As anyone who has ever been a classroom teacher will tell you, students are sometimes unhappy with their grades. I was generally able to work around this problem by providing detailed feedback on my students’ assignments, and this allowed me to avoid even a single formal grade appeal from my college students. However, this did not mean that they would never show up for my office hours and plead for a higher grade on occasion.
I remember one student who was particularly adamant that her first essay of the semester deserved more than the D that I assigned. When I asked her to explain why, expecting that she would argue I failed to give her proper credit for some aspect of her writing or research, I heard different line of semi-reasoning: She “felt” that she deserved a better grade.
I was used to students being shocked by their grades on their first essays in English 101. The grade inflation in many public schools is beyond ridiculous, so a great many freshman have completely unrealistic grade expectations when they arrive at college. I asked if she had read my (many) comments on her essay and had any questions about what I had written.
She brushed this aside, stating that she had put a lot of effort into this assignment and believed that should be rewarded. I explained that it was likely all of her classmates had also worked hard to complete their schoolwork, so my grading was based on the execution of the essay. She was perturbed, to say the least.
To assuage her feeling that she was somehow being treated unfairly, I pointed out that I had photocopies of all the graded essays from her class right on my desk, and at that point they were still sorted by the assigned grades. Given that I stated in my class syllabus that all of their essays might potentially be discussed in class or used as teaching examples, I felt comfortable offering to let her read essays that had earned higher grades and compare them to her own. If she could demonstrate that her essay was equal to another that had received an A, B, or C, I would be happy to consider revising her grade if it was warranted. This suggestion was not well received.
Scrunching up her face and shaking her head, she retorted that the grades received by other students in her class had no bearing on the grade that she felt she should receive. Grading, she firmly asserted, is entirely subjective, and it was apparent from my attitude that I did not like her and was treating her badly.
A bit taken aback at this point by her obvious anger and frustration, I assured her that, after only one week of classes, a total of roughly two and a quarter hours of very busy class time, I could not possibly have developed any personal animus regarding her individually, and if she read the assignment guidelines, she would note there were very specific criteria that were required to be met, which helped eliminate the possibility of subjectivity in the grading of essays. I proceeded to ask her if, having compared my comments with the assignment guidelines, she felt that I had failed to properly credit her for her work.
It was then that the kicker, which was not wholly unexpected to be honest, entered our discussion: She had read neither the requirements for the assignment nor my written feedback on her essay.
When I suggested doing both might aid a discussion of her grade on this essay and provide a starting point for learning how to improve her work on future writing assignments for our class, she signaled that she found me “unhelpful” and might need to seek assistance elsewhere. As she stood up to leave, I assured her that she had plenty of time and opportunity to improve her semester grade—but had to remember that engaging with the requirements and expectations of the class was necessary.
She was clearly unpersuaded, unhappy, and unbelieving and flounced out of my office in an loud huff, still obviously feeling I was both unfair and unreasonable for expecting her to meet defined educational standards in class. This interaction was as frustrating for me as it certainly was for her because I knew her beliefs and lack of interest in the course content did not bode well for her academic success during the remainder of the semester.
The intense feeling that they are not getting what they deserve seems to afflict a lot of younger Americans today, and this sense helps to produce a lot of amorphous and misdirected rage that disables initiative and impedes progress. It used to be a truism that success is not guaranteed for anyone. Although we all know the famous and well-to-do routinely plow the road for their sometimes dim-witted offspring, most of us need to find the inner strength and tenacity to slog through the many life lessons that occur both inside and outside of classrooms.
Learning skills is only one component of managing one’s life; accepting that the road might sometimes be rough and unforgiving is a prerequisite for any career or interest one chooses to pursue. We seemed to have weaned too many children for too many years on participation trophies and endless second chances, and the inevitable outcomes of well-meaning coddling are everywhere we look today. Young people who complain endlessly about the inevitable rigors of life are inevitably going to fail.
It doesn’t help that we go out of our way to teach students—literally, it’s the course content your child is studying right now in college—that contemporary America is a wonderland of bigotries aimed at frustrating their aspirations and crushing their dreams. This makes life no better for many because it discourages the self-examination of one’s effort and abilities that is the precursor to self-improvement and success. Learning to wallow in one’s victimization is the ultimate privileging of feelings over facts, and it destroys young lives before they even start out by turning many potential friends and mentors into an unnecessary enemies, which will ensure the frustration and failure so many are experiencing (and carefully documenting on their social media accounts) in America today.
One of my favorite teaching experiences was at a rural high school where I had loads students who were growing up on farms. Getting up at five in the morning to do chores before even arriving at school tended to get them in the right frame of mind to take responsibility for their learning in a way that wasting one’s time whining on Instagram never will.
Our personal feelings are wonderful and precious, but the plain fact is that diligent effort, good manners, and a concern for others is going to play a much larger role in determining the successes and failures of our lives. I sometimes wonder whether what we deem to be education in our American schools and colleges today is actually an advanced course in resentment, hatred, and self-pity that is all being paid for, one way or another, on the taxpayers’ dime.
Toxic tenured theorists with PhD degrees tacked to their walls are not helping their students or our country by encouraging antagonisms instead of prompting honest inquiry, personal responsibility, and self-examination. You want to start a real revolution? Start one today by standing up and refusing to kowtow to the Associate Dean agitators, DEI defeatists, and Marxist academics who all love to hate America, American history, and Americans—while collecting a nice, fat paycheck for doing so.
This might not have quite the romance of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, but it could be the essential spark that sets our nation on a path to self-renewal and sanity.