DEANS DENOUNCE GRADES AT HONORS CONVOCATION
by Sherry Thomas

      The two College Deans addressed the 1972 Honours Convocation at 8 o'clock Tuesday evening, May 2 in the Dorothy Quincy Suite of the John Hancock Building. Chancellor Francis Broderick introduced the deans and announced that Susan Eagles, Class of '73, was the winner of the John W. Ryan 1966 Faculty Convocation Award which is awarded to the Junior who attained the highest average at the completion of the second year at the University.

      Dean of College I Daisy Tagliacozzo spoke about the importance of grades but added, "I do not recall with pleasure the times when obtaining the grade became my primary motive. I do not recall with joy when the still rigid lists of required course work (without escape clauses) made me fight for that good grade without much interest, or when pages of multiple choice questions made me spend nights chain smoking and rote learning.

      I do not cherish the memory of competitive success, "continued Dean Tagliacozzo, "so intense that I subordinated other joys much too frequently: the joy of a nice spring day along the Charles, of music, of drives in the country and above all of the friendships which are formed during college days. The system had its troubles--but so had I because I responded in ways that often deprived me of the many joyful and interesting experiences which lay within my grasp."

      Because of sometimes overwhelming competition, the dean said, "we are trying to change . . . I have not found anywhere else a place where so many--student, faculty, administrators--are trying as hard and as honestly. We must be committed, above all, to shape and form our values and beliefs and still keep them open for examination, revision and the challenge of others who may disagree with us."

      Dean of College II Walter Rosen who appeared to speak extemporaneously began his speech with a definition of APOLOGIZE from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, "to lay the foundation for a future offense."

      The dean apologized for his apology, and asked rather for a challenge that "perhaps next year there won't be a convocation . . . The University, like many across the country is contemplating a change in the grading system. No more A,B,C,D,F, convertible into numbers and credit hours which can be run through a computer and turned into a cumulative grade point average.

      Strengthening his argument for pass/no grade, Dean Rosen explained that the abolition of grades won't mean "we have ceased caring about excellence. It won't mean that we will have stopped trying to teach in the best ways we can. It won't mean we will have stopped trying to inspire you to use your minds to the maximum.

      It is happening because we've known for a long time that we want much more than what we can measure by grades alone. Grades are important and you are rightfully proud of your high scholastic achievement. But grades are not an end in themselves. Only a beginning. Only a direction. Unfortunately, we often lose track of the forest (of the intellect) because of the trees (of the courses and their grades) . . . We need to find a way to cultivate the whole mind, and then to reward it for its total development. The movement away from grades is because they all too frequently become ends in themselves.

      Dean Rosen ended the speech segment of the convocation which preceeded a coffee and punch informal gathering by asking the honored students to help. "Help us find even better ways of inspiring students to even greater scholarly achievement, and even better ways of measuring it. Help us to find an even better curriculum and to build the colleges.

      The Colleges are a bold attempt to run a University in a more stimulating, enjoyable, satisfying, growth-promoting way. They are communities of people, learning together, and learning how to learn--together."

The following two quotes appeared in recent issues of Twospaper, the College II news.

      The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weaknness and folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty, there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs. No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are given. Force and restraint may, no doubt, be in some degree requisite in order to oblige children, or very young boys, to attend to those parts of education which it is thought necessary for them to acquire during the early period of life; but after twelve or thirteen years of age, provided the master does his duty, force or restraint can scarce ever be necessary to carry on any part of education. Such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that, so far from being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master, provided he shows some serious intention of being of use to them, they are generally inclined to padton a great deal of incorrectness in the performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a good deal of gross negligence.

      The real intellectual life of a body of undergraduates, if there be any, manifests itself, not in the classroom, but in what they do and talk of and set before themselves as their favorite objects between classes and lectures. You will see the true life of a college . . . where youths get together and let themselves go upon their favorite themes--in the effect their studies have upon them when no compulsion of any kind is on them, and they are not thinking to be called to a reckoning of what they know.

Note added on February 25, 1999. The original name of the course was Science for Survival. Soon after the Pinochet/CIA/IT&T overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile I realized that mere survival was not what I wanted this course to be devoted to, and replaced the word Survival with Humane Survival. But this handout, although after the coup, still had the original name.