Do we really need grades?

Perhaps in this moment more than ever, there is a lot of conversation around grades and grading policy in our schools—in all sorts of directions, too, from Harvard faculty voting to place a cap on A’s to the University of Michigan withholding letter grades for their incoming class of freshmen, instead using a pass/fail system for the first semester.

So it felt like the right time to have a conversation around grading.

Joining this episode around grading is Susan Blum, an anthropology professor at Notre Dame and the author of many books around education and learning—including most recently Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning.

In this episode, Susan shares about her own journey away from traditional grading, her perspective on what is happening with grading in this moment, and what a potential better path forward could look like.

To follow Susan’s work, you can find more at her website www.susanblum.com as well as her Substack newsletter Susan D Blum Muses. Along with Schoolishness, these other two books by Susan might also be of interest for listeners to this conversation:

• Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead)

• “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College

Thanks, as always, to Alberto Lugo, one of Jim’s former students, for writing and recording original intro music; and Tom Csatari for allowing us to use his band’s recording of “Woodstock” from their 2020 album, Garden.

• Find Tom’s work at uncivilizedtom.com, and on Instagram @banduncivilized.

• Find Alberto’s work at djsynchro.weebly.com, and on Instagram @djsynchro.

You can email us here with feedback or any other questions as well: thebrokencopier@substack.com.