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Citation:
Kenneth R. Conklin, "Due Process in Grading: Bias and Authority," THE SCHOOL REVIEW, LXXXI, 1 (November, 1972), pp. 85-95.
Due Process in Grading: Bias and Authority
Kenneth Robert Conklin, Boston University
A Letter to My Students
What do you hope to gain by studying with me? If you are like most students, you have not really given that question very much thought. You are here because someone told you to
come, you think you might meet interesting people here, you want the status
and security of a diploma, or you want to learn whatever you have to know
to get and keep a good job. If these reasons, or others like them, explain
why you are here, then the next few paragraphs are especially for you. If
you are here to seek personal growth or enlightenment also, please have
patience, and I will say some things to you a bit later.
I promise to do the best I can in teaching the subject matter I am supposed to teach. I
will try to be fair and impartial in judging how well you learn that
subject matter. But before I accept you as a student, you must acknowledge
the fact that I have been given the authority to teach the subject matter
in the way I consider most effective and the authority to judge how well
you learn it. The authority to teach and grade you has been given to me by
the people who will accept your credits and grades as tokens of what you
can do for them. As the agent of those people and of society in general, I
have a responsibility that I will not take lightly.
[end page 85 / start page 86]
As my students you will have to learn my opinions, and you will
be graded according to how well you understand them. Since I cannot read
your minds to see how well you do understand my opinions, I shall require
you to pretend that you agree with them, and I shall grade you according to
how well you give the appearance of agreement. You must not only repeat my
opinions to me, but you must show that you understand them by answering
new questions from my viewpoint and by telling me some of the other
opinions which I hold but have not told you.
Does all this bother you? Do you think it is unfair to require you to seem to agree with me in order to pass the course? Please note that I am not requiring you to agree with me.
What you believe in is your business, not mine. All that I demand is that
you demonstrate that you can successfully pretend to agree with me. Does it
seem phony and shallow that you will be graded according to how well you
succeed at this game of make-believe? Well, perhaps it is shallow, but then
so is your interest in getting a diploma, job, status, or friends. If you
want to get these things you must learn how to imitate the behaviors they
entail. By wanting these things you put yourself under the power of the
people who control them; people who have hired me to teach you appropriate
behaviors and to judge your performance; people who are confident that my
opinions represent an acceptable version of their opinions. Therefore, if I
judge that your behavior is acceptable in view of their opinions, then the
same people will rely on my judgment and give you what you want. Whether
you agree with those opinions is irrevelant. All that matters is that you
be able to succeed at giving the appearance of agreeing with them, and that
is the basis on which I shall grade you. You may get a good grade even
though you overtly disagree with the "correct" opinions, provided that the
way you state and argue your disagreement agrees with my opinions about how
disagreements should be argued.
If you think that teachers should be unbiased and should not require students to appear to agree with them, you are mistaken. Bias is unavoidable, and those who pretend to be unbiased are
(perhaps unwittingly) doing a subde and powerful
[end page 86 / start page 87]
job of indoctrinating you without your awareness. What it
means to be considered well educated is to give the appearance of agreeing
with the common biases of those who consider you to be well educated.
Societies stay together because people have certain common opinions and
behave in accordance with them. To become a member of society you too must
learn how to conform to these opinions. This is true for the big society
and its opinions about wearing clothes, robbing, and killing. It is equally
true for the little society of workers in some field of study who have
opinions about how to study and produce. Nobody can move a muscle or think
a thought without doing so in conformity or opposition to some opinion
concerning how to move or think. Thus, bias is unavoidable. People consider
other people competent only when all of them behave in conformity to
similar basic opinions.
Do you still feel that all this is phony? Then give
up your concern for diploma, status, security, friends, and job. Strive for
personal insight, spiritual enlightenment, inner peace, and joy. Do these
things by yourself, or with the aid of a guru. But as you achieve these
goals you will discover that credits and grades are no longer important
because they merely represent other people's opinions of you and other
people's promises to give you material goods. Since you are not really
interested in status or goods, you will not care about credits or grades.
Therefore you should not come to school at all, or if you come, you should
accept whatever grades I give you without joy or sorrow, without anxiety or
protest.
Now let us realize an obvious fact. You need material goods to
survive; and you need the favorable opinions of others to stay out of jail,
get a job, and obtain the material goods. You need these things to survive,
whether you are merely a lazy drifter or a charismatic seeker of wisdom. If
you are a lazy drifter I will not help you, but if you are a sincere seeker
of wisdom, then I shall help you all I can.
The seekers of wisdom are extremely rare. I do not set myself up as dictator in judging who is a real seeker. Rather, I follow the requirements of my culture except on the rare
occasions when you and I mutually agree to give up our "rights" in the
[end page 87 / start page 88]
customary due-process system and enter into a very
special relationship. In these cases I am willing to give you a grade which
is better than your performance merits. I do this knowing that society
will think you have performed at the level of your grade. I am deliberately
helping you to fool society into giving you the favorable opinions and
material things you need to survive so you will be free to seek wisdom. In
doing this I violate an unspoken oath, contained in my teaching certificate
or contract, in which I tacitly promise to teach and judge you in
conformity with the interests and opinions of those who hire me. Since
society itself is my ultimate employer, the deliberate violation of this
obligation is an act of civil disobedience.
I think society will not judge me too harshly, since society has, however reluctantly, provided me with "academic freedom" which gives me the power occasionally to digress from
what I am supposed to teach and how I am to grade. Perhaps the purpose of
"the system" is to provide due process for the vast majority while also
providing escape routes for those rare individuals who prove themselves
worthy of special treatment by the fact that they are able to "beat the
system." If this is so, then society will wink approval when I help the
rare seeker of wisdom "beat the system." However, a teacher who too often
violates his oath to judge in accord with society's vested interests will
lose effectiveness. People will begin to realize that the teacher's grade
is meaningless, so the grade will no longer bring society's favorable
opinion and material goods. The teacher who wants to help the rare seeker
of wisdom must firmly create the general appearance of a strict traditional
grader.
I wish to be very harsh with teachers who deliberately violate the
customary standards of grading on a regular or routine basis. For example,
I know a teacher who had the habit of giving every student a course grade
of B at the beginning of the course Ñno higher and no lower grades were
permitted. This teacher claimed he was freeing students from anxiety and
artificial motivation so they could explore whatever they thought was truly
valuable. I claim that this teacher's conduct is not permissible, unless he
is engaging in an act of massive
[end page 88 / start page 89]
civil disobedience to overthrow a grading system he considers perverse. But
in that case, he should publicize his actions rather than hide them, and he
should dramatize his case by welcoming the penalties for "incompetence"
that his colleagues are obligated to impose upon him. Furthermore, I argue
that such a teacher is mistaken in his assumption that the grading system
is bad. The system is very good in serving the vocational interests of
students and society and sorting new members of society into appropriate
categories. The grading system is merely a symptom of a much more profound
evil: excess vocationalism and neglect of opportunities for
self-realization.
An Explanation to My Colleagues
When old-fashioned masters take on apprentices, or when gurus help truth seekers achieve
enlightenment, there is no due process. Students beg to place themselves
under the authority of a master who alone exercises total, unappealable
judgment in "passing" or "graduating" them.
Students seem to want the
intimacy and spiritual growth a guru provides, but they also want the
protection of due process. Since these two are incompatible, problems
arise. Students oppose the impersonal standardization of objective exams,
while simultaneously opposing the subjective way some instructors use
essays to grade students for their opinions. Students want warmth and
personal intimacy with teachers, but object to unequal treatment obtained
by students who brown-nose, play "teacher's pet," or express hostility
toward teacher's views. Some students think it is wrong to put any grade on
creative or expressive work in art, music, poetry, or philosophy.
This paper does not attempt to make explicit the prevailing mores of educational
evaluation. Rather, it deals with two general issues that grow out of the
increased emphasis on due process in grading. (1) Should teachers,
especially in the humanities, be permitted to teach their opinions and to
require students to understand those opinions? If so, can due process be
safeguarded? (2) Should teachers have the right to violate it by giving to
selected "worthy" students grades or
[end page 89 / start page 90]
credits they have not really earned in order to help them "beat the system"? Of course I
am expressing my personal views in this article. But I believe I am also
expressing the general justification for the entire grading system as
presently practiced. That is, I believe most teachers operate in such a
way that logic would require them to agree with my main points.
Grades, Opinions, and Cultural Transmission
To grade a student is to express an
opinion about the worth of his work. Even when students are ranked
according to relative performance in meeting standardized requirements, the
validity of the requirements and the decision to give rewards according to
rank are matters of opinion. Grades yield consequences in terms of
employment, salary, social mobility, and prestige. Why should teachers have
such power to affect a person's life by recording their opinions about him?
One important function of education is to transmit culture. A teacher who
is knowledgeable about some aspect of the culture and whose style
exemplifies acceptable behavior represents his culture. Certifying and
hiring a teacher confers upon him the authority to act in place of society.
Thus, a teacher's grade certifies a student's level of competence in
demonstrating cognitive and affective behaviors which the teacher, acting
in place of society, deems good. Grades help society sort out students and
allocate them to positions in such a way as to maintain the culture's
patterns.
This right of the school to transmit and enforce cultural
standards is challenged most severely in the area of student "discipline."
Regulations governing dress, hair style, student organizations, and
off-campus activity are challenged in court. Students' "rights" are
increasingly negotiated rather than handed down, conduct codes must be put
in writing, and due process must be followed when someone is accused of an
infraction. Yet, although it sometimes appears that "law and order" have
broken down, the school is nevertheless transmitting our culture.
Confusion and conflict over moral opinions in the culture are reflected in
confusion and conflict over disciplinary regulations in school. More to the
point, however,
[end page 90 / start page 91]
is the fact that students are learning to conform to society's changing opinions concerning
the importance of due process. When a culture uses violence to settle
disputes, so do students. When a culture emphasizes legalistic protection
of the rights of accused criminals, the students begin insisting upon their
rights. Thus, students receive good grades or "good-conduct standing"
depending on how well they conform to society's opinions concerning how to
behave or how to resolve conflicts over how to behave.
The right of the school to transmit and enforce cultural standards is even challenged in the
area of subject matter, although here the challenge is less severe than in
the area of "discipline." In every academic subject, students seem willing
to acknowledge a teacher's right to grade them on "facts" but not
"opinions." The history student is willing to be graded on how well he
recalls the facts about what happened, but not on his interpretations and
conclusions. The philosophy student acknowledges the teacher's right to
grade on how well he recalls the details of a particular philosophy or the
facts about the history of philosophy, but he objects to being graded on
his own philosophizing. Opinions about what subject matter to study are
also challenged. Teachers feel threatened about grading anything other than
demonstrable fact; thus, facts and details become central to both teaching
and grading. Science, mathematics, and language learning acquire larger
portions of the curriculum both because they deal with politically neutral
facts and details and because there appears to be little disagreement over
"correct" procedure in these disciplines. Students who insist on impartial
objectivity and the other rights of legal due process in grading therefore
bear great responsibility for creating an educational environment they
label depersonalized, inhumane, obsessed with trivial details, and
unresponsive to deeper needs.
Canons of Reasonableness Are Opinions
It is important to realize that opinions are unavoidable, even in the most
rigorous cognitive disciplines. Every discipline has certain canons of
reasonableness, which are opinions about
[end page 91 / start page 92]
what standards to apply in judging the acceptability and worth of a piece of
work. These opinions are agreed upon by a consensus of the experts and
constitute folkways to be mastered by neophytes.
Mathematics and science have the most explicitly stated and well-developed canons of
reasonableness, so that these disciplines appear farthest removed from
opinion. Yet even here, as in all disciplines, there are constant battles
over the canons of reasonableness. Perhaps we may define an expert as
someone who knows his field well enough at least to understand, and
perhaps to participate in, these battles. Mathematicians quarrel over the
reasonableness of proof by contradiction and question whether Goedel's
Proof demonstrates that the Russell-Whitehead concept of the well-formed
formula is unacceptable as a mandatory canon of reasonableness. Physicists
debate the relative merits of using wave or particle equations to
interpret and solve problems in subatomic mechanics. Psychologists battle
over Freudian versus behavioristic analyses of motivation, and Gestalt
versus associationistic theories of learning. Quarrels over canons of
reasonableness are attempts to define or demarcate the disciplines.
"Intuitionist" mathematicians say that someone who relies on universal
propositions is not doing mathematics; behavioral psychologists claim that
Freudian analysis is theology rather than psychology; artists disagree over
whether to admit industrial design to their discipline; poets now think
that rhyming is outmoded; "legitimate" theater is unsure whether to
encourage audience participation.
Although the canons of reasonableness
are subject to dispute in every discipline, the disputes themselves are
conducted in ways that the participants recognize as valid. So there are
canons of reasonableness for debating what should be the canons of
reasonableness! At some level the disputants, at least tacitly, accept
certain shared opinions about what is reasonable, or else the dispute
becomes an unscholarly brawl. Even in the scientific disciplines at the
upper levels the canons of reasonableness are so amorphous that the expert
must be constantly alert to keep up with them, and they are so complex
[end page 92 / start page 93]
and nebulous that the student can master them only through osmotic initiation.
Learning How to Think
Students often say they want to learn how to think rather than what to think. In
particular, students do not want to be subjected to propaganda or to be
required to agree with the teacher. Yet, by examining the nature of canons
of reasonableness, we have seen that how to think is itself a matter of
opinion. Somewhere along the line a student simply must accept the
authority of his teacher or of the community of experts if he wants to be
considered well educated.
Notice that being considered well educated does
not depend upon whether the canons of reasonableness really are correct or
whether a person really believes in them. All that a student has to do is
to understand the canons well enough to be able to give the appearance of
abiding by them whenever called upon to do so. The analysis is the same
whether we are talking about subject matter or disciplinary behavior, and
whether we are talking about teacher certification or pupil credits and
grades. The teacher's job is to stand in place of society by exemplifying
the folkways of the culture that has certified him and by grading students
according to how well they can give the appearance of exemplifying the same
folkways.
Teachers Should Teach Their Opinions
As a certified exemplar of his culture, a teacher has the right and the duty to teach his opinions.
Students learn what to think by listening to a teacher's substantive
opinions about the facts or "stuff" of the discipline. Students learn how
to think by observing a teacher operate according to the opinions known
as the "canons of reasonableness" and by imitating the teacher's
performance. In the more complex disciplines (e.g., mathematics,
philosophy, art) teaching a student how to think requires us to put aside
questions about what to think. If we want
[end page 93 / start page 94]
to teach how to think then we must temporarily adopt some one viewpoint, with all
its one-sided opinions, as a vehicle to explore its inner workings. For
example, we might select Plato's philosophy and spend a whole year learning
how his doctrines are interrelated, how to draw prescriptive conclusions
from his doctrines, and actually drawing conclusions about current events
from this ancient philosophy.
A student may legitimately be required to
state new conclusions not covered in class, but in conformity with the
teacher's viewpoint, as a way of demonstrating that he understands how to
think this way. Both teacher and student can do their jobs better when the
teacher presents opinions that he really believes in, because then there is
a more realistic exposure of the student to a mode of thought and a more
accurate evaluation by the teacher of whether the student has successfully
given the appearance of thinking that way. So long as it is clear that the
student is playing a game and need not really believe in these things,
there is no problem of indoctrination. Indeed, the teacher who presents his
opinions blatantly and one-sidedly thereby protects his students against
the normal kind of subtle indoctrination that takes place in courses which
purport to be even handed. Teachers cannot avoid teaching their opinions
and render a valuable service by teaching them. For example, most Americans
who teach use Standard American English (SAE) and require students to
speak and write SAE. The question has been raised whether this violates the
rights of racial and ethnic minorities. But no matter what dialect a
teacher uses, he will be conforming with some opinions while violating
others. And since SAE is the commonly accepted canon of reasonableness in
America, a teacher has the right not only to use it himself but also to
require students to use it. Whether SAE is really good or right is
irrelevant. SAE can be learned like a foreign language. To get ahead in
American society a person must know how to use it correctly when the
situation demands, as in applying for a job or seeking status among
professional colleagues.
Critics who attack the schools for requiring
students to conform to behavioral rules in the affective domain must
logically broaden their attack to the cognitive domain as well. In both
[end page 94 / start page 95]
areas we are asking the same question:
should society have the right to require participants in various activities
to give the appearance of behaving in conformity with commonly accepted
standards for those activities? People who emphasize the importance of due
process in handling discipline problems must logically give equal emphasis
to it in the evaluation of cognitive performance. But both the critics and
the supporters of the schools overlook an important point established
earlier. Schooling deals with appearance rather than reality. Schools help
people master the art of behaving in such a way as to create the appearance
of conformity to commonly accepted canons of reasonableness, and schools
evaluate how well students have mastered the art of giving those
appearances. School is not as serious as most people think, although it
becomes serious and even dangerous when we make the mistake of taking it
seriously.
Teachers and students do not then function as a voluntary
community of colearners or truth seekers, but as a community of sellers
and buyers, or judges and judged, engaged in socially prescribed tasks. All
of us are paid prostitutes to the social order. However, if special truth
seeking relationships are established, then within those relationships we
find a community of colearners where evidence of mastery is not
behavioristically observable, and one person can only intuit another's
level of self-realization./1 Education for self-realization is far more
important than schooling for enculturation and provides a domain where
credits, grades, and due process are irrelevant. But that is a subject for
a longer essay.
1. Kenneth R. Conklin, "Educational Evaluation and Intuition," Educational Forum 34, no. 3 (March 1970): 323-32.
[end of article]
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