There is something destructive in all grades whether they be A's or B's. It is their inarticulateness. They are the stuttering of a powerful Jehovah. Learning is not interested in being told how good or bad it is; it is interested in being responded to, in being shown what is being done wrong. Let us look at the question logically. Socratically, what is the point in telling a student he is stupid if he is stupid; and if he is not stupid, what is the point of telling him that he is?

This insistence that learning craves response, however imperfectly put, is the best contribution in i.e. It will come up later in considering alternatives to present methods; the trouble with this polemic issue of i.e. was that it did not study other ways. Even so, its blunderbuss onslaught was useful in stimulating thought, especially among some students who would ordinarily never think about education and what it ought to mean.

By and large the student's complaint is that grades are inconsistent and inaccurate, and that they do not measure the most important parts of a course. This student frankly does not care to read everything on a reading list with the same degree of attention, and he resents the College's willingness to single him out as less educated than others on this account.

There are two main lines of defense for the system of grades. One, unquestioned, is that grades stimulate work which would not be done if grades were removed. The reformers contend that a different system could produce superior stimuli and render grades unnecessary. Such arguments vary, depending upon the reform.

Leighton Defends

The other defense upholds the importance and validity of grades, as they are. Dean Leighton says, "You must have some measure of academic performance," and he believes that grades are perfectly suitable. Showing grade curves which correlate with scores on Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Interpretations of this sort do not go unquestioned, however, for John U. Monro '34, director of Financial Aid, argues that while the percentage of students on Dean's List has risen over the years, it has not kept pace with the concurrent rise in SAT scores.

All these statistics actually reflect is the quality of prediction afforded by SAT scores, in terms of later grades. They say nothing about what a grade is intended to measure, or how consistently it measures even that unknown.

College administrators and graduate school admissions officers appear to be satisfied with grades as forecasters. Yet they insist they do not rely entirely on grades to judge people, saying that when they know someone competing for a fellowship or prize, grades become secondary to personal appraisal. They explain this apparent contradiction by arguing that only grades can work on a large scale, because of the idiosyncrasies of far-flung deans making recommendations.

They believe that grades have a great prediction value, and they will not readily discard them. Some, like Education School Dean Francis Keppel '38, doubtless feel "that American education is not only a system of education, but of selecting people for various walks of life."

Inherent Dangers

The belief that grades must be retained rests upon more than the fear that without them there would be no criteria for awarding fellowships or admitting students to graduate schools. More important is the apprehension that without a recurrent check in the form of grade-sheets there would be no impulse for students to do any work at all, and the structure of Harvard education would come tumbling down.

The status quo faction may concede some faults in the system, but ultimately it will argue, as Keppel does, that students who allow low grades to become ends in themselves are immature. He says, "The dangers of the grading system are inherent in the immaturity of the people operating under it. In removing the grading system you do not remove the immaturity that leads students to seek unworthy objects."

European students may survive without frequent grading but some feel that the different cultural background of the American makes this impractical. As Monro notes, "people have an awful time shedding their grade consciousness when they get here, after having it through their earlier schooling in the form of report cards, achievement tests, vocational tests, scholarship tests, and College Boards." He points to some high schools where competition for college admission is intense and observes, "This is where the gradefactories really begin."

On the other hand, systems without grades, or with greatly deemphasized grades, have worked in American college education.

At two small colleges, Reed (570 students) and Bennington (309 students), grades are kept but not communicated to the students. Reed students do not learn grades unless some of their work is unsatisfactory, in which case they are told C or above is "satisfactory," C- is "barely satisfactory," D is "barely passing," and F is "failing," telling the students in words, not letters. Students and instructors confer regularly about the course work, and Reed avoids public recognition in the form of Dean's Lists, prizes, etc.