Zemblan Grammar

One of the topics that’s always debated in academics is grade inflation. You know: the process whereby students get more points for less work; the system whereby grades lose value as a C becomes the new F and a B the new C; the hideous realm where brown is the new black and orange is the new pink (and whoever said that was seriously disturbed). Professors give fewer Ds and Fs; most of the grades range from A to C. While C used to signify “average” or “adequate,” it now signifies a serious shortcoming about which the student must bitch, moan, and cry during her professor’s office hours. C is a tragedy; everyone expects an A.

Why is this happening? Why are we rewarding slack and disinterested work with a B, and completely incompetent sludge with a C? A passing, “average,” “adequate” C?

In an effort to track how much this happens, most academic departments monitor the grade statistics for all their courses. When I taught writing at Zembla University, all of us in the English department would receive a printout at the end of every term with the grade statistics. All the names would be erased except our own, so we could see where we fit in, statistically, with the rest of the department, but without seeing which classes were whose. As far as I know, the department never used this information, it was purely “informational” for the instructors — a subtle way of nudging us into line, I suppose. I was never sure which line to get in, though, as my classes were like the majority of them — a handful of As, a majority of Bs and Cs, and a couple of Fs for whoever had been caught plagiarizing or simply hadn’t turned in any assignments. If students did all of the assignments in those writing classes, they were all but guaranteed to pass. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the way things are meant to be, but it seems to be the way they are.

On that sheet there were always a few mysterious holdouts whose grades represented a real bell curve — mostly Cs, several Ds and Bs, only a few As and Fs. Did they plan it that way? Were they constantly inundated by requests from the tearful D students, begging them for a C? There were also always a few mega-inflaters (should we call them fluffers?) whose students mostly earned As with only a handful of Bs, and no, those were not the honors sections.? Surely the work of those classes couldn’t all have been at A level, right? But I’ll bet those softies got some great fucking course evaluations at the end of the term!

And there, you see, is the crux of it all. The fucking course evaluations. When I taught in Zembla, I rarely received any negative evaluations. Every now and then there would be one student who, for reasons completely inscrutable to me (for I am practically perfect in every way) hated my guts, and would write something ridiculous on the evaluation like “this course made me contemplate suicide,” or “teacher has messy handwriting” (patently untrue; I have impeccable penmanship), or simply “I hated all this reading.” As those evaluations were the exception rather than the rule, I never worried much about them.

Here at Wordsmith, though, the general trend of evaluations is much different. For one thing, while the Zemblan students have the option of signing their comment sheets (and most do), the Wordsmith kids are not asked to sign them. In Zembla, only signed evaluations are “official” and thus part of your file; here there is no such distinction. All are anonymous; all go into the file. Students have all of the power and none of the accountability. Which is awesome.

I read those stacks of comment sheets with great trepidation, especially after having heard that one dear colleague received almost nothing but negative ones, and another had received some kind of complaint that her (short, unpolished, unremarkable) fingernails distracted her students from learning. WTF, right? I was not looking forward to seeing what the chowderheads decided to say about me.

For two of my classes (one writing class and one lit class), the evaluations were mostly positive, with a couple of complaints about the readings and a few calls for more lecture and less discussion. This was, I thought, to be expected.? Students here mostly study technical subjects (medicine, aerospace engineering, etc) and are used to being taught via powerpoint presentation. Class discussions of literary texts are not their cup of tea, usually, but I am “committed” to “fostering” an “intellectual” “discourse” “community,” and all that stuff, so the discussions will have to stay. This is all fine.

Then, though, I had this one other class — my other lit class. They had been the weird class all semester. The room was a stadium-seating-style lecture room (ruling out the possibility of my West-Coast Hippy-Style circle discussions), which never really felt comfortable. The students in this section were largely detached and unmotivated, and, of all three courses I taught, they had the lowest grades by far. On the essays and exams, my other lit class had an average 12-15 points higher than this class. That’s more than one letter grade higher — it’s very unusual. As I tallied up the final grades at the end of the semester, I saw that not a single student in this class had gotten an A — they were all Bs and Cs, and, I think, a couple of Ds. It was the most bizarre looking final grade list I had ever seen. Not a single A: no one was even close. The highest grade was around an 85.

And, of course, this was the class that screwed me on the evaluations. For example, under the question “What about the course distracted you from learning,” one student wrote “the way the instructor dresses.” Oh no he didn’t? Oh yes, he did. One colleague told me that this is probably “code” for my tits; another one told me “dude, that’s not even code.” Regardless of my breasts and their distracting presence in the classroom, the kids had a lot of other shit to say. One of them even claimed that he “obviously” knew a lot more about “the subject” than I did, which, I guess, explains why he got a C in a sophomore-level survey class — a level of greatness that I in all my inadequacy have never achieved.

My instinct in this matter is to respond with a fist to the sky, a resounding “FUCK YOU,” and a few too many whiskey sodas. Unfortunately, I will have to address the student evaluations in a more professional manner, as I have my annual review coming up on Monday. In preparation for the review, I have had to submit copies of my syllabi, assignment sheets, and exams for all my courses as well as a self-assessment wherein I explain my teaching philosophy and how it relates to my experiences so far at Wordsmith. In writing that statement I had to seriously resist the temptation to use the phrase “dickless illiterate retards.” I feel that would not have been received well.

In spite of the fact that I have prepared and submitted all of this stuff to the person who will be reviewing me, I already know (via people who have had their reviews already) that the entire process is focused on the evaluations. They discuss them with you and offer suggestions for improvement (”The department recommends you stop having tits”). They also give you some kind of rating, which I believe is on a scale of “shitty” to “excellent,” and then decide whether to keep you around for another year and whether to give you a raise based on that rating. The rating? Based solely on your course evaluations.

Yep, that’s it. Nothing else but the evaluations determines whether you will have a job next year, and, if you do manage to stay, what your salary will be. And this is why I plan to practice more grade inflation from here on out: in the classes where grades were higher, students were happier and evaluations were nicer. In the class whose grades sucked a big hairy one, so did the evaluations. Higher grades = nicer evaluations = more money in teachers’ pockets. And there you have it, professors of the academe.

Unless we change the way we evaluate non-tenure-track faculty (who can’t earn promotions based on research, service, or outreach; only on teaching; only on evaluations), the process of grade inflation is never going to stop.

While I’d like to respond to this by punching several people in the neck, starting with the student who thinks my tits distract him from learning, I think I will take a few deep breaths and then start making up a really, really easy final exam.