First Grades

Just finished grading my first papers and I'm always a little nervous about that. The line between expecting a lot out of students and being too tough is a blurry one that every professor must personally define. "Well, they really put forth a good effort," a professor might say, and so decide to overlook holes in the argument or inaccuracies with writing or imprecision with language.

Grade inflation is, I think, a rather subtle form of evil. It's subtle because when professors are participating in it or committing it or allowing it to continue it is very easy for us to think we're just being nice. But it is evil because it gives students a false sense that they have already achieved, that they need not press forward toward the mark (see Phil 3:12). In a sense, just like a student is breaking at least the commandments against stealing and bearing false witness when she commits plagiarism, so also is the professor when giving grades higher than she knows someone deserves just for the sake of being thought nice or, at least, not mean. The professor inflating grades steals a proper sense of the relationship between hard work and success. The professor inflating grades lies to students by making them believe that a mediocre effort is equivalent to a superior one. And education suffers. And no one is the better for it when that happens.