This post is an edited reprint of a post from http://www.gradeinflation.blogspot.com/ dated 2/6/10.
We all feel good when we receive an “A” and not so good when we get a “C” or lower. I believe that we have found an easy way for more children to get “A”s, thereby delusionally raising the national self-esteem quotient. In his article, If You Want Good Grades, Move to Texas, Jay Matthews of the Washington Post (10/30/07) reported that according to the College Board nationwide survey of those in the 2007 senior class who took the SAT, 49% of the seniors in Texas had GPAs in the “A” range and 43% of all seniors who took the SAT in the USA had GPAs in the “A” range. This is quite an achievement when you consider the legends on most report cards that read: “A” = Excellent; “B” = Above Average; “C” = Average; “D” = Below Average; “F” = Failure. Congratulations to the educators of Texas for insuring that their students maintain both high self-esteem and scholastic excellence, thereby approaching the ideal set by Lake Wobegon, where as Garrison Keillor tells us every week, “all the children are above average.”
As an adjunct to grade inflation, we could also institute a feel-good program like No Child Left Behind, first envisioned by the George W. Bush Administration, and now being modified by the Obama Administration. Inherent in the choice of words, “No Child Left Behind” is the mass delusion that no matter how many obstacles a child might face (neurological, behavioral, socioeconomic, or motivational), the sky is still the limit! The only roadblocks to this plan are standardized tests which have the potential to force us out of our delusional thinking and bring us back to reality. Now if we could just discredit tests such as state-level achievement tests, the SAT, the ACT, and the GRE, by claiming that they are really not correlated with academic performance, we’d really have something. We could also claim that they are unfair to the learning disabled, the dyslexic, the poor, and most minorities. Between grade inflation, No Child Left Behind, and the elimination and watering-down of standardized tests, every child would have a good shot at getting into Harvard, Princeton or Yale, just as long as they could afford the tuition. The elite universities could then establish scholarships to give the economically disadvantaged more opportunities. Finally, the universities would have to get on board with the grade inflation ploy to make sure that no student is left behind in his/her endeavor to become a doctor, lawyer, hedge fund manager, or CEO.
At this time, it appears that most universities are, in fact, cooperating with the grade inflation program. For example, according to a 2002 American Academy of Arts and Sciences study, in 1966, 22% of all grades received by Harvard undergrads were “A”s. By 1996, this figure had climbed to 46%. One fly in the ointment: to counteract the easy-“A” mass delusional system that had evolved, Princeton University has now instituted a grade deflation program which limits “A”s to 35% for each department. Let’s hope other institutions don’t follow suit by elevating their standards!
There would probably be a few signs that the above plan has flaws, but most Americans would never even notice them. We could eliminate newspapers and get only snippets of current events from our web browsers. We could gradually lose sight of the role of journalism as a check-and-balance on government (including the public schools) by focusing on celebrity gossip rather than hard news. We could become more isolationist and xenophobic as a country, and explain away others’ anger as jealousy and religious extremism based on other mass delusions. We could blame the loss of good jobs in the USA on illegal immigration, the financial collapse, and the economic recession. And, with regard to the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) results that found that we are ranked 24th in math, 21st in science, and 15th in reading among all the world’s developed countries, many of us would simply tune-out this information because, after all, we are 24th in math and we don’t understand anything numerical.
Remember, anything and everything is possible in the world of delusion!
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