Daniel Cohen ’67’s statement that “a certain amount of knowledge should be the goal of each course, and those who master it should be rewarded with an A” (Inbox, Jan. 18) wholly misconstrues the nature of both teaching and learning, making the education process comparable, to use his example, to “coal shoveling.” In fact, there is no limit to the amount of knowledge that one can learn from a course (literature, history, science, or any other), and the analysis of the information by the student always will be better or worse. A professor can never say that a student has “fulfilled the contract,” nor are exams, usually essays, structured in such a way as to permit any such strange determination. Some students will always perform better than others, and it is a disservice to all students not to recognize in their grades the relative quality of their work, good or bad. Welcome to the real world.
In Response to: Holding the line on A’s