This is to say that -- in case you thought otherwise -- there's nothing wrong with aiming for good grades. However, deliberately aiming for good grades at the deliberate expense of knowledge, insofar as this is possible, probably is wrong -- or, at the very least, unwise. Professors won't begrudge you for doing well with respect to grades, but if you make it clear that your interest is not only primarily in the grade, but solely in it, then this, too, seems purely foolish.
The reason for endorsing this approach seems to be our respect for the authority of professors and TAs as assigners of grades. While we clearly have to acknowledge that mistakes can be made here -- points summed incorrectly, sentences misread -- we also seem compelled to generally defer to the judgment of professors on these matters. This means that when we find ourselves faced with a bad grade for an assignment we have completed, we should assume that the fault is with us, the student, rather than with the professor. The grader's assessment is to be preferred to the graded's.
This is not an argument for always kowtowing to a professor's peculiar grading standards at the expense of your personal beliefs on a topic just to ensure a good grade, but rather an argument that claims that we should presume that it is our standards that are peculiar rather than theirs. So if we receive a bad grade but think we performed to a higher standard than this assessment suggests, we should be prepared to defend our side of this difference of opinion especially stringently. We should not conceive of this as he-said-she-said -- and not just because of the political incorrectness of that formulation.
To some, this paean to deference may sound, itself, inappropriately deferential to authority. They may say it is a hallmark of classic conservatism to prejudge disagreements such as these in favor of the powerful. Presumptions like these allow professors the freedom to discriminate against their students on illegitimate grounds and the lack of transparency denies students the opportunity to seek redress to such discrimination. All of this contains an element of truth, but also an element of imprecision.
We should not defer to all authority, only to proven authority. And our deference is not unconditional or interminable. For example, the President of the United States deserves our presumptive respect, but actions taken in the course of the presidency can cause this respect to be lost. The type of authority we are deferring to will also determine the extent of our deference. The possibility of educational authority is grounded in the notion that some people -- say, professors -- can be more educated than others -- say, students. The political authority of the president is grounded solely in our consent; this is not the case with educational authority. This isn't a democracy, after all.
If our goal is to be educated then we have to acknowledge the difference between our level of education and that of our educators. If our goal is to get good grades then we have to acknowledge the difference between the likely accuracy of self-grading and being graded by a third party.
Obsequious deference will not secure either of these goals, but, when combined with honest work, appropriate deference will work better than inappropriate dissent. Bad professors surely exist, but they are outnumbered by bad students. And if we want to succeed, on either metric, we should probably try to avoid being one.
The editorial board is composed of David Grant, Laurel Colella, David McIlroy, Sally Bull, Jackie Peters, Alexandra Kaufmann and Jenna Marson.
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