But psychological effects are not really considered too important, for while the College is ready to provide advice, and psychiatric help if necessary, it will scarcely discard an entire educational framework to solve problems it considers essentially personal. Change will only come if teachers and students feel that more can be learned, in some circumstances at least, without grades.

Student discontent is hard to judge. The student has no Committee on Educational Policy to express his grievances, and while the subject might be treated in a Student Council report, it is probably too involved for that group to handle.

i.e.'s Damnation

One of the few vocal expressions of dissatisfaction was last June's i. e., a general damnation of Harvard education which suffered because its heat was grades, i.e. said:

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 it the point in telling a student he is stupid if he is stupid; and if he is not stupid, what is the point in telling him that he is?

However imperfectly put, this insistence that learning craves response was i.e.'s best contribution. The magazine offered no constructive suggestions, but its blunderbuss assault was still useful, for it stimulated quite a bit of thought, much if it among students who had never previously considered education abstractly.

By and large, these are the students' complaints with grades:

They are inconsistent.

They do not measure the most important parts of a course, and they suggest that each item on a reading list or each lecture in a course deserves equal attention.

One defense for grades upholds their validity. Dean Leighton says, "You must have some measure of academic performance." He believes that grades are quality of SAT prediction, in terms of a perfectly suitable measure, pointing to grade curves which correlate with scores on Scholastic Aptitude Tests. But of course all these figures show is the later grades. Neither standard is necessarily meaningful.

College administrators and grad school admissions officers say that they are satisfied with grades as forecasters, though they readily admit that a personal appraisal is superior, when they personally know the candidates for some award. But the idiosyncrasies of far-flung deans limit the wide application of such an approach.

The second is more important. It argues that without a recurrent check in the from of grade sheets, there would be no impulse for students to do any work at all. They contend essentially, with Keppel, that though some faults may exist in the current system, student immaturity is the basic problem, and would not be removed by removing the present goals of their immature student.

While European students generally get by without constant grading, grade consciousness is instilled in the American youth all through school, culminating in a terrific batery of tests his last year in school. It is felt that this grade emphasis stimulates much of the learning in American education.

Reformers argue that grades are not a necessary cause of learning. They argue that several institutions have removed grades from the college experience of varying groups or students, and without bad effects on learning.

Reed (570 students) and Bennington (309 students) keep grades but do not communicate them to students, using conferences to inform students about the quality of their work.