> -----Original Message-----
> From: Judy Diamondstone [mailto:diamonju@rci.rutgers.edu]
> Sent: Friday, December 25, 1998 4:36 PM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: Robotized competitive grading
>
>
> Hi Eugene and everone else who skips Christmas day as a
> holiday.
I hear you... :-)
>Eugene, contrary to claiming individuals make no
> difference, Jay's message invited us to look across levels
> of the system, suggesting to me that we might plan and
> optimize _whatever difference_ (i.e., we can't predict
> our influence on larger scale organization, but we COULD
> perhaps collectively bias a shift in one direction or
> another by affecting our immediate environment) we can make.
I'm not afraid to be baised. Biased means to be alive. I do not think the
danger of gradeless hegemony is real now... :-)
As to collective action, I'm not sure that we ready for any collective
action regarding grading because, in my view, we are in phase of sharing
dissatification feeling about grading practices and brainstorming in words
and in practices. I don't beleive that for change we always have to preplan
our coordiantion to act. We can act without preplanning of our collective
action. In other words, we still should "find" our collectivity in regard
to Grand Sorting. This "discovery" will be probably in our "utopist",
"idealist," "isolated individual acts" and communication about them.
> In Jay's words:
> >t's a classic political problem: how to mobilize resources
> >>> from the lowest level to reorganize the intermediate level in
> >>> ways that are
> >>> permitted by the constraints from the higher level, resulting
> over time in
> >>> change in all three levels.
>
> That still doesn't address the issue of 'excellence' here
> vis a vis the diversity of our students and the functions of
> grading. At which level do you focus to define "excellence" ?
May I ask, who is in position to define unilaterally "excellence"? If it is
not define unilatreally, are students' voices allowed in defining what is
excellence? If multiple voices are allowed, what about disagreements about
what is "excellence"?
The buity of informal learning (e.g., learning how speak in a native tongue)
is that nobody pre-defines "excellence" and "standards" and meanwhile, we
are not swamped in the chaos of "anything can go." In my view, e-valuation
is a negotiable process that can't be separate from learning and practice
itself (like any gate keeping, sorting, grading, certification, and so on).
> I'm interested in how Jay, Eugene and others negotiate
> institutional constraints and define 'excellence' in their
> grading. Who or what gets an A?
"A" gets a student who reads my mind better than I do in such a way that I'd
attribute his/her reading of my mind to the high quality of student's
performance.
Happy New Year,
Eugene
>Are there criteria that
> apply across courses? How much of the grade is based on
> students' completed texts, apart from their processes of
> learning, their visible labor, their interpretation
> of the tasks assigned them (how difficult, how original),
> the distance between where they started and where they end up...
>
> Judy
>
> At 07:00 PM 12/24/98 -0800, you wrote:
> >Hi Jay and everybody--
> >
> >I agree with your suggestion of getting Grand Sorting out of education. I
> >also agree that this solution is finally institutional. However,
> I disagree
> >that "the isolated actions of individuals" do not play role in making
> >institutional change. Making historical analogy, I'd argue that
> slaveowners
> >who had left their slaves free contributed to abolishment of
> slavery. Their
> >act became a strong contribution in the public debates on slavery.
> >
> >Applying the situation to us, instructors, I think it would be strange to
> >put our efforts in "humanizing" Grand Sorting and inventing "better" and
> >"less harmful" ways of grading.
> >
> >As to students,
> >>she is now concerned solely about
> >> her record and the consequences for her future, and has explained her
> >> analysis in detail ... (there are perhaps some personality
> >> factors involved
> >> as well, as she somewhat grudgingly admits)
> >
> >Very few people can ignore pain... Grades are punishments for msitake
> >making and violating instructor's expectations. They are often
> detrimanetal
> >to quality of education.
> >
> >What do you think?
> >
> >Eugene
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Jay Lemke [mailto:jllbc@cunyvm.cuny.edu]
> >> Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 1998 5:18 PM
> >> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> >> Subject: Robotized competitive grading
> >>
> >>
> >>We could move to affirm Quality and
> >> Standards in our schools and universities at the same time we
> opt out of
> >> the Great Sorting. If we did, other institutions would tend to
> take over
> >> the Sorting, but society would change, in some unpredictable ways, and
> >> schools and universities would change in at least some, more
> predictable,
> >> positive ways. HOW we could opt out, or at least significantly
> reduce our
> >> institutional coupling into the Sorting, is a solvable problem of
> >> strategy.
> >> It requires looking at the relevant economics, politics, and ideologies
> >> from the individual scale (us and our colleagues, students) to the
> >> institutional scale (governance forms, budget dependencies) to the
> >> trans-institutional scale (resource inputs and trade-offs, political
> >> authorities). It's a classic political problem: how to
> mobilize resources
> >> from the lowest level to reorganize the intermediate level in
> >> ways that are
> >> permitted by the constraints from the higher level, resulting
> over time in
> >> change in all three levels. Just as this kind of social change
> cannot be
> >> accomplished by the isolated actions of individuals, so it
> also cannot be
> >> prevented by general social structures. It is similar in logic to Mike
> >> Cole's mesogenetic strategies, but easier insofar as it does
> not require
> >> the creation of entirely new institutional forms. It is also,
> contrary to
> >> general belief, not necessarily incremental or reformist: it can have
> >> radical, revolutionary, large-scale (and small-scale)
> consequences -- they
> >> just don't happen to be predictable.
> >>
> >> JAY.
> >>
> >> PS. sitting on my desk is an appeal from a student who still wants an
> >> A-minus grade from last spring changed to a full A grade ... this is no
> >> longer mainly an issue of quality, as I've already explained
> very clearly
> >> just what was lacking and she's tried to remedy some of the defects
> >> retroactively (partly successfully) ... she is now concerned
> solely about
> >> her record and the consequences for her future, and has explained her
> >> analysis in detail ... (there are perhaps some personality
> >> factors involved
> >> as well, as she somewhat grudgingly admits).
> >>
> >> ---------------------------
> >> JAY L. LEMKE
> >> PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
> >> CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
> >> JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
> >> <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
> >> ---------------------------
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
> Graduate School of Education
> Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
> 10 Seminary Place
> New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
>
> Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake
>