One thought, among many, as I read Lynn Z. Bloom’s, “Why I (Used to) Hate to Give Grades and Lester Faigley’s “Ideologies of the Self in Writing Evaluation”:
Last week I asked my students to do an in-class exercise in which I asked them to give me an evidence-based response to the question:
“Based on what you presently know about the 2016 Presidential race, who would you support if Election Day was next week? If you don’t yet have a strong candidate in mind, who have you already eliminated from the race? Why?”
The results were
6 – “For Bernie” because he’s genuine, is truly a “for the people” politician and has good, common sense ideas
3 – “For Donald” because he’s a business man, we’re in debt, and we need someone to negotiate a debt settlement
2 – “For Marco” because he is open and accepting of immigrants and has good religious values
1 – “For Hillary” because she did the whip and nae nae on Ellen
19 – “Not Donald” because he’s dangerous, a blowhard, anti-women, anti-immigrant
3 – “Not Hillary” because she’s dishonest
1 – “I’m not voting, politics are stupid, this assignment is stupid and I don’t care”
1 – “None of your business, Ms. Sutton. We shouldn’t be talking about politics in class and I don’t appreciate you asking this question and trampling on my right to privacy”
As part of her/his argument, that last student, who has kept me on my toes all semester, reasoned that divulging that information to me might put her/him at a disadvantage since we can’t help making judgments about people based on the information we’re given.
And s/he’s right, in his/her own convoluted, rude way (consider your audience, grasshopper!). Right away, I formulated stronger positive opinions about some of my students and gave myself a mental high-five for being “right” about others.
Wow! I haven’t gotten any students like that here at the university. Those last two answers sound like something my high school students would have written. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by the immaturity of the 2nd to last answer and the rudeness of the last answer.
I had a similar experience earlier on in the semester, but with a topic much less controversial than politics.
On the first day of class, I asked them the typical questions, such as name, major, hometown, among others. The last question on my list was name your favorite book to movie adaptation. If they did not have one, they could just tell me their favorite movie.
Oh, the responses I received.
I got a handful of Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and the Hunger Games (which is what I expected). Then there were others who surprised me with unusual (at least in my mind) choices. One student chose Jane Eyre and another To Kill a Mockingbird. One student even chose Anna Karenina. Automatically, I began to wonder if their choices reflected their honest opinion, or if they were just trying to choose “correctly” to make a good first impression on the teacher. And then there were others who admitted that they don’t read a lot, and among their favorite movies were the Fast and Furious series and Step Brothers. I’ve never seen the former (I have no real interest in action movies of this sort) and the latter is actually quite funny…but these are your favorite movies? Really?
Ultimately, I left the classroom that day trying to not make judgements of my students based off such a simple question. That’s easier said than done, of course. And this was just with movies…imagine if I was aware of their political leanings…
I also struggle with judgments based off of my students’ behavior in class. I already find myself wanting to give the participatory students more slack and leniency when they have an issue in their paper. Then, I see a student’s paper that has similar issues, but they have given their in-class time minimal attention. I feel myself looking MORE critically at their mistakes. I know that’s not helping them, and I catch myself when I do it, but it’s hard not to go into grading mode with some prior opinions. Sometimes I think about ways I could make the papers anonymous while I grade just to avoid that bias.