Today, we have at long last Part III of the Amazing Grade Inflation Blog Series (see Parts I and II in the June 5 and June 11 blogs). My apologies for the slow and intermittent character of the series, though if I do say so myself my serial tardiness in writing about grade inflation constitutes a peculiarly apt deconstruction of the chronic tardiness built into the grading system itself, which revolves around two equally annoying but ever so common procrastinatory poles: that of The Late Paper and that of The Even Later Grade. (So it's a bad excuse. At least I didn't try to get you to believe that the dog ate my blog.)

So, without further ado, here are two more entries in the Encyclopedia of Grade Inflation:

Wordsworthian Genius Theory: This theory has two versions: a diachronic version and a synchronic version. The diachronic version of the Wordsworthian Genius Theory argues that since students are on average much better prepared for college today than they were in the days of yore (not to be confused with yesteryear), they should get higher grades than students used to. The synchronic version of the Wordsworthian Genius Theory applies only to elite schools, and argues that since admissions standards at elite schools are so high, the students attending these schools are just smarter than students at lesser institutions, and therefore just do better work than their comparatively impaired compeers.

The diachronic version of the Wordsworthian Genius Theory is not only laughable (suggesting as it does that all students from all time inhabit the same transhistorical classroom, and make up the same transcendent bell curve), but highly debatable. Try telling the tenured Temple University math professor who lost his job for refusing to dumb his courses down that students are better educated today than they used to be, and see what he has to say. Also try the little math test included in the article, and see for yourself the simple problems this professor's college students could not solve.

The synchronic version of the Wordsworthian Genius Theory of grade inflation is similarly laughable (if students at elite schools are such brilliant autodidacts, why have elite schools?). It is, nonetheless, very much a part of the rationale for grade inflation at places like Harvard, where eminent professors such as Stephen Greenblatt describe their student work as "astonishing" and "amazing" in order to justify handing out a disproportionate number of A's. Thus does snobbery justify pedagogical irresponsibility (sorry, Professor Greenblatt, but if the silver spoon fits...). In Greenblatt's words, ''Is someone who graduates summa cum laude at a less selective university really the same as a summa at Harvard or Yale?'' Maybe not--probably not--but Harvard students aren't in competition with students from St. Mary of the Swamp Junior College. They are in competition with each other, and, more importantly, with themselves, and they need real, stiff grades if they are to do their best work. A grade is not, after all, just an assessment after the fact. It is also, like it or not, a motivation before the fact. We all do better if we are aiming for something; we all do better if we know we are accountable for our performances; we all take more pride in our work if we believe that it will meet with firm, judicious judgment when we submit it. Genius theories of grade inflation confuse admission to an elite college with intelligence, and compound the problem by confusing raw ability with hardwon achievement.

James Brown "I Feel Good" Theory: This theory of grade inflation, which might also be called the "Do No Harm" theory of grade inflation, says that it is more important not to wound a student's feelings, or to damage her prospects (which amounts to the same thing), by giving low grades. Guided by the premise that self-esteem is all, this approach to grading understands low grades as petty punishment rather than honest assessment, and seeks above all to protect poor students from the painful consequences of doing crappy work. At once radically egalitarian and militantly sensitive, the Feel Good approach to grading leads teachers to give artificially high grades in order not to have to discriminate among poor, middling, good, and excellent work. This approach tends to accompany an eviscerated, or at least overly simplistic curriculum: you will find feel good graders in feel good classrooms, where nothing is too hard, where nothing offends, where there is no failure, and where, as a consequence, there are no standards.

So popular is this approach to education that teachers who do not provide it are being punished. Michelle Malkin's current column describes the plight of a teacher who was threatened with a lawsuit from the parents of a student she failed, another who discovered that his school was quietly changing F's to D's, and a third who resigned after the school board refused to allow her to fail students she caught plagiarizing. As in secondary school, so in college. I myself have received concerned phone calls from sensitive administrators, asking me to consider raising a particularly beset and troubled student's grade.

All of the entries in the Encyclopedia of Grade Inflation (see June 11 blog for more) offer convincing and credible accounts of the problem, especially when you keep in mind that it is not necessary to choose among them. Social change is, after all, a messy business, and causes are as multiple as effects. Grade inflation owes much to each of these phenomena; in turn, it helps to perpetuate them (it's hard to restore standards, for example, when you've defined them away; likewise, it's hard to undo the consumerist model of education when the degree has become something you effectively buy, rather than earn, and when a name brand degree functions as a ticket to certain grad schools and certain jobs).

In the fourth and final part of this series I'll conclude my discussion, such as it is, of the many causes, theories, and rationales for grade inflation with an analysis of what I call the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" compact that binds professors and students in an intellectually dishonest, but mutually compensatory commitment to bloated grades.