A paragraph for Ron Graff
(This will take more than a paragraph.)
Ron Graff, Associate Professor, Painting, University of Oregon
Ron Graff was noticeably shorter than me, which puts him on the short side for a man.
When I was in his drawing classes, he had a stout, stocky, muscular build; a fire-plug. I bet he still does.
He was intense, mostly coiled, with occasional outbursts; not of anger, or at least not of anger at anyone present; just the occasional, sudden release/reveil of whatever it was that was contained inside his dense frame.
The first day of class (basic drawing, required) he announce that if we all came to class and did all the drawing assignments we would all get a B.
He said there would be no A, C, or D grades.
If we did not attend regularly or do the required assignments we would get an F.
He went on to explain that he used to give the whole variety of grades to his students, but was forever in the department chair’s office, with some aggrieved student, often in tears over the destruction of their GPA, explaining why he had given a C or a B, or a D or an F (students, no matter how lazy or untalented, never demand explanations for an undeserved A, he noted.)
He found these exercises tedious, and did not think they were earning him any brownie points in the department either.
But over time he noted (and I can still here his voice when I recall these words), “I’ve seen many really terrible art students turn into lovely artist; and I’ve seen many truly wonderful art students turn into lousy truck drivers.”
And so he settled on his B/F grading rubric.
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If I taught mathematics, I would grade pass/fail; with 87.5% being the passing mark.
There is so much wrong with this I don’t know how to start. In “the real world” such antics would lead to interventions and eventually dismissal hearings (which yes you can get fired in a public high school even if you have tenure). Doing blanket grades with little to no rationale for them is the very reason that people are upset at educators and label them ineffective and lazy.
A grade is a measure of mastery in a subject. As a teacher it is his responsibility to know what he wants students to “master” and then as part of his grade reporting to give a judgement as to how well they managed to master those objectives. Now that said, if his objective is “be here every day and do every assignment” then any student who masters that objective has earned an A. They have completed 100% of the objectives at (I assume) mastery level, since showing up isn’t exactly something you can judge beyond “Did You?” and “Did you not?”
That said, I am very supportive of moving schools away from recording grades beyond a Pass Fail and to look at transcripts from the standpoint of “did you master the majority of That Class?” and “what topics did you study?” rather than what we have now which is “is your GPA higher than some cut off score we’re using?” However that shift cannot be effected by a single rogue teacher with a bur in his boot.
It’s nice that he has the luxury to not care about the impact of grades. However that’s not the world we live in. He alone cannot change the way GPA’s are used to judge overall performance. While a B is not that bad, it will reduce the average of any GPA that is above 3.0 to begin with. As someone who’s had to sift through 100 applications for a single job (reason #340 I don’t volunteer anymore for hiring committees), GPA is a factor that does get used because at least it’s a number we have. I’d ~like~ to use something more comprehensive to overall skill but it wasn’t an option for us with the data we were given.
I simply did not know how many people with a 3.2 compared to a 3.9 had those GPA’s because they slacked off a bit (Ie got a C for every A) or becuase they had a rogue teacher who decided that a B was “good enough to keep the grovelers happy”.
I respect why he seems like a champion, but from my desk he seems to suffer from a very myopic view of the results of his choices.
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I don’t know which of these two comments I enjoyed more.Report