Merits of the Proposed Change
The major advantages of the proposed system can be briefly summarized with respect to the functions of grading.
1) The proposed system would also offer a student far more extensive evaluation of skills in problem solving, writing, group work, analysis, and argumentation than are now measured in exams. Students would no longer feel that many of their abilities were being overlooked, and that the Law School regarded examsmanship as the most important legal skill.
Evaluation under the proposed system would tend to minimize, rather than reinforce, the tensions and hostilities caused by competitiveness among law students. Some competitiveness is inevitable. The proposed system, however, would avoid the most destructive consequences by emphasizing individual development and eliminating the unitary status hierarchy imposed by the current grading system.
Finally, consistent feedback would remove a student's nagging doubts about how well he was doing, and allow him to devote more energy to learning legal skills. Evaluation would no longer serve as a punishing judgment which offers no help in the first year and discourages work thereafter.
2) The proposed system would make better use of students innate willingness to work and desire to improve. Top performance would be induced by:
* Peer group influence. Both in small groups and in individual assignments exchanged with classmates, students would be strongly motivated to produce work worthy of careful consideration by others and reflecting well on themselves.
* Pride of accomplishment. Most students in this law school are, if anything, over-achievers who will work hard on any assignment.
* Interest in the work. The student's initial enthusiasm is dampened, as it is now, by ever-increasing tension. A student would know how he was doing, and would retain confidence that he could continue to develop proficiency over three years. In addition, assignments under the proposed system might become increasingly flexible as the year progressed, so that a student could concentrate on points that particularly interested him.
3) The proposed system would bar employers from relying on first-year grades as the most important criterion in hiring decisions. Instead, the student would be free to submit to prospective employers such indices of ability as the student feels best reflect his ability. The most important of these would be samples of his written work done either in or out of class. A portfolio of the student's work might, at his option, include exam papers on which he had done well.
We believe that the proposed system would give Harvard graduates substantial advantage in competing for jobs with graduates of other schools. Employers turn to Harvard now because of the quality of education here. Nevertheless, Harvard prematurely labels a large number of students as failures, giving a prospective employer the idea that these students are mediocre. The proposed system would stress that all Harvard graduates will make very competent lawyers. In addition, the top students here--if not most students here--will be able to compile sufficiently impressive portfolios of class work to compete at no disadvantage with top students from other schools.
4) If the proposed system of evaluation were adopted, membership in these organizations would be determined by considerations other than class rank. Honoraries must be removed from the arena of first-year exams.
Lack of first-hand knowledge of these organizations makes it difficult for us to do more than suggest how new members might be selected. The Law Review might choose all new members by means of a writing competition. (The Yale Law Journal now recruits all members by means of a writing competition, in which students not elected receive course credit for their work.) The Review might also consider having more than one competition a year, and expanding the number of members it elects.
We have already suggested that the Board of Student Advisors might consider increasing its membership and its activities. Legal Aid might recruit all members on the basis of interest.
Already, we know of a broadly based concern in our class that the current system of grading is grossly inefficient. Harvard attracts an abundance of first-rate students each year, but has become obsessed with discriminating among us, rather than developing us to our fullest capacities. Fundamental change in the grading system is central to reversing these priorities.
We ask that the Dean appoint faculty members to meet with representatives of this committee to discuss the ideas contained herein. We believe that changes along the lines we have suggested must be made this year. They must be made in time for grade-based organizations to consider alternative means for selecting members. And they must be made in time for this class to approach the end of its first year thinking about law and not grades