Anti-Climacus

I am sympathetic to the problem of grade inflation. One year I TA'd for a large lecture class, where at the professor's insistance everyone received at least a B- (including the kid who had just over 50% on the final)(not surprisingly, we received more grade complaints in that class than any other I've TA'd, even though over half the class ended up with an A- or better). As someone who has taught multiple writing-intensive courses, I am sympathetic to the idea that the average college student at an elite university has little skill in English composition. This is a bridge too far, though:

From X’s descriptions of his teaching — rallying his students’ spirits, charming them into discarding low expectations of themselves, editing drafts for hours with the group — I began to suspect that his work was more valuable than his repeated self-deprecations suggested, even if none of his students ever hand in an A paper, a standard he likens to “an essay by David Foster Wallace.”

This does not constitute a rational standard by which to judge undergraduate work. An A paper is the equivalent of an essay by one of the premier nonfiction writers of the last 20 years? Professor X may not be reflecting on the quality of his students so much as his unreasonable expectations of them.

As it happens, I read through a number of my own undergrad papers last summer, as I was deciding what to pack along with me to New Jersey, and let me tell you: most of them were not good. By 'not good,' I mean 'not good by the standards of my current work.' My professors and colleagues will, no doubt, be glad to hear that I've learned a thing or two about how to write a political theory paper in the last 7-9 years.

But let me also say, as one who has done a fair amount of grading: they were all pretty good as undergraduate papers. That is: they showed I had read the material, devoted some independent thought to the subject of the essay and could decently critique the work of others. The best of them showed some flash of the abilities that I would subsequently go on to develop. And... that's about all you should expect.