Grades and the Real World

I find myself very skeptical of Inoue's notion of allowing students to assess and grade themselves. While being able to revise and improve on one's writing through revision is an essential ability to learn, I have to wonder whether the methods Inoue uses properly prepares her students. While the notion of deconstructing the concept of “correct” writing might be interesting in theory, the fact remains that the larger community—and here I mean other classes, the workplace, and other areas outside of this single class—does not judge writing based upon democratic notions but on very standardized conventions of discourse. So again I must ask if pursuing such an experimental course is of benefit to our students or whether it is actually hobbling them with misconstrued ideas.

On the other hand, I think it is very useful to discuss the criteria by which good writing is judged. Asking students what they think makes a good paragraph or paper can be very useful in the learning process. The difference that I would emphasize is that the instructor should remain in the position of final arbitrator. I disagree with Inoue that this demotes such discussions to “busy work,” since it serves a pedagogical purpose, and can be used as an alternative to other methods of instruction.

As a final note, I think it must be said that instructor standards and evaluation are still present in such a system—and this goes for Elbow's contract method as well. If it were not, could not students simply vote to allow themselves to get an A for doing virtually nothing? Yet I would imagine that both of these instructors would halt such an excessive plan, as well they should. But doesn't this then mean that the idea of power distribution is really only a facade? Students, at the end of the day, want a good grade. And really, this is understandable, since this is the criterion by which they are often judged, whether it be for scholarships, for parental approval, for graduate school applications...one could go on and on. Ideas such as these that seek to diminish the importance of a letter grade simply do not synch with the reality that the students have to deal with outside of the writing classroom.