As has been stated in an earlier column, ("Grade evaluation," Oct. 5), students at the university tend to view grades as a form of currency, something which they can barter for careers and graduate admissions. One has only to read the Nov. 2 column by Rachel Sheedy to find evidence of this attitude, which to some extent holds true in today's society. Grades are a determining factor in career and admissions applications. Notwithstanding, grades are primarily an evaluation of a student's performance in a class; however a company or graduate school uses grades, and the grade itself must remain the professor's appraisal of the student's work.
It is perhaps true that the university must change its grading system to reinforce the meaning of a grade. Students might respond better to a grade-free system, a system where faculty write paragraph evaluations instead of choosing grades. However, it seems that the current grading system will stand for the moment, and the current dialogue is based on this assumption.
The argument about grade inflation at the university hinges on the question of the quality of the typical student. No one debates the point that approximately 70 percent of the graduating class will graduate with honors this year and that the average GPA is climbing.
In fact, very few people even dispute the claim that students at the university have improved in the past ten years.
However, the question must be asked, with respect to quality of work (and thus grades), whether the typical student is of such a caliber that seventy percent of students should graduate with distinction, and this question must be answered honestly.
Honestly, the answer is no. The typical student is simply not of any excellent quality. While some students at may compare with the best students at the Ivy League schools, the overwhelming majority do not. Even leaving aside the issue of the average capability of Wake Forest students, which is at best only moderate, students at this university are not model scholars.
As a number of professors have remarked, most students here are not intellectually stimulated or stimulating. They do not invigorate their classes; instead, they leave that enervating job to the professor. Outside of class, most students do the minimum amount of work necessary and disengage themselves from academic or other intellectual pursuits whenever possible. Nor is the social climate at Wake Forest beneficial for studies.
Intelligence and success in course work is not respected here; they are envied, and envied with such hostility that students just hide them out of fear.
Connor states that if grading standards are raised, Wake Forest students will continue to meet the challenge. They will spend more time working, not out of love for their work, but in order to earn a grade: their key to some bright financial future.
Connor may be correct. However, good students would spend more time working for their courses, not for the grade, but out of sheer love for learning. It is this one difference between a good student and the typical student that deadens classes and stifles the academic atmosphere of the university.
This disinterest in academics is why Wake Forest students have no right to protect their grades "with a complete sense of self-righteousness and with a free conscience," as Geoffrey S. Connor, the author of "Grades accurate," claims.
And until the average student becomes more interested in academics and begins to love learning for the sake of learning, Connor and Wake Forest need not worry about becoming like the Ivy Leagues or even like Duke University. Until the student population changes, the university will never compare to those schools.
Andrew Frey