Xref: utzoo comp.edu:1693 sci.math:5253 sci.physics:5335 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aipna!jeff From: jeff@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics Subject: Re: Student and Course Integrity Message-ID: <425@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 24 Dec 88 23:55:02 GMT References: <1131@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> <1887@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <859@quintus.UUCP> <9940@quacky.mips.COM> <871@quintus.UUCP> Reply-To: jeff@uk.ac.ed.aipna.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Organization: Dept. of AI, Edinburgh, UK Lines: 71 In article <871@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >In article <9940@quacky.mips.COM> danny@mips.COM (Danny Ammon) writes: >>Grades are personal information which a student may share with others >>if he/she wishes. The student's grades are nobody else's business. > >Look, this is simply repeating the same assertion over again. >Why is it ok for other people to know whether you passed or failed, >but not whether you got a C+ or an A-? The granting of a degree is >a matter of public record, for heaven's sake! It's not repeating the same assertion; it's just getting all the way to an answer. But how can we get all the way? The fact is that many people regard their grades as private, personal information, over which they want some control, and not as a matter of public record. It should be clear that there's no absolute necessity to this view. I'm not sure I can explain it to you, but I'll make an attempt. It turns out that I remember when the legislation that restricted access to grades (and also gave students access to their own records, as I recall) came into effect. Before then, I hadn't thought about it much, if at all, and didn't find it surprising or objectionable when grades were posted or otherwise revealed. But all of a sudden I was given some power over this information, and I began to think about it in a new way. I could see it as something that I might want to exercise some control over, where before it just hadn't occurred to me to think that way. I don't imagine that there would necessarily be some great harm if my grades were public, but why shouldn't I be the one to decide? >It's as if people were >saying that it was ok for the public to know whether you were over or >under 180cm tall, but despicable for someone to say in public that >your height was 160cm or 170cm. This, and your earlier remark about pass or fail, makes it seem that you may be misunderstanding something. While it may be a matter or public record that I have a certain degree from a certain university, my grades on individual courses, or even whether I passed or failed, which courses I took, remarks entered into my records, etc. are not. If we take a single course, it's not the case that who passed or failed is public but not the exact grades; neither is public. By the way, the "despicable" takes as given that people regard the information as private. If it had been the normal and expected thing that grades were posted, no one would have thought it wrong to post them. >Also, it is not the case that "The student's grades are nobody else's >business." In a society which does not exalt competition, a student who >is having difficulty with a problem would do well to consult another >student who is more capable than he in that subject, because the more >capable student is likely to understand the _difficulty_ as well as the >answer. 1. It's generally possible to know who are the better students, and the ones best able to help, without having to look at their exact grades. 2. Just because someone could help someone else doesn't mean it's their business to help. Students don't have a right to get help from better students, but even if they did it wouldn't automatically confer a right to know their grades. >>Not to say that grades and money are the same, but consider the analogy: >> Bank tellers do not broadcast the balance of my account >> to all their customers. >But banks *DO* provide this information to a hostile agency (the IRS). >Not a good analogy. Give me a break. The banks *do not* provide the information to all and sundry, which is what you think is OK for grades.