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In "The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (1974), there is an interesting discussion about the idea that removing university grades would provide a better
by farber 12y ago
In "The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (1974), there is an interesting discussion about the idea that removing university grades would provide a better education.
"[A student at a grade-less school would] be a free man. He wouldnt need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and theyd better come up with it.
Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldnt stop with rote engineering information."
- ars 12y agoIsn't this basically what auditing classes does? It's often free as well.
- VLM 12y agoIts the inevitable result of grade inflation.
- frobozz 12y agoYes, but at the potential expense of grade-bearing classes, and because grades seem to be important, grade-bearing classes tend to take a higher priority than interesting non-grade bearing ones. At university, I audited several modules, and there were many that I wanted to attend, but couldn't, either due to timetabling clashes with the classes I was supposed to attend, or because the process for attending classes in disciplines entirely unrelated to my subject was prohibitive. When the workload expected of me grew too great, I reduced my participation or dropped out of my audited classes. With the removal of grades (and compulsory modules) entirely, I might have dropped some of my graded modules in favour of others.