Grade Inflation: The True Effects

At this timely period in the term, as exams and project due dates start piling up on that Canvas schedule tab of yours, I would like to offer my humble opinion on a topic relevant to many of you reading the paper—the topic of grades at Exeter.

I would be lying if I said that grades don’t matter. To me, as well as to most of my at this school, especially those plowing through upper year, these confounding numbers and letters (x percent equals y letter grade, which is z on an 11 scale) are the largest causes of distress.

“It is the year that determines what school you can apply to,” said a friend in English class as a way to start off the term, putting into words the taboo that was on everyone’s mind. Though we all aspire towards an ideal—unfettered intellectual exploration for its own sake—few of us can proclaim to not be bogged down by the pragmatic worries about our transcripts and the upcoming college application process. Every term becomes a series of cost-and-benefit calculations, the tricky business of balancing exciting challenges versus the possibility of “screwing up” a hard-earned streak of acceptable GPA.

Maybe some of us are more gullible than others. Hard as this is to admit, I, for one, cannot recall a time before “doing well at school” became a larger-than-life aspiration, and flighty numbers on weekly quizzes took upon the role of something almost core to my identity. This obsession predates Exeter itself. “I have come upon dark times,” my twelve-year-old-self wrote in her diary during the seventh-grade final season. “My mind can’t find a single hour of rest. The grades are coming. Yes, Maths, Literature, English... all kinds of devilish numbers. When put to face such evil doings I have no courage, none at all.” Theatrical prose aside, I believe these lines summed up real emotions—myopic, selfish, frivolous in hindsight, but nonetheless real and inescapable when one is going through them. These sentiments were only magnified upon my entrance into the competitive environment that is Exeter. 

When I confided these worries to a particular friend who had finished his Exeter career and since then wandered though Southeast Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe in search for unconventional knowledge, he responded with screenshots of passages from Excellent Sheep, “a social criticism on the role of elite colleges in American society.” In 1971, the passage read, 73 percent of incoming college freshmen said that it is essential or very important to “develop a meaningful philosophy of life.” By the start of this decade, this number has dropped to 47 percent. The primary concern, it seems, is the tangible outcome, measured in dollars of income the first year after graduation. Education has increasingly become less about teaching students to think and more about reducing them to “productive employees at work, gullible consumers in the market, and docile subjects to the state.” In an Exeter religion class, I am made painfully aware of a subconscious tendency to phrase questions, with regards to assignments, such as “Are we supposed to __?” or “Do we have to___?”.

I’m sure many of you pride yourselves on your ability to think critically, as this is one of the skills supposedly honed by an Exeter education. Engage critically with texts, ask questions, participate in debates. But take one step back, and consider how there usually are, or there usually seem to be, the “right” questions to ask, which fit within the strict parameters of what is considered good by the teachers, the institution. In short, as students, it is hard to completely cast off the mentality of doing something for the approval of a teacher, for a grade.

I look forward, perhaps a little bit too much, to a gap year after Exeter, when taking risks and furthering my own growth does not have to take a backseat to beautifying my transcript. Ironically, Exeter is a place of immense opportunities for personal and intellectual growth, if one can completely take advantage of it. It is sad that most Exonians cannot.

So am I proposing an Exeter without grades? In an ideal world, yes, for this is the most effective way of ensuring that everyone at the school is motivated by an intrinsic desire to learn rather than an extrinsic desire to prove that they are smart. I do not presume to offer an opinion on what this would mean in terms of the pragmatic concerns that we cannot simply wish away—i.e. the college process.

But, gradeless utopia aside, I do look back with a dash of wistfulness at the olden days in the tales of Exeter alumni, before an “A” became the norm. Grade inflation causes more anxiety than it alleviates it. At institutions such as MIT, for example, creativity is fostered by throwing at students impossibly hard problems so that everyone fails in some way, and thus learn to prioritize collaboration over competition, and learning over grades.