Re: grading vs. control of error

["Jonathan Siegel" <jmsiegel.info.research@worldnet.att.net>]

Quite a wonderful story.

It has always struck me that the key element of grading, what makes it most
problematic, is the practice of making one person's success depends on
another's failure, so that the only way one can feel good about oneself is
through others' pain and loss. I think Deming was concerned about the social
effects of such a state of affairs, both in terms of teaching  children from
earliest youth  to obstruct rather than help each other, and in tending to
create a society  in which an artificially imposed scarcity of winners
prevents people's talents and efforts from being fully manifest and  fully
benefiting society.

There areother concerns -- grading can result in settling  for the
fulfillment of specifications, for example, rather than a philosophy of
continuous improvement that can lead to far more. It can damage any emergent
intinsic interest in a subject, joy in learning, and other intrinsic
motivation -- personally genuine and socially productive bases for
satisfaction. But my reading of Deming is that the competitive nature of our
system of grading is what he saw as most destructive to self and society.

Jonathan  Siegel