Harper College - Halcyon Yearbook (Palatine, IL)

Page 8 text:

your inadequacies. Can a person be truly educated in this atmosphere of punishment? This punitive nature of the traditional grading system gives a student what psychologists call neg- ative feedback. When a student has trouble in a class, the wasted time, money, and effort are com- bined with a failing grade that remains with him, possibly producing a reluctance to attempt school again. lf he does decide to take more classes, the negative feedback will influence his attitude and learning ability. Even the student who has never experienced the trauma of failing a course has the constant guillotine ot grades hanging over his head. This pressure could prevent him from delving into any area which truly interests him, where he might possibly learn more in the course than the objec- tives which would hurt his grades. As a result of the constant pressure placed on the student, you see many students whose person- alities are adversely affected, and who suffer the many side effects of school such as Habscence of job or loss of friends. This negative feedback is the opposite of the desired result of education. ln the ideal system, effort and the acquisition of knowledge are awarded positive feedback. A system with positive feedback will encourage students to branch out and try new subjects, and will promote a good attitude towards education. The third major fault of the traditional grad- ing system tas mentioned earlierl is that it does not foster true educational goals. Instead, it re- wards cramming and good attendance neither ol which necessarily aid in acquiring knowledge. The permanence of a poor grade is contrary to true educational goals. After all, a course is sup- posed to offer the student the opportunity to acquire new knowledge. lf a student fulfills this goal, only the fact should be recorded - not that he failed to reach the goal previously. Because of these and other faults, many ofthe schools in the country have been changing their grading policy. Some of the changes that have been made are to a total pass-fail system, to a pass-fail system for electives, to an A-B-C no-credit system. Some of the schools experimenting with these systems are fvl.l.'l., Malcolm X junior College, Gakton Com- munity College, and the University of lllinois at Champaign-Urbana. Four years ago, the U of l started a limited pass-lail course a semester, and it could not be in their major or minor lield or a required course fsuch as English llll or English l02l. They have 6 since changed the system so that there is no limit on the number of pass-fail courses that can be taken per semester, and pass-fail may not be used for required courses or courses in your major field. This system makes the grade point average directly reflect a student's work in his field. Under this system, students are encouraged to broaden their knowledge by taking courses from outside their field without the fear of doing poorly and having it affect their grade point average. This system has been successful at U of l as evidenced by the increased number of classes that students are allowed to take under it. This system allows the student the choice of grading policy that he wants for many of his courses and still furnishes and evaluation of his progress. Massachusetts Institute of Technology was an- other school which adopted Pass-Fail. lVl.l.T., how- ever, adopted the policy without limitations. Due to the fact that lVl,l.T. is attended by the academ- ically superior, the experiment did not succeed. These genius students need continual reinforce- ment of their high desire to complete and to achieve superiority, and this is not given Linder the pass- fail system. This system cannot be adopted by schools catering to the genius and genius-fringe. lt is primarily aimed at schools who embody the average and below average students, who do com- prise over half the students in the world. The need for competition and success in scholastics is not as important to these students, they have been con- ditioned through years of schooling to accept the fact of being average, merely by watching their own development. The schools catering to the academically elite cannot truly become educational institutions until any formal type of grading is abandoned by all. This change will not occur un- less the importance of grades is justifiably de- creased by employers, and a type of recommenda- tion grading is established. Another grading system that is new and has many possibilities is the A-B-C no-credit system that is used by Oakton Community College and Malcolm X junior College. The A-B-C no-credit system is designed specifically to eliminate the punishment of the student twice for poor work in a class. ll' he does poorly, he is penalized by the wasted of his time and money, but not again on his transcript or grade point average. Through a tele- phone inquiry it was learned that Nlalcolm X is functioning quite well under its A-B-C no-credit system. Oakton was not willing to say how they were functioning under the system because they

Page 7 text:

ABC You have been operating under the A-B-C-D grad- ing system ever since you entered the first grade. While this system may have been good for your early schooling, it has recently come under increas- ing attack. Up until a few years ago, secondary schools and higher institutions of learning used the A-B-C-D-F system. However, recently many of the more liberal educational institutions have experi- mented with other grading systems. These range from 3 level grading, instead of the usual 5, to merely sending out a progress report. In the last year even some of the more conservative schools, including technical institutes, have adopted the more liberal and educationally type of grading. The history of grading policy at Harper is a Harper is very simple one. Harper has always used the standard 5 level grading system and also Harper is a very simple one. Harper has always used the standard 5 level grading system and also has had a fairlystrict selective retention program. lf a student had a bad first semester, he could be dismissed from school without even having one semester on probation. This has been changed, for is being changedi to a certain extent. In the last six months there has been a con- tinuous effort to get the grading policy of Harper revised to a more educational type of system. This effort has been contributed to by faculty, admin- istration, and for the most part, students. The present attempt at revision has followed a steady course. It started as a student complaint, advanced to a talk with administrators, continued into stud- ent research, then blossomed into student petition- ing, letter writing to other colleges, and joint stu- fac-admin hearings, and finally settled and is ready for the Board of Trustees to act upon. lt is rather watered-down from the A-B-C no-credit stage, however, it bears the most necessary of changes. Hopefully by student standards it will carry the - No Credit following provisions: A student may retake a D or an F course of which the higher grade received for the course will be used on the transcript and figured into the G.P.A. Also, the date of with- drawal from courses will be extended until one week prior to the completion of the semester. lt is felt that these revisions are only a foot in the door to a complete overhauling of evluative methods. The first thing to be considered is the purpose of grading systems. The ideal purpose of a grad- ing system is to measure the amount of knowledge gained by an individual. However, in practice, grades have become a measure of how well one did as compared to his classmates, oneis class attendance, one's popularity with the teacher, and, only to a small degree, one's acquired knowledge. The gap between the ideal and the actual has led to much investigation of the traditional grading system. The general faults of the traditional are that it is numitive, that it is not educational, and that it is psychologically bad. An investigation into these faults will yield the motivations for the new and different grading systems. It should be quite obvious to anyone who takes the time to examine the traditional type of grad- ing system, under which most students have been silently suffering for up to 16 years without ques- tion, that it is of a quite punitive nature. On the grounds that getting an education is beneficial, there is no reason why anyone who is trying to better himself should be punished. The system as it stands will punish a student who has tried, but not quite achieved the level of his classmates, with- pit regard to what advances he may personally have rnade. lt will say to him, l care not what gains you have made in personal knowledge. You have not brought youself up to the level of you classmates, therefore you must be punished for 5

Page 9 text:

xiq.3 .if'Q1 - 'fi tiff. yew?-i' 'C wi. i s 'J .' ? it1ia:s'42sHsffts1r2ie1 sNnU X' 1 - ,fit f 0 Donn B. Stansbury, Registrar l wish to commend the student body for their interest in Harper 's grading system and to compliment them for approaching desired changes through the appropriate channels, l would support the recommendation of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars to have all course worle attempted reflected on the students permanent record. The recommendation does not state that all grades earned must be included in the cumlative grade point average. lf Harper approves a repeat policy only one of the computing the cumulative grade point average. l support the new policy which extended the length of time a student was allowed to drop a course and receive a W , lam confident that additional changes in the grad- ing structure will be considered when appropriate research reflects the changes would beneht the members of our student body. .- ,vs felt they had not used the system long enough for a reasonable determination. ln reply to letter sent out recently to other schools regarding the acceptability of credits from an A-B-C no-credit institution, the following schools, among other replied positively: Univer- sity of California at Berkeleyg Harvardg Univer- sity of Mischigang University ofChicagog Northerng University of lllinois fby telephonelg and South- ern lllinois University. This indicates that junior Colleges can have more liberal grading systems than four year schools and their students will not run into problems transferring credits. It has become increasingly obvious that a true evaluation of one's acquistion of knowledge is impossible on any standardized form. lt is import- ant that all educators and administrators think rationally enough to recognize this fact. ln a truly educational system a student will be allowed to move at his own pace on his own curriculla in an area which he has chosen to delve into, not one into which some harried counselor has thrown him - continued on page 54 7