During the week preceding the Oct. 2 deadline to change course grade options, my peers engaged me in countless conversations over which grade option they should choose for certain classes, analyzing the pros and cons of each option and aggressively soliciting my opinion.
During each of these discussions, I tried my best to genuinely help my friends, listening to their concerns over taking a course for a grade along with their qualms about taking a course S/NC. Yet I could not help but notice a pattern linking together all of these independent conversations with students from different disciplines and different walks of life.
The students with whom I spoke were not contemplating the S/NC option because they felt they would struggle with the material for a certain class or because they were taking a course outside of their comfort zone. The students with whom I spoke considered changing their grade option in the event they would receive a B in the course.
Using the S/NC option to banish Bs - and Cs - from one's transcript is not a new phenomenon at Brown. As Kurt Walters '11 wrote in a 2010 column, the New Curriculum has created an "unreasonable new environment in which A's are the only 'good' grade and anything else represents a failure on some level" ("The A/B/(N)Cs of Brown grading," Sept. 9, 2010).
Please understand, I am not writing yet another column advocating reforms of Brown's grading policies or changes to the New Curriculum. Instead, I am writing to assess the pervasive grade-grubbing culture at Brown, a culture that subverts learning for learning's sake and prioritizes letter grades over the acquisition and appreciation of knowledge.
This is not at all to discount the importance of grades. Needless to say, grades are undeniably important for those applying to graduate schools and for those entering the workforce alike. Indeed, if we were not at all concerned with grades as high school students, many of us would not have made it to Brown.
Yet caring about how we perform academically is different from manipulating our transcripts in an attempt to disguise any "blemishes." Moreover, since when is a B considered a lesser achievement than simply passing a course with a grade of "S"? When passing a course is preferable to receiving a B, it is apparent that we are more concerned with numerical academic success than we are with engaging with course material for its own sake.
As a community we cannot claim to espouse the New Curriculum if its purpose has been distorted. The New Curriculum and its grading policies were established with the hopes of encouraging students to embark on a broad course of study. If the New Curriculum's S/NC option, is encouraging perfectionism rather than academic exploration, we must reassess the two elements that contribute to this trend: 1) the incentive structure of the New Curriculum and 2) the culture of our community and our reasons for studying at Brown.
As mentioned, I'm not going to urge for changes to the New Curriculum in this article. Instead, I want to use this space to discuss the academic climate at Brown and to analyze the issues of integrity plaguing our community.
When the S/NC option is used out of the fear - yes, fear - of receiving anything less than an A, this implies that our reason for enrolling in courses in the first place is to simply obtain that A. And when we feel that we cannot obtain that A, we choose to obtain an S - perhaps with distinction - instead. In this sense, our education at Brown has become simply a means to achieve some end: admission to a competitive graduate school, a position at a top consulting firm or something else.
Being ambitious and having professional goals are praiseworthy, and the aim of my article is not to disparage an achievement-oriented mindset. I, too, have aspirations beyond Brown. What I do want us as a community to think about, however abstractly, is our relationship with our education. Is a shiny transcript from Brown merely a stepping stone to a competitive job offer? Or can our Brown education and the knowledge and skills we acquire through that education be the end itself, even if we have some other future end in mind simultaneously?
Assessing what we want from our Brown education will help shed light on the reality of our academic culture. If we aspire to create an environment conducive to learning for learning's sake, conversation and academic exploration, then we must reevaluate the type of means-ends relationship we have with our education.
Jaclyn Katz '14 would love to talk more about the purpose of an education, and can be reached at jaclyn_katz@brown.edu.
