Why I (Used to) Hate to Give Grades
1997; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 48; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/358403
ISSN1939-9006
Autores Tópico(s)School Choice and Performance
ResumoA en I was but a sprig on family tree, growing up in New Hampshire college town where my father, Professor Zimmerman, taught chemistry and chemical engineering, an emblematic cartoon by William Steig appeared in New Yorker. It depicted a downcast youth glancing surreptitiously at a report card held with distaste by a man in a suit looming bulbously from his armchair. caption, isn't good enough for a Zimmerman-yes, that really was name in cartoon-so succinctly expressed family ethos that my parents made dozens of copies. cartoon became their Christmas card that year. When my siblings and I were in college, the B-plus joke, as we had come to call it, would arrive, anonymously, at midterm and final exam times. As grandchildren arrived they, too, were blessed with copies of their own. The B-plus joke has become subject of long-distance phone calls, impromptu seminars at family reunions, and considerable sardonic mirth. That a B-plus was in fact never good enough for a Zimmerman, however, is my lifelong legacy. Its message will be inscribed on my grave. Over years I've filled up a depressing stack of grade books. Their limp, academic-green covers conceal a myriad of cryptic symbols, which in turn embed stories of work and goofing-off, hope and despair, brilliance and just-going-along-for-the-ride. Although I have always-well, usuallylooked forward to reading papers, and can even tolerate reading exams, calculus of giving grades had become, over time, preferable only to doing income tax. Until last year.
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