December 21, 2004

• To: Washington University in St. Louis

  
  

  Re: Your use of grades, dean’s lists, 15 credit requirements per semester, individual courses, high standards of admissions, competitiveness in the US News and World College Rankings, focus on publishing for professor tenure…

  
  

  Having consumed your product for four years, I write to express the great disservice you did for me, for my peers, and that you continue to impose on students today.  While I believe you, being faculty and professors, have nothing but the best interests of students in mind, I am concerned that your practices are outdated.  Just as the medical profession is always innovating, and if a doctor told you, “I still use practices from 40+ years ago,” you’d run away in fear of the harm that doctor might cause you, a school that holds to practices that have been proven inefficient and harmful to students for years, is a school that should leave its students in outrage. 

  
  

  I am writing because I am in outrage.  I am writing because others are in outrage, but as students, professors, or deans, are not in a position to express their outrage, lest they put their job or degree on the line.  I am writing because those who have graduated have been harmed by your practices.  Many who struggle with life after graduation, can look back to their time at Washington University and see how they were not only underprepared for the real world, but how they were handicapped by purchasing a four-year education from you.  They are handicapped financially through debt, educationally through an inability to understand the world, and emotionally by having not had the full opportunities to explore their interests while at your school because of the way success is defined by grades, credits, majors, and the degree requirements, and they have been handicapped socially and politically, both by the bubble they have been kept in, as well as the general focus of your school, to help people get jobs, rather than to help students learn what they need to be active in creating social change after college.

  
  

  For four years, I was numb to learning at your school.  This numbing began in first grade, when I first learned to define success by grades, and first had my values shifted from valuing what I know, to valuing “how well I know,” valuing intrinsic values shifted towards those imposed by school.  Your emphasis on grades as a motivating factor for learning, your dean’s list, your honors, etc., caused me to work towards those goals, at the expense of developing a love of learning. 

  
  

  I write you now because more and more students are suffering at the hands of your grading system.  Today’s students are less likely than I was to value learning for intrinsic reasons, because the demands of K-12 education, and the over-hyping of the SAT test, have created that shift. 

  
  

  When students fail, (fail to learn, and fail to succeed as the school defines it by passing classes), we cannot and should not put the spotlight solely on students.  We must not allow ourselves to label students as “lazy,” “unmotivated,” or any other description that we often use to explain those students who are uninterested, or unsuccessful in their classes.  Instead, it is the educational system, it is Washington University in St. Louis itself, that we must question.  When kids fail (both academically, and fail to develop as passionate learners) it is really the school, the faculty, the administrators, who have failed the students, both literally and as people.

  
  

  The only thing preventing radical change, is the lack of belief that it is the institution that is broken.  Those who defend the system, defend it out of familiarity, comfort, and the ease in which we can maintain the status quo.  Those who defend the system out of a belief that this is the best system, have no right to educate, because my experience, the experience of thousands like me, and both educational and psychological research supports the notion that this traditional system, serves the opposite goals of what we claim education should be doing.

  
  

  Unlike K-12 education, whereby parents and students have little choice, and despite the cultural shift that is ongoing whereby more people than ever are going to college, colleges are more vulnerable than K-12 schools.  Students who graduate high school have thousands of schools to choose from, including those that are choosing to innovate.  Also, college students are more likely and able than K-12 students to speak out about issues that concern them.  Ironically, the one issue that touches them daily, their education, is the one issue that is quickly overlooked.  Students all over America are active organizers, protesters, commentators, trouble-makers, and activists.  Now is the time for that energy to be turned towards the issue that affects them daily, to an issue they have so much power over, to an issue many will face later as both educators and as parents.  The issue is our schools, and it is time to make some demands. A student bill of rights:

  
  

  -meaningful feedback from professors, and the abolishment of grades
  -courses built around themes or problems
  -boycotting the US News and World Rankings systems
  -professors who receive tenure based on teaching
  -student involvement in determining courses, distributions, and other requirements
  -an admissions process based on experience, through essays, interviews, and activities, with no consideration given to grades or SAT scores
  -courses that involve real-world meaning, service-learning, apprenticeships and internships, co-ops, etc., experiential
  
  *these practices can be found all across America, although in limited number, and almost not at all at Washington University in St. Louis.

  
  

   

  • 1:15 pm
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