I once did a five-year stretch teaching at Harvard, and so this story came as no surprise:

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading…

In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view. “I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

Although I would get used to it soon, I was astonished the first time a student complained about his (usually it was a boy) grade. In my own student days I’d have gnawed my arm off rather than beg a professr to raise my grade. It was a simple matter of self-respect.

In a compulsory freshman course called “Contemporary Civilization” we were required to turn in weekly book reports from a long reading list. For my first one I naturally picked a book I had already read and dimly remembered. I knocked out a necessarily vague puff piece between breakfast and the nine o’clock class. The professor gave me an A-, not even noticing that I had got the protagonist’s name wrong.

Plainly, then, I could coast through the semester. Next time I’d even read a book that was new to me, write my report while I still remembered it, and get a sure A. I picked Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos, finding it to be a weak effort by the master. I got a C-.

Did I debase myself by complaining? I did not. I did the manly thing. I read a new book each week, and set down exactly what I thought about it. Even then my taste was exquisite and my standards so high that no book ever entirely met them. And I never got a grade higher than a C.

To ease the pain I set up a little business selling book reports to other students in the course, the fee to depend on the grade. I found each book to be a masterpiece, fully deserving of its place on the professor’s book list. The lowest grade I ever got was an A-.

Posted by Jerome Doolittle at February 18, 2009 02:27 PM

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