What’s the Alternative?

Regarding Ryan M. Brown’s “The Case Against Grades” (September): I went to a school with a descriptive grading system instead of letter grades (Union Presbyterian Seminary, 1972–1976). As a teacher, I used two versions of a contract system when teaching ninth-grade social studies and college-level Christian Scriptures.

From what I heard, the professors at Union did not like the ungraded system because it was so much work for them. To describe what a student did well or poorly was time-consuming even when classes were small. For students who wanted to attend an academic graduate program, it might have been more difficult for schools to figure out how to read their “grades.” As a concession to those students, there was a designation of honors for those excelling in the subject studied. I liked it well enough. I didn’t really care what grade I got because I had gone to seminary simply to learn. It was a professional school, but when I entered, I had no intention of pursuing that profession.

When I taught a ninth-grade class called World Cultures to students who were in the lowest of three possible academic rankings, I was faced with students who had limited ability and, for some of them, even less motivation. So I came up with a system based on Scouting badges. You picked out a grade you wanted to work toward: A, B, or C. You had a page of activities to choose from. The higher the grade, the more work required. Some activities were required, but most were chosen from a list. There were tests, but if you failed, you could take them again (more than once). The conscientious students loved this. No more anxiety. They had control over which grade they were going to get. The slackers failed because they never got around to doing the work. So I ended up with an upside-down curve: A’s, B’s, and F’s. No C or D grades. The principal sort of freaked out, but he let me do it anyway.

On a college level, it forced students to be honest with themselves and with me about how much work they wanted to do. During the semester, they could decide to work toward a lower grade, but they couldn’t go the other way. There was a lot more work for an A or B, not so much for a C. You could repeat tests you failed. One effect was that students who failed a test had to take it over. They couldn’t just blow it off and forget about it. To pass the course, you had to pass the tests. That was work for me, because I had to readminister tests. What I liked was the honesty it required and the fact that students had more control over the grade they got. It was still a letter grade, but the students had a way to control it.

I am not sure there is a good solution to the grading problem, but it has been interesting to be both a student and a teacher in alternative systems, and as a teacher to use it with both college students and ninth graders who were at the bottom of the academic heap. I preferred the alternative system and would use it if I were to teach again.

Patricia Hunt
Staunton, Va.

Nature’s Enduring Beauty

The October issue has an interesting article about Rosa Luxemburg, the German socialist murdered by right-wing Freikorps terrorists (“All Creatures Great and Small”). One paragraph struck my attention. Luxemburg found company in nature while in prison. Almost forty years later, Wolfgang Borchert, a great writer who influenced Heinrich Böll, wrote a short story “Die Hundeblume” (“Dandelions”), about a prisoner who spots a dandelion while walking a prison yard. He takes it back to his cell to reflect on nature’s enduring beauty. Borchert was arrested by the Gestapo for writings harmful to the Nazis. Böll once said that Borchert never wrote too much or too little. Unfortunately, Borchert died in 1947 from medical complications.

John Mulqueen
New Rochelle, N.Y.

Resounding Judgments

I was not just surprised by your terrific editorial “Robed Collaborators” (October) but pleasantly astounded. Commonweal has all too often shown so much care to be fair and not offend that your moral judgments don’t exactly resound through Christendom. Had Seymour Hersh and Daniel Ellsberg shown such discretion, we never would have heard of a place called My Lai or discovered how far our government had gone in lying to us about our unjust war in Vietnam.

But, thank God (not metaphorically), this time Commonweal did offend, cutting loose in a style we used to call kicking butt and naming names. True, you named just one name, John Roberts, but his butt was certainly the most primed for kicking. As chief justice, he has done more damage to American democracy than even Alito and Thomas (the pride of Holy Cross), and that’s setting a high bar.

Six of the nine justices are Catholic, a ratio that validates the bitter in-joke that the biggest secret of the Catholic Church is its social-justice teaching. If we could time-travel back to the fifties and inform Paul Blanshard (author of American Freedom and Catholic Power) how things stood now with the nation’s highest court, he would be horrified. Today, the shrinking number of Catholics who cherish our social teaching are the ones horrified.

Roberts, not one of the cherishers, gave the commencement address at my son’s graduation from Holy Cross. But my own alma mater, John Carroll, outdid Holy Cross at my graduation long ago. It was no less a national hero than Curtis LeMay who took the opportunity to tell me, my classmates, and our families that we need have no fear. If those Commies tried anything funny,  his Strategic Air Command was ready to beat the bastards back to the Stone Age. (I paraphrase.)

Mike Gallagher
Shaker Heights, Ohio

Big Shoes to Fill

“Gently They Go,” by Christine Brunkhorst (October), is one of the best essays I’ve ever read. I immediately sent it to my four siblings, and they just loved it. Our father was a great man, a public figure who taught, coached, and legislated. Often, we were asked how we could fill such big shoes. But the answer was so easy as to be laughable. Dad was great, no doubt. But the gold standard in our family was our mom. And every day we struggle to live up to just a bit of her legacy.

Thank you, Christine Brunkhorst. You didn’t know our Catholic mother, and we didn’t know yours. But, on the other hand, we certainly did! God bless them and you.

David H. Bieter
Boise, Idaho