions, employment. They aren't objective; can they be fair??
Doesn't seem likely. In math and the sciences assigning value to
responses is easier.
**(Without diving back into discussion of the sublime) it is the public
who decides when a work of art, a play, movie, book, poem, music,
advertisement is successful. For papers and essays, a lone professor is
the sole arbiter... one voice, one opinion -- no matter how honest,
meticulous, and caring...
TC,
>
> Best, etc.,
>
> -tor
>
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