Rant on Grading

The thing that struck me most when reading the articles for Professor Crowley's class was the idea of rubric grading. More specifically, how in one instance (A Mania for Rubrics, by Thomas Newkirk), rubric grading was used to grade kindergartners' drawings. This idea alone is completely absurd, and for more than one reason. First, grading kindergartners is just ridiculous; these children shouldn't have to worry about what grade there block castles get, they should be learning about social interactions and the simplest mechanics of academic requirements. Second, the idea that you can slap a letter or number grade on art is completely ignorant and, worse yet, damaging, especially if there is only one grading system. With only one system of grading, everything is scaled the same way, giving no account for differences in style, personal skill, or personal taste. After all, we all have friends who do not like the same style of music as us, but is there type of music worse than the type we listen to? Art comes down to taste and personal
attraction to the piece, as does writing.

Now writing an essay or an exam is a little easier to grade than artwork. Does the student get their point(s) across in a meaningful and precise manner? Do they write about the topics they were asked to? Did they include enough outside sources and citations? Essays and class papers can be scored by rubric (though I would not prefer it) rather easily. The problem comes when the rubric formula is extended into the creative forms of expression and does not stay in the academic. As a writer, I personally believe that you cannot teach creativity, and thus cannot grade it. It simply would not be fair. While you can teach someone the mechanics or writing, and give them advice on how to improve their own individual voice, you simply cannot teach someone how to be creative (by doing so, wouldn't that make it uncreative anyways? If there was a set formula for 'How to be creative” wouldn't that destroy the whole idea?)

This train of thought can be further extended into all of academic teaching. What right do we have to grade someone's ability, capacity and desire to learn? Should we fault a student for not wanting to learn material they believe is irrelevant and unnecessary? Is it our job to break them down and destroy their self esteem and their views of what is important so that it fits the 'accepted standards'? Or should we as teachers instead try to guide that student onto a path that they would benefit most from? A path which would utilize their passions and talents and make them want to improve themselves and learn. The difficulty with this is that we'd have to acknowledge that everyone is unique and different, and rubric based grading does not allow for differences and variances. Rubric based grading only works if we believe that every individual can be molded into the exact same form as everyone else. To admit that everyone is unique would destroy completely the validity of rubric-based grading.

And we wouldn't want that, would we? After all it is so much easier to deal with only one student copied over millions of times than to have to judge each and every person by there own merits and flaws.