Word: working
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Grades provide an incentive--to get good ones. They do not provide the student incentive for thoughtful legal scholarship. They do not provide incentive to think through questions presented in class unless they relate to the course material directly. They do not provide incentive to continue working once the grades are recorded. Primarily, grades provide the incentive to do well on four-hour exams and to ignore or put off other work, however valuable, that does not seem likely to be tested...
Grades do not provide an incentive to work throughout much of the first year. The prize of good grades at the end of the year is probably too remote for many law students to use as a motivation to full application throughout the school year. Gearing their entire first year's performance to six exams at the end of the year is unnecessarily unpleasant and sometimes dehumanizing. Many students decline the challenge and meander through the year, hoping only to get by." Some find themselves distracted by the atmosphere of tension and isolation, and they resent it. Others feel they...
...present system at the Law School encourages us to compete, to score points on each other, rather than to communicate and work in cooperation with one another. cessive and sometimes ruthless competition. Everyone is taking the same courses and competing for the same positions and grades. One person's success depends upon the failure of many others. Competition is a reality in our lives, now and in the future, but the competition at the Law School is extraordinary. It is an institutionalized competition which many of us did not bargain for when we made our decision to study...
Four-hour exam grades are one kind of incentive, but they are not the only kind. To the extent that they operate as an incentive, they also tend to undermine a student's better motives. Students admitted to this law school have been trained to work hard. Most are efficient and eager to add to their understanding of any new, complex subject. Most would feel inadequate and uncomfortable unless they attempted to master the material offered in the first year...
...submit that grades fulfill their functions very imperfectly. For too many people they tend to produce confusion and unnecessary competitiveness and, for some, a disdain for their years at Harvard Law School. First-year grades become the definitive judgment of a student's work. They open or close the doors of the honoraries. They enhance or hinder chances for jobs. They establish academic and social hierarchies which reign over the following two years and beyond. Thus, grades become fixed in the minds of many as the most important part of their law school careers. This is an unfortunate and unintended...