Much ado about marks
I remember in my 10th grade after a particularly difficult mathematics exam, almost all of the class had flunked the test. I happened to top that test, and had scored 86/90. I remember being smug about it in front of my parents until my father asked, “why did you lose these four marks?” I was shocked. And this came from someone who rarely cared about marks. Somehow, irrespective of what we consciously choose to believe about marks and their value, subconsciously and intuitively - we all measure our worth and potential success using them. The importance given to a faulty metric like marks scored in examination will always be a a polarizing issue. Enough people know that standardized tests are unreliable indicator of the traits that they are deigned to evaluate - intelligence, learning or application of knowledge. But still a majority of us care deeply about marks. In an educational system that is built around scoring marks, and not learning - nobody benefits.
I recently scored poorly in a paper I worked really hard for. Really hard. And not just me, almost all of my class, including really bright people were graded poorly in this test with scanty justifications of why it was so. This of course generated unrest among the class about the grading rubric and the seemingly arbitrary nature of it. And even now, we’re still trying to understand how can we go about it. However, the very nature of our educational system is one such that affords almost no recourse mechanisms to students like us who feel that they’ve been unjustly marked down. That is an institutional failure in as much as we don’t value student feedback in education at all, but that’s not the topic of this post. This event made me think about how we, in turn, think about marks.
I hate caring about marks, but I do, deeply. I stress incessantly about scoring well and put in as many efforts I can into it, so do many of you. We all understand that scoring marks is not in any way, a good indicator of learning. I’d say it is not an indicator at all. Tests are a system, and like any other system, they can be gamed. What surprises me the most are those brand of professors who think that not giving marks is somehow a sign of superiority. You and I have encountered many teachers/professors like this, who seem to have the power to convert the spare marks not given into some kind of valuable resources like gold. They must have this power! For otherwise I cannot fathom the justification for this marking scheme.
I think as time passes, you start to forget your past world views. These same professors were at one time, students like us who cared deeply about marks and whine about the same professors. However, as soon as they cross over to the other side, it’s a clean slate. It’s the same dogma. I also think you need to be highly arrogant to be able to believe that you have the judgement to unilaterally state that no one you have ever taught is even remotely good. As a brilliant professor of mine recently said in a conversation around failing students, “I just don’t like to play god”. Alas, some professors start liking to play god. The other part of the erasure of past memories is how many of the professors are either not cognizant, or simply don’t care, about how their arbitrary marking schemes affect students down the line. A grade up or down can quite literally change people’s lives, at least in the short run. My argument is not that more often that not, professors tend to give incorrect marks, it is that for the times that they do, there is no way to either correct that failure, or address it.
Culpability v. responsibility
In my episode with Ashish Kulkarni, he made a very interesting point about how we think about what is the responsibility of teachers. I was arguing that teachers should bear the responsibility to ensure that their students learn, and enjoy that subject. Ashish in turn argued that it is not even about responsibility, the bare minimum that the professors can and should do it to make sure that it is not because of them that the student loses interest in that subject. In other words, may professors are culpable for killing the curiosity inside of their students. Which is what the tweet above also says. In our educational system, we think polarizing-ly. It is either only the student’s fault or only the professor’s fault. When the ratio is somewhere around 80 (teacher) -20 (student). If a class as a whole does badly, it is either a teaching failure (because a collective learning failure only happens in that case) or a grading failure. In both cases, it is the professor who must take the blame. But they rarely do. It is surprising how quickly they disregard the possibility of their own shortcomings.
Most great teachers and professors I know of don’t care about marks beyond what they’re institutionally bound to. I would also assume most of them also do not measure their own teaching by the marks that their pupil score. They shouldn’t. The same professor who I mentioned above has a great standard for what he thinks counts as learning - he says that as long as that course gave you some new lens or perspective to look at, if not the world at large, but some parts of it - that’s a job well done. And I wholeheartedly agree with this.
If I were a professor with absolute discretion, I would not take any exams, in any form. All assessments and projects would be optional and voluntary. The point of education for me is to have fun. To run along with ideas and ask as many questions one can. Tests, exams, deadlines and submissions are not fun. But guess what, they do not even prepare you for the real world that may may argue is not about having fun. Technically, if real world is all about earning money, then even this argument fails. It is increasingly becoming the case that you do not have the make the trade off between doing what you love and earning money. But keeping that aside, it is worth asking yourself the question as to what education means for you, and what it means for the educational institute you are studying in.
I’m trying to become free of marks dependence, and optimize for learning. Learning > Marks. I hope that professors also get on this learning curve.