Grading Philosophy

There is story about Henry Kissinger teaching a graduate course at Harvard. The day after students had submitted their first paper, Kissinger came in and returned all of the students papers, saying “Is this the best you can do?”. He allowed the students to take them back and resubmit them the next day. He took them home, and came back the next day, a Friday, and again said, “Is this the best you can do?” The students once again took them home over the weekend, and worked and worked on them. Kissinger picked up the papers on Monday, and on Tuesday once again he came in and said “Is this the best you can do”? Finally one student spoke up and said, “Dr. Kissinger, I’m sorry, but we all worked and worked on them, and this is the best we can do”. “This is the best?” said Kissinger. The students all nodded. “Then” said Kissinger, “I will read them”.
 

Of course, I will read all of your work before commenting on it, in fact, I normally read everything submitted twice. Like Kissinger, though, I expect your best efforts. It seems to me there are a few different approaches that instructors can take with student work. One is to be superficially encouraging by saying that the work is good (even when it really is not), which (the instructor hopes) will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another is for me to try and be as honest and constructively critical of your work, in the belief that you will respond to comments as “words to the wise”, and will stretch yourselves to do better than you thought you could.  Frankly I feel the most respectful and caring approach is to give you my best professional opinion. Almost without fail students get better at analysis and have high-quality submissions by the end of the term.

 When you get your grades and have read my comments, if you don’t feel your grade is appropriate, take a quick minute to go back and look at the assignment parameters as well as the rubric. If you still don’t understand why I graded something the way I did, please email me, or call.