Friday, May 06, 2005
I’m the Anti-Grade Inflation Czar (or, Words of Comfort for Teachers in their Time of Trial)
Who knows exactly how the problem arose. What’s clear is that grade inflation infects our entire educational system, from art hour at the neighborhood kindergarten to advanced seminars at Harvard, where the old “gentleman’s C” has become the gentleman’s A- with opportunities for extra credit.
It’s hard to blame the kindergarten teacher for praising the child whose finger painting technique produces one big, goopy gray-brown blot. The pedagogical failure seems more criminal when a college senior receives a passing grade on a sloppy, illogical, shallow essay from a teacher who finds it easier to graduate the student than to confront him with the truth of his deficiencies. But by then it’s far too late. Don’t get me wrong. Normally, the worst thing in the world for a teacher to do is merely to criticize, abuse, and reject. Under ordinary circumstances, only encouragement and careful guidance lead to success. But my friends, we don’t live in ordinary times. Harsh times call for harsh measures.
And so, it has fallen upon me to address the problem. As the government’s new Anti-Grade Inflation Czar, in the National Office of Grade Inflation Veto Enforcement (NOGIVE), I have the task of countermanding inflated grades from coast to coast, and preventing undue praise.
The war against terrorism requires that we address this problem sooner rather than later. Experts predict there will come a time when all able-minded Americans will be called upon to contribute to the national security effort by serving as intelligence analysts working part-time out of their homes. Our mental resources will be sorely tested on a daily basis, and we’ll need to be prepared, thoroughly, rigorously, uncompromisingly. In other words, no babies! I expect all of you to shape up. Ah-ah! quit your whining! Study diligently and you’ll have nothing to fear.
The rest of you can expect to be dealt with severely. The sad truth is that today’s soft-hearted teachers are incapable of preventing the inevitable national catastrophe. Thus, my master plan relies on unlimited outsourcing. Already some of the harshest grading in this country actually takes place aboard factory ships in international waters. There, supervised by officers under my command, foreign nationals with expertise in numerous academic subjects, many of them captured on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, spend grueling hours grading papers and exams. And they don’t simply record a grade; they compose accurate, cutting comments formulated to shame our students into producing the kind of honest effort they would give their football or soccer coach. Back home, our teachers must read these withering comments aloud in class. Student grades, even on minor assignments, must be posted in their local papers, next to the police reports.
Another method we employ is called “rendition.” When a student turns in work so abysmal that it affects a teacher’s mind like a punch to the gut, we hand it over to special readers in places like Syria and Uzbekistan where grading methods that would almost be illegal here are standard. These well-trained graders have degrees that are higher and scarier than PhDs. Although international agencies claim that the grades and comments such readers produce may amount to torture, we feel that the program is justified because it works. The harrowing comments that come back, believe me, reach into the souls of our wayward students and set them straight. They are calculated to startle and transform our students into the academic soldiers our nation desperately needs.
Make no mistake about it, the classroom is a battleground, and as educators we are on the front lines, continually taking hostile fire, and—wait a minute! Who am I kidding? I’m not the Anti-Grade Inflation Czar. It’s all been a wonderful dream, but the fact is, I’ve got a stack of exams in front of me as big as the town dump, and no one can help me with this work, and so I have to maintain my own equilibrium as I weigh the value of every idea and expression and judge the students’ efforts in the light of what I tried to teach them, taking into account my own failures. Like a God of mercy whose love emanates not from the security of his own perfection but from a maturing knowledge of this imperfect world in which, if mercy does not season human justice, our spiritual failure is inevitable—like a God of mercy, the teacher has a cross to bear.
A random selection from more than 300 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
Joe Chaney -- I’m the Anti-Grade Inflation Czar (or, Words of Comfort for Teachers in their Time of Trial) / More essays by Joe
Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- More essays by Jeanette
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, and Ken Smith.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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Recent pieces
Making Up on the South Shore -- As we’re approaching the Beverly Shores station I glance over and see the woman looking into a pocket mirror. Yes, you’re pretty, sister. Don’t worry about that. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out a big pink tackle box, sets it on her lap and opens it up, revealing a whole assortment of little tubes and jars. She selects one tube, squirts some stuff onto her fingertips and starts rubbing it onto…her face. Whoa! What are you doing? By Jeff Nixa.
Time Travel in Paris -- I had studied maps of Paris and read French literature and the Parisian works of American expatriates like Stein, Hemingway, Baldwin, and Miller. I had fallen in love, of course, with my French teachers in high school and college. My prior romance with the language, art, stories, and landmarks animated the city. I remember a morning when the sun emerged and lit up the domes and towers across from where my friend and I stood on a right bank quay, and the world itself seemed like a pure gift, a fresh beginning. By Joe Chaney.
Celebrating Magna Charta Day -- Runnymede, the site of the signing of the Magna Charta, loomed right up there in my imagination with Stonehenge: a couple of historical sites that had captured my interest early on. I can still see surly, pimply-faced, bad King John in some old movie being strongly urged, that is coerced, into signing this document where he promised to behave: “The Lion in Winter,” I think. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Life on the Default Setting -- That foam cup will still reside in the county landfill when our great grandchildren are driving their offspring in a nuclear-powered mini-van to gymnastics classes on the moon. "Will you look at those kids jump!" By then the landfill will be the tallest manmade feature in north-central Indiana, visible from earth orbit. Astronauts will steer their sleek ships by the neon glow of all our waste. By Ken Smith.
It’s a Long, Long, Road from May to December -- Over the years Kurt Weill’s music has inspired a legion of devotees who want to be a part of his creepy luster. Some fifty years after Weill’s death Lou Reed took a stab at getting in on this kind of cool. Now, Lou is just about as cool as there is too. In the 1960s he co-founded the rock band, The Velvet Underground, and as the story goes, only a couple of thousand copies of their first album were sold, but everyone who listened to it formed their own band. The man gives new meaning to having no vocal range, and yet conveys everything that needed to be said. By Jonathan Nashel.
Pomp and Happenstance -- Truly, the moments in our lives that really deserve a brass band and velvet robes and a basso profundo voice saying “Something BIG has happened here!” are most often happenstance, unexpected. Maybe you’ve had the experience of reading a novel or seeing a film that shifts you, profoundly, to another axis – that peoples your interior with ideas or characters that become guides – or cautionary figures – for the rest of your life. Or maybe you’ve had a conversation with someone that suddenly made your world slide sideways as you questioned your faith – or gained a new sense of it. Those are moments that warrant pomp and circumstance, but they often pass quietly, despite their transformative legacy. By April Lidinsky.
A Kid and a Rock -- But every night I come home, the kid is hammering on the rock. He’s like a little John Henry. Small stones dislodged and fell to the dirt but then larger ones emerged, and eventually the worst one of all: a granite field stone the size of a pumpkin embedded in there till the end of the world. “This is hard,” he said. “Yeah, it is,” I said, watching the woman glare at me from hell. I left town for vacation. Two weeks. I was carrying an armload of sleeping bags back around the house when I stopped. The concrete monster was gone. Just a circle of rock dust in its place, littered with stones and in the center, the big granite pumpkin. I smiled. He did it. Dang. I’m going to go hug that kid. Buy them both a pizza or something. By Jeff Nixa.
True to Type -- We talk about what we are reading, what we have read, what we’ve read about reading (God bless the Sunday New York Times Book Review section!) and what we are planning to read next. Standing in front of the bookcase, my daughter-in-law, Nancy, and I were having one of those discussions. I think that she was holding Bobbie Ann Mason’s Clear Springs; she flipped to the back and saw the page that tells which font was used in printing the book and a bit of history about that font. Nancy said, “I can’t believe that they waste a page putting that in there. Nobody cares about that!” Danger! A big, evil-mother-in-law-trap just waiting to ensnare me there! Recognizing it in time, I pulled the shreds of my seldom-worn garment of tact around myself and did not blurt out, “Are you nuts! That’s a great thing! I love it when they put that in! It’s like frosting on a cookie; it makes it ever so much better!” By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Jump Ball at the Hoosier Primary -- I can’t believe it! At long last, Indiana matters during the national campaign season. We’re in the news every day. We Hoosiers have been crafty, too, not tipping our hand as to whom we favor. We’ve made Indiana a real battleground state, forcing the candidates to pour ad dollars into our communities in a despairing sort of Vegas binge. Here in the second congressional district, we’re a battleground within a battleground. And permit me to announce loudly that I’m an “undecided voter.” You guessed it: a battleground within a battleground within a battleground, the center of a political universe in which not knowing what you want makes you royalty. By Joe Chaney.
Doing Algebra -- I’m doing quite a bit of algebra these days, helping our young mathematician solve homework problems. I last took algebra from Mr. Webb way back in the year 19-mumble-mumble, when President Nixon was still lovingly adding names to his enemies list. My strongest memory from Mr. Webb’s class was that he never learned his students’ names. He called everyone Babe. No matter who you were, he’d say, “Babe, put the next problem on the board. Thanks, Babe.” But he must have been a pretty good teacher, because after a quick refresher I can solve a basic problem. And so for the moment I still have a role to play in our teen’s life. By Ken Smith.
Skirting the Issue -- Now, Land’s End and other sensible clothiers exploit this swimsuit anxiety brilliantly to play on both the intelligence and self-loathing of grown-up women. For one thing, you practically have to have your Ph.D. in Swimsuit-ology to wade through the thick catalogues hitting mailboxes now, with bold headlines promising “Flattering Solutions” – implying every body is a problem. In fact, you can shop by “anxiety zones,” choosing which body part you think most needs to be slimmed, supported, disguised, and, somehow, covered, all while revealing more than most of us care to face in full-length mirrors, fully clothed. By April Lidinsky.
Baby, It’s Cold Inside -- After you see these photos you will probably wonder what we can do to prevent every single last iceberg from melting away and becoming history. Here, I confess, I have no idea. I’ve heard it all before: lower carbon footprints, drive hybrids, recycle with abandon, hate the oil companies, love to read in the dark, you name it. And you know what: none of this is going to bring back these icebergs or grow new ones or do anything to stop our relentless destruction of the earth, let alone quell the naysayers on global warming. I recently heard on NPR that an iceberg the size of Connecticut just broke apart and is melting away. Now, I’ve been in Connecticut many times and I still can’t wrap my head around this little fun fact. What can possibly be the size of a state? By Jonathan Nashel.
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