[Newspoetry] Footnote on Evaluation

[Dirk Stratton]

Rob, Bill, et. al.--

a clarification: evaluation, per se, isn't evil, only the current 
system that dominates education. i.e. i admire schools like Reed, 
Evergreen College, Bard, and any other school in which grades have 
been abolished in favor of a system where professors write long 
evaluations of each student (in other words, where profs act like the 
mentors Bill mentioned in his original message). evaluation can be 
useful, even crucial, but grades ain't the way to do it.

and Ann is right: in the current bad system, workshops are often the 
closest a student will ever get to experiencing a collaborative (vs. 
a competitive) learning environment (workshops can also contain a 
healthy dose of mentoring, too, when the prof isn't a jerk). but as 
she notes, when an arbitrary grading system (and when  you're dealing 
with art of any kind, how could it be otherwise) is thrown into the 
mix, it can sour the experience a bit.

we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

--dirk