When was the last time your professor sent you back an essay or test with comments? It most likely wasn't when you received your most recent final paper or exam. How often has your culminating examination resulted in a submission to the simple black box of a final grade? Lacking the insight of a final assessment, I have often felt my experience in a class was summarized simply by its contribution to my GPA. I firmly believe that our education should extend beyond the written assessment, to the interaction with the Academy. The decision of the institution to deny us an assessment and critique is a travesty of the liberal arts education.
One of Dartmouth's points of pride is that we offer an education, rather than a certificate. The emphasis of this college is to teach, not to research, and every time an essay is ungraded or the comprehensive result of a test is denied to a student, this principle is undermined; at stake is the integrity of the institution itself. At the end of each term of our collegiate careers we do not receive the academic attention that Dartmouth prides itself upon.
The primacy of grades over assessment is a fault of institutional pressures to turn in grades and of our willingness to comply with this educational omission, in favor of administrative efficiency.
At Dartmouth, we have a major disconnect between our education and our assessment. The common practice at Dartmouth seems to be to prize grades over intellectual achievement. Maybe our professors feel overworked, having graded a series of essays and tests over the course of the term, and during the finals period, there is therefore less of an emphasis on providing coherent material back to the student. Maybe there is not enough time between terms to prepare for an incoming course. Or even worse, maybe professors feel that, having supplied an apt grade, they have fully satisfied their responsibilities.
I know several peers who have submitted requests for a final assessment to be returned, only to be ignored. Some professors have had the decency to blitz an explanation of their reasoning for not returning final exams: finals are sometimes retained in order to curb academic violations. Yet this restraint is as much a restraint for would-be-violators as it is for students intent on maximizing their education.
Here is the crux of the problem: Is Dartmouth College an administration, or an education? Are we here for the certification or enhancement of our intellects? What is the purpose of the interdisciplinary requirements? What is the purpose of the major? Is it designed to certify an education in a particular academic field of study, or to actually enhance our engagement with the world through a concentrated lens?
We are here at Dartmouth to learn. Indeed, our grades signal the completion of a course. Yet the papers and tests we write are not just contributions to our GPA, but confessions of what we have learned and what we are able to communicate. Obviously, the emphasis on learning is frustrated by the time and intellectual constraints of assessment, but this does not mean we should lose sight of why we're here.
Such a sin of omission can be explained quite reasonably. After the strenuous intellectual engagement of finals, we are satisfied by the release, in the form of a final paper or test, and we are glad to be done with pencils and books. We do not wish to engage further with the material due to exhaustion or apathy. While understandable, this attitude is fundamentally counterproductive to our liberal arts education.
I am not asking for professors to be babysitters. Instead, I am asking for an emphasis on an education that reflects the ideal value of culminating coursework as a contribution to our critical and intellectual growth.
I do certainly hope that, someday, the attention a professor gives to a student's final is as comprehensive as the attention he gives to any other portion of the course. At the least, I find it ironic that the culminating assessment of a student's education is reduced to the "black box" of a final grade, whereas the class itself is designed to develop a deeper critical understanding of the material.
I hope that the pride in our intensive education will overcome the institutionalized reticence and apathy that hinder our academic goals. At stake is the primacy of Dartmouth College as an education rather than a certification.
