“Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines.” The roar is deafening. Tires screech. Race peel out and start tearing around the track.. We’re watching the end-of-term Academic Roadrace 500!

 If you read the student journals, ease drop on their conversations, look at their faces, peer into their eyes, and notice their walk you’d know what I mean. Our campuses are turning into very uneducational pressurized tanks. Professors, who themselves have demonstrated questionable time management skills, have put on their jump suits, donned their crash helmets, jumped into their cars, reved their engines, and are speeding on the raceway in a mad dash to “cover the material.” Their leisurely pace throughout the term has turned into a crash course at the end of the term. They’re racing down the stretch I the course to cover, assign, test, and cram. Oblivious to what each other is doing, for the harried and hurried students it’s like working for five bosses who don’t care about each other’s schedules and demands. And, the onus is placed square on the shoulders of the hurried and harried students.

 I have the students write on the white board as they enter class each day one word or so to describe how they feel. I do this so I can get a quick pulse of the class. Lately, “stressed,” “sleepless in Valdosta,” “zombied,” “stretched out,” “brain dead,” “joyless,” “driven,” “numb,” “tired,” “strained,” “at a breaking point,” “tight,” “harassed,” “exhausted,” “fearful,” “nervous,” “edgy” have been appearing as the overwhelming majority of descriptions. Their daily journal entries reveal that these sleep deprived, pressured, harried, and hurried students are losing their playfulness, their physical and mental alertness and agility; their smiles and gleamy eyes are replaced by straight lips and stares; their dance steps have transformed into plods. Nerves are frayed; muscles are aching, tempers are short; brains are numb. This is educationally sound? Can students really perform at their peak in this condition? Not if you read the studies on creativity, imagination, and pressure by Teresa Amabile of Harvard. I think it’s critical that we think about what most of us are really doing. When we race at breakneck speeds as if we’re on a super highway just to cover the material in these last few days, doesn’t everything turn to a blur? Don’t we really superficially cover the material just to cover it? Doesn’t deep learning, or any true learning for that matter, flounder on these shallows? Sometimes, I wonder if many of us are really worried more about covering our backsides than the material. The proclamation that was hurled at me when I quietly raised this question with a colleague over coffee was a simple involuntary reflex, “That’s the way we’ve always done it in every class. I made it through all that (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted) in college. Why can’t they?” I missed the moment. I should have asked him why he used a heavy expletive to describe what was hurled at him during his own end-of-the-term experiences as a student and whether it applied as an apt of description of what he was now hurling at the students in his classes.

 Anyway, I think we ought to slow down and reflect on what we’re doing to both the student and the image of education. Why? Because, the more an idea, an attitude, a belief, an action is inherited, unexamined, routinized, personalized, and espoused as tradition, the more entrenched it becomes and the more resistant people are to finding reasons to change and to changing the situation.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

 I hear the darkness has returned and spread over the academic land. It has been doing this every now and then for the past century. It’s withering the crops and drying up the waters. It’s passing through locked doors and shut windows, getting into every nook and cranny. It’s stifling the air. It’s tormenting the very soul of academics. The Ivory Tower, once again, is being ravaged by an apocalyptic plague the proportions of which rival the Black Death. It’s threatening the very foundations of the Ivory Tower. We are in desperate need of a magical incantation to ward off this evil. And, evil it is, for this deadly, apparently incurable disease, rampaging at a full gallop as if it was one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, is: “Grade Inflation.”

 The bestowing of undeserved higher grades, making easier grades available, and showering young people with unbelievable and undeserved praise is said to be “scandalous,” “a mess,” “inappropriate,” “irresponsible,” “corrosive,” “sick,” “odorous,” “evil,” “depressing,” “demoralizing,” etc, etc, etc. This spreading pernicious disease, this quest for popularity among students, this pandering to students’ self-esteem, this treating of students as customers, this flattering of students’ egos, this succumbing to student expectations is turning hard courses squishy, rotting standards, rewarding mediocrity, spreading counterfeit knowledge, eroding professorial authority, diminishing faculty image, and tarnishing faculty prestige. Why grade inflation is even attacking the very selective class structure of academia by confusing the distinction between the super-smart student, excellent student, good student, average student, mediocre student, and bad student.

 “Ah, me,” so many academics groan with tortured breath, “where are the days of the good ole ‘F’ and ‘D?’”

 Get out the sackcloth and ashes! Hand out the protesting posters. Go to the streets. Egalitarianism is nigh! Weeding out, selectivity, and exclusiveness are out. Nurturing and inclusiveness are upon us! The academic world is coming to an end! Help us O Lord: “Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies. Ashes….”

 And you know something, I agree. I agree with all these dark descriptions of the situation. Grade inflation is, to say the least, a pernicious a disease each of us has to admit exists, diagnose, and find a cure! We do need a new standard of achievement. We do need a new vantage point. We do need a determination to act! We do need leaders to lead! Grade inflation is an outrage and we do need commitment and determination to prick this ever increasing balloon. We do, we do, we do!

 Surprise you? Think I’m out of character? Well, take it easy, when I talk of grade inflation I’m not talking about higher grades. I’m not referring to the proliferation of “As” and dearth of “Fs.” When I talk of “grade inflation,” I’m talking about the inflated value placed on the importance of grades, a value that’s rising faster than gasoline prices at the pump. In reality, I’m talking about deeply underlying philosophical issues dealing with the nature and purpose of an education.

 What has gotten me thinking about grades once again? It’s that “ah me” time of the semester. All semester I’ve successfully dispensed with using any grading system. Now, I can’t avoid dealing with that awful academic addiction to grades. It’s the time I have to struggle against my better judgment and make judgments as I assign final grades. It comes close to driving me to drink.

 Let me give you a few embodiments of why I think grades are probably the most uneducational part of education. First, I had a student “pop” into class bedecked in green from hat to shoes. He was getting extra credit in an English literature class for wearing St. Patrick’s Day décor to class! Second, I have a colleague on campus who rants and raves against grade inflation while he drops students’ lowest test score and then uses a perfect Bell Curve in his calculation of the final grade to insure that the grades fall into a “normal distribution.” Third, I have another colleague in another college on campus who prides himself with more than a hint of machismo and self-congratulations as a self-described weeder. That is, he is not committed to insuring that everyone in his class masters the material. To the contrary, he is dedicated to using the grade as a winnowing tool to separate the proverbial chaff from the wheat and to ferret out those who do not do well in his classes. Fourth, while I was at Reyes Point in California watching the migration of the whales, I got into a conversation with a man in his late ‘30s who was moving to Atlanta from Mississippi. “There are jobs there, better jobs than I’ve got.” he said. When he found out I was a university professor, he went on. “I was a straight ‘A’ student in college, busted my ass, got my business degree, went out into the real world, got downsized, and wound up slaving as a UPS driver. A lot of good my good grades did me in guaranteeing a good job.” Then there was the student who tried to butter me up at the beginning of the semester by introducing himself as an honors student who decided not to go into the honors program for fear of getting lower grades. Unimpressed, I asked him in reply, “But, are you an honors person?” He got this confused look in his eyes as if I had striped away his identity leaving him with nothing. And finally, there was the student I recently wrote about who compromised her integrity in pursuit of the Dean’s List.

 As I told a group of professors, staff, and administrators as an aside during some workshops I was presenting, when students are focused on getting grades and when faculty are focused on giving grades, I have found from almost fifty years (gulp!) of personal and professional experience in the collegiate classroom on both sides of the podium, from reading countless studies, from reading even more countless student journal entries, from discussions with other academics, and from talking with students that at least twenty-three very uneducational–and unhealthy–things tend to happen to both students and academics: (1) academics usually grade with the false impression that the playing field is level and that everyone jumps off from the same starting line; (2) academics usually are deluded into believing that the grade is a non-judgmental, true, absolute, and objective assessment of student learning; (3) the grade creates the wrong impression that such a brief academic evaluation statement has a universal standard; (4) too many academics think that the grade is the “great extrinsic motivator;” but seldom wonder why it so often doesn’t motivate; (5) too many academics equate rigor and the height of the proverbial bar not with intellectual depth and value of their classes, but on the amount of work assigned and the rarity of assigning good grades; (6) students’ interest in learning takes more of a hit as their interest in grade getting increases; (7) the quality of student creativity, imagination, originality, and thinking in general drops; (8) students are generally instilled with a fear of failing rather than a courage to achieve; (9) grades tend to reduce students’ preference for taking up challenging tasks; (10) students tend to take the easiest and quickest route while shunning the difficult road less traveled; (11) students tend to pander to what they think the teacher wants; (12) learning is reduced to grade getting and which sadly often doesn’t have much of a life after college life; (13) “importance” is degraded to something that’s going to be on the test and/or graded; (14) the grade doesn’t convey everything about the student’s transformation, achievement, and development; (15) the grade doesn’t convey what the teacher may want to say about a student; (16) the students define themselves and are defined by others according to their grades; (17) teachers too often define themselves and are defined by the grades they give; (18) too often academics ask of a technique or method only “how do you grade this” rather than “will they learn from it;” (19) too often the grade is elevated to the heights of a crystal ball as a predictor of things to come; (20) the grade confuses being judged and judging people with being educated and educating people; (21) the grade may indicate a one-day performance or a series of one-day performances, but does not tell anyone what material will be retained, that is, what a person supposedly knows at a moment has nothing to do with what a person will continue to know or learn to know in the moments to come; (22) the grade is often used as a punishing “stick” for students’ actions that have little to do with their classroom academic performance; and, worst of all, (23) because too often the grade becomes everything, the students will too often succumb to doing anything to get them.

 In other words, I think the real problem is not with grades. The real problem is that most of us have made them into ritual fetish objects. We’ve become academic idolaters, laying ourselves prostrate before them in supplication. We’ve become so addicted to them that we need GA (graders anonymous) meetings on almost all of our campuses. Too many students, parents, faculty, administrators, legislators, et al put all their money into the basket of grades and think the point of going to school is merely getting the grade. Their interested is limited to a credentialism that will offer a good living. They pay only lip service, if that much, to the additional educational goal of transforming and being transformed into a better person and learning how to live the good life.

 So, if you really want to cure the Ivory Tower of this pernicious disease of “grade inflation,” and put the joy and meaning of getting educated back into education, take out your pin, prick the balloon, and deflate the value of grades—if not eradicate them.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

 Ah, me. Why don’t things go our way. Why don’t people act as we want? Life would be so much easier and simpler. You know a prayer is not so much a request as it is a reminder. Take Reinhold Neibuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” It’s not just a prayer for recovery of addicts. It’s a prayer we all should say, for we’re all addicted to denying a basic truth about life and life in the classroom: life is complex, complicated, and impermanent. It’s a realization prayer of the truth that try to control as we may, there are things, immutable things, built into the nature of everything over which we are powerless. It’s a prayer for acquiring an unconditional “yes” to living and of getting on with life rather than getting caught up in and thrown about my life. It’s a prayer for knowing when to hold and when to fold. It’s a reminder that happiness is determined more by the state of one’s mind than by one’s external conditions, circumstances, or events It’s a reminder that the key to happiness in the classroom, if not in all of life, is in our own hands. Grumbling doesn’t make it better. Wishing upon a star doesn’t change things. Making up horror stories doesn’t improve things. If anything, they all make things worse. They bog the spirit down with their own tiresome and wearisome weights in the muck of despair. They scan the radar scope for the next impending crisis. They cloud the sky and block out the sun and the stars.

 I’ll just say that she, a student, had chosen the grade over doing what was right. I was convinced she wouldn’t. She did. The grade meant everything to her. And so, she was willing to do anything to get it, to pay a lot of her integrity for that transcript inscription. I not sure she really realized what she had done to herself. She wasn’t the first. Nevertheless, it hurt. I was disappointed. I struggled to be empathetic. For a while I flayed myself with trying to find what words or gestures I could have used to guide onto that right road. I felt a momentary tide of “why bother” rise inside me. It was all for naught. She made me realize that while there are limits to my grand vision of doing good and making a difference I shouldn’t hesitate to pursue that vision. It also drove home the realization that while I don’t respect or love her choice, I can still respect and love her as a fallible human being. It underlined the fact that can’t allow myself to create a distance, a disconnect, merely because this situation didn’t go my way. I can’t shut down or even close a bit. I have to be willing to remain open, to fight to maintain that unconditional connectivity with others from which I draw my strength, enjoyment of life and teaching, and through which I make my contribution of offering support, encouragement, strength, and joy to others.

 We live too often what I’ll call a life of “conditional ‘yeses.’” That is, if things go our way, we’ll be happy; if people what we want, we’ll be affectionate and appreciative. But, what would happen if we made those “yeses” unconditional, that is, only if things turn out the way we want? Do we loose faith? Do we tear at our clothing, don sackcloth, put ashes on our heads, scream out that students aren’t like they used to be, and burn out? If I let such regret of this student’s choice let me down, if I let it be a source of weighty discouragement, if I let it interfere with the pursuit of my purpose and meaning, how do I go on with everything I’ve got to give?

 I mean this student was a walking serenity prayer. Dealing with people is a very complex issue. There’s no one proverbial size that fits all, no one formula for dealing with all issues. You’ve got to be supple. She reminded me that things don’t always go according to my plan, that people don’t always do what I want or expect, that I don’t always make the right read, that I will make mistakes and have lapses of judgment, that I can’t control anything or anyone other than myself, that people won’t always take the right road, there will be disappointment, there will always be choices to make, and that who I am is both determined and revealed by how I choose to come to terms with these truths. So, do I struggle to ignore and get around these truths or do I accept them. My own answer is in learning the toughest lesson of all: just accept those truths of life.

 I believe there’s a vitality in each of us. It’s more than a spark. It’s a bonfire. It’s an urge toward wholeness, a passion for transforming, a commitment to evolving. Its makes us go on, start all over, not give up, not give in with a “who’s next?” We teachers are a Spring people valiantly living finding bits of hope and renewal each day in our own experiences. So, why do so many of us surrender, burn out, lapse into resignation.

 Here’s my take on it as I explained to the faculty at Adrian College, Baker College, and Kettering University. So many of us fight those truths by struggling futilely to play the “perfection game” and the “control game,” and maybe even the “changeless game.” So many of us are terrified by these facts of life. So many of us are fearful of what is. And, we let our ego get in the way when these truths come home to roost. And, the more we try to hold on to our evasions, the more grotesque and distorted life in the classroom becomes and our anxiety or resignation level heightens. Dissapointment or its minions can be great stumbling blocks to purpose and meaning.

 So, would you be surprised if I treat this student with gratitude. Would you be stunned if I told you that I see her aas a benefactor? It’s the struggle with life, that “it’s hard” thing, that makes us who we are, that keeps us on our toes, that keeps us from doing things unthinkingly and unmindfully in our sleep. That’s why “it’s hard” is so important. And, this student tested me. Yet, she gave me the chance to practice humility, patience, and empathy. Ready or not, she gave me the opportunity to take a fresh look at my own beliefs, practices, purposes, and meaning. As a teacher, I still believe in the sacredness and worth of each and every student; I still believe I am here to help each and every student help him/herself become the person he or she is capable of becoming; I still believe in the value of empathy; I still believe in a policy of faith, hope, love, and kindness; I still teach from the vantage point of that value system; I still allow myself great flexibility and freedom to deal with the vast array of human complexity in the classroom.

 Victory Frankl, said “Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it.” He observed in the Nazi concentration camps that the people most likely to survive the unimaginable atrocities weren’t the physically strong, but those who drew their strength from and based their survival on the strength derived from a sense of purpose and meaning. I guess he meant that finding and clinging to meaning and purpose is a powerful means of helping us cope with those “hard” and trying times. He also meant we should search for our “why” and have a sense of meaning and purpose in the good times when things are going well in order to be better prepared for those times when things don’t go well.

 That is, the attitudes and outlook we cultivate in advance may well decide how well we recognize the difficulties and how we let them affects us when they strike.

 Yeah, a prayer is a reminder. I ought to send this student a gift of thanks. She taught me that my “pain” may not be what I wanted, but it was a pain I obviously needed in order to be more accepting of these life truths, balanced with my own sense of purpose and meaning, without getting down. Instead of letting them disappoint, frustrate, sadden, consume, I’ll use them to continue to bring out the best in me, to strengthen my courage and compassion for others with less fear. I can now better and more serenely balance reaching out to touch a student and not being able to touch a student however I stretch my reach. It’s a kind of what someone called disrobing myself of my centrist ego. It’s understanding that we should appreciate what we have and have done rather seeking merely to have what we want for the sake of having and wanting. This student made me realize even more what that ‘40s tune said about accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, to teach by looking at my assets and see how I can still reach out, touch, and help transform. It’s a kind of plea bargaining or settling out of court with the condition of existence. It frees me from any compulsion to control and have things only my way. It allows me to continually give it all I’ve got. It gives me the strength to be authentic. It gives me the courage to hold nothing back. It animates my unconditional faith, belief, and love.

 She also reminded me not to let things I cannot affect get in the way of and interfere with things I can affect. If I want to be in control of myself, then I simply have to be open to events as they happen and not get bowled over by events that happen. It’s not a passive or surrendering letting the chips fall where they may. It’s a matter of picking up those fallen chips with a greater resolve, using them to make new bets with a greater enthusiasm, and continuing to stay in the game with a greater soft sensitivity and hard determination. Every moment prepares shapes the next. Happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment can be achieved through the systematic training of our hearts and minds by letting our attitudes and outlooks endure the necessary aces and strains and even pain of “pumping iron.” My painful “ah, me” in the long run may not be as bad as I thought at first, for as I can do what I just said, my teaching report card will more likely than not will continue to list straight As: acceptance, attention, appreciation, admiration, affection.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–