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f Pass r Fail The pass-fail system will remove the pressure on the student stu-dent to meet the often arbitrary standards on which letter grades are based, and allow him to explore the field for himself without fearing the stigma of a low grade. The abrogation of letter grades will also abolish incentive, thus enabling any enterprising student to get through a particularly par-ticularly odious class without ever having opened a book and still come up smelling like a rose. Here we have two predictions of what will happen when the pass-fail system is implemented at the University. A third predicition can be added which suggests that unless some radical radi-cal changes are made in the American educational system, the second predicition generally will be the correct one. There are many incentives for becoming educated prestige, pres-tige, power, betterment of one's existence, betterment of mankind's man-kind's existence, the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, but there is nd denying that the primary incentive for education in this country is money. The educated man is the one who gets the better job, who gets the promotions. With this the case, the acquisition of high letter grades becomes a very important secondary incentive since acceptance into high-paying positions is directly or indirectly dependent on high grades. Better Job Increasingly, however, the worth of the "better job" is coming com-ing under fire, and concomitant with this attack there has been an increase in criticism of the American education system and with it the traditional grading system. The proponents of progressive pro-gressive education have proposed sweeping changes in the system. sys-tem. Within their new system grading would be abolished because be-cause a much more effective, less confining, and less arbitrary system of rewards and punishments can be effected. Within such a system the student would have more latitude to do what he wants. What is perhaps more important, he would escape from the drive-sapping pressure of having to do things he didn't want to do. Thinking that abandoning the present grading system will bring this about, however, is absurd. Students Stu-dents who have spent twelve to sixteen years in pursuit of high grades are not going to keep plugging away when their goal disappears, dis-appears, unless another goal is put in its place. Yet this seems to be what the University administration is suggesting. Half Apology Another interpretation of the administration's action might be that they are beginning to feel guilty about requiring students stu-dents to take classes they don't want to take, read books they don't want to read, and in general waste time that would be spent more profitably studying something else. The pass-fail system could be construed as a half-apology for forcing the student stu-dent into such a position, and, simultaneously, a face-saving device for the entrapped student. On the other hand, vast problems like changing the American Ameri-can way of life are notoriously difficult to attack. With this in mind, it ca nalso be suggested that the University's experiment is a step, however small and tentative, in the right direction. It might also be suggested that the University could have greatly improved the results of this experiment if they had taken a more comprehensive approach to the problem and sought a way to produce a little new incentive before they so abruptly remove the old. |
