A student recently asked what she needed to do to get 100% on an assignment.
Here’s my response:
“I don't know. I don’t think I ever have given one. For quite a few years, I practiced Tae Kwon Do. The master was an international judge and a military academy instructor. He was ninth degree. In traditional Tae Kwon Do, nobody, repeat nobody, became tenth degree, because that would indicate perfection, with no room for improvement. I might give Feodor Dostoyevski a 99 for certain chapters of Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov. Maybe.”
Long ago, a student told me that the instructor in a beginning Creative Writing class had remarked, “If you get an A, you can be a successful writer. Get a B, you might have a chance, but it’s not likely. Get a C, forget it.”
Unless this fellow gave everyone A’s, that was not only a heartless remark, it was also patently false. I’ve known plenty of student writers who weren’t in the least impressive but who have, through patience and dedication, become masterful.
Grades are perhaps a necessary evil of education. Evil because: behind every grade lies the question, “Compared to what?”
According to traditional Tae Kwon Do, our quest should not be for perfection, but to achieve a patient and indomitable spirit, and to always do our best.
Master Jeong would make that advice into a chant, “Do your best. Do your best.”
3 comments:
During my teaching days (philosophy, not writing), I did from time to time give a grade of 100%, but I never took that figure to be some representation of perfection, but rather, relative to the rest of the group and relative to my hopes and expectations, it is possible to reach 100% both in comparison with peers and relative to those expectations.
If there happens to be a student whose work is that good, then that student in that class has set the 100% bar, against which other performances are then evaluated.
It only means X student has turned in work that meets the criteria I set and meets the best I could as a reasonable man hope for.
It's a somewhat rare event, but it has happened from time to time.
I do not think it fair or reasonable to even offer a mark that is by definition completely unattainable. I don't mind that a classroom 100% is relative to that class and that teacher's reasonable expectations.
Otherwise, it is sort of like saying, well, it's there, but you can't ever have it. Well then, a bright student ought to answer, so bloody what!
Oh, and by the way, Ken, you ought to out the moron who made the comment that getting an A makes a successful writer, a B a maybe, a C ... etc. Such a person ought not be teaching anything, so you can do possible future students a service by naming this idiot.
Don,
Afraid my student wouldn't give me the deluded teacher's name. Only that he or she taught at San Francisco State around 1980. Perhaps my student worried I might react in a violent manner.
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