"Grades in courses are a necessary evil, but for the exceptionally qualified student they might not be necessary"--Kenneth B. Murdock '16, chairman of the Committee on General Education.

"People are examined too much and too frequently"--Richard T. Gill '48, Senior Tutor of Leverett House and a member of the Committee on Educational Policy.

"Brilliant students can be ruined by a police-type exam given in great detail because of the grading system"--Paul H. Buck, former dean of the Faculty.

"Too few students realize that God is not grading their bluebooks"--Wallace MacDonald '44, director of freshman scholarships.

These opinions represent some fundamental doubts about Harvard education, suggesting that the College's educational methods are unimaginative and old-fashioned, with many students caught up in a mesh of exams, papers, gradesheets, and course requirements.

Grades draw attention because they underlie the whole system. Except for tutorial, all formal education at the College is evaluated in twelve steps from A to E. Lectures, reading, quizzes, essays are all treated as things to be marked, or the stuff from which to make an examination.

If grades actually spurred students to intellectual achievement, this approach would be reasonable. They are in fact only a poor substitute for personal criticism from a respected teacher, the best incentive to learning.

Grades suggest first that the ideas and facts presented are not in themselves interesting, and second that what is worth knowing about a given subject has definite, readily attained limits. The A symbolizes them, and sets a limit of its own on effort in a course.

Sophisticated students may ridicule the A and those who seek it. But when they accept a lower mark, perhaps a B-, as minimal for self-respect, they are mislead into believing that B- stands for an important, measurable level of learning.

Then there is a third type of student, who is immediately inhibited by grades, courses and the other IBM-directed trivia of Harvard education. He wants to study some problem deeply, but does not because he feels he must make high marks in all courses, for the sake of the Scholarship Committee, or for a graduate school, or for his parents.

Harvard's emphasis on grades can show worst in final examinations. Finals can and should be educational tools in themselves, but now they tend to deemphasize memory, and a certain amount of vaguely knowledgeable generalization. Questions which amount only to identifications, either of terms or places, or which permit an A answer based only on general information typify this pointless approach.

An exceptional professor will ask a question that requires the student to take a stand and draw together the material of the course. He will have to do some thinking, and whatever grade he gets, he will have gained something from that examination.

The fact-memory exam has only one justification--the assumption that tests are only to show how much has been learned, and need not be learning experiences themselves. This slothful attitude defends the exam which allows only one answer to one question (like "What was the center of cotton production in the United States in 1940?").

When even a little thought is asked, or where more than one answer is correct, then the inaccuracies that characterize grading here explode the system. Even teachers and administrators here doubt how well grades measure, and some begin to question just what they do measure.

A traditional complaint against grades--the psychological effect of continual measuring--is noted here, but never becomes an important argument.