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Barbour published in Chronicle

By John Barbour
June 25, 2007

Grading on the Guilty-Liberal Standard

I have taught many conservative students over the past quarter-century. Most of them have been either thoughtful participants in classroom discussions or else silent, withdrawn observers. The institution where I teach, like most colleges, has in recent years witnessed a small group of conservative students complain about the so-called liberal bias of academe. They think the preponderance of liberal professors in higher education makes it difficult for them to argue for more-conservative positions. The political and social stance of those students is often related to conservative religious views.

As a teacher of religious studies, I mentally dismissed those students' complaints as right-wing anti-intellectualism and fundamentalism. A few years ago, though, I encountered a student whom I shall call Rick, who aggressively asserted his conservative views in class. Recently I engaged in some soul-searching about whether I had graded him fairly. But if I was unfair, the result was the opposite of what conservative students would object to. (A few of the details in this essay have been changed to protect individuals' privacy.)

I was teaching a course on Christian ethics, which focused on various understandings of Christian community and practice. We studied classic texts, such as I Corinthians, Benedict's Rule, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, and contemporary Christian groups, including the Catholic Worker Movement and L'Arche. Most of the students were, like me, liberal Protestants. Usually my courses have a greater diversity of religious perspectives, including conservative Protestants, Roman Catholics, agnostics, and a sprinkling of students from other religious traditions. Rick correctly perceived the course he was in as dominated by a particular religious orientation.

He challenged our views again and again. The two issues on which his opinions differed most from ours were homosexuality -- he argued that the Bible condemns it -- and a religious community's involvement with issues of social justice, especially poverty and racism -- involvement that he felt compromised the integrity of such a group.

I got to know a little about Rick's history and aspirations, and to like him as an individual. He had grown up in a small, Midwestern town. His family had been working class during his childhood and had gone through some hard times, but was now comfortably middle class.

"Nobody helped us," Rick told me. "We pulled ourselves up by our own efforts. That's the way it should be. No one deserves a handout."

He attended a conservative Protestant church in his hometown and had a fairly literal interpretation of the Bible. He wanted to be a lawyer, probably a county prosecutor. "I want to lock up bad guys," he said, half-jokingly, but I knew he meant business. I expect that Rick will someday be very good at that work.

He expressed his views in class in ways that provoked other students. He sometimes referred to gays and lesbians, members of racial minorities, or poor people as if they were outside the church, and intimated that it was "our" decision whether or not to let "them" in. In what I thought was a respectful way, other students challenged Rick's opinions. I pointed out that he probably thought more like most Christians in the United States than did those of us who considered ourselves liberal or progressive.

I was surprised when Rick told me that he felt attacked. We had had a guest speaker who expressed sympathy for a clergyman struggling between his vocation and a homosexual relationship forbidden by his church, and Rick said he had felt both "personally assaulted" by the talk and unsafe because he had been surrounded by people with radically different views. He also told me he had encountered hostility on our campus and had been treated in insulting ways.

I tried to help him see that Christians can conscientiously and politely disagree with each other on certain ethical issues. "You can't be protected from other points of view," I told him. "That's what a liberal education is all about. You, as well as the students with whom you disagree, are learning to consider other ideas and to think more deeply about your own convictions."

Rick listened respectfully, but he was still obviously agitated.

Throughout the course, I struggled with the question of how to grade Rick. His work was about average in terms of the quality of his reasoning and the way he presented his views. He had a limited capacity to consider other points of view and evidence that went against what I thought were his often rigid positions. He tended to dismiss alternative views rather than engage them. His written expression of his ideas was somewhat repetitive, even tedious. When he analyzed a text, he simply described it rather than probe its assumptions or implications.

Perhaps his work was really below average, I sometimes thought. But I worried that I was so opposed to his views that I was not fairly evaluating it. I gave him good marks ? better than average ? on both an essay exam and a paper.

For the final grade in the course, 25 percent was supposed to come from oral participation and 25 percent from the final exam. Rick did pretty well on the exam, and he had participated a good deal in class. I agonized about his final grade and ended up giving him the benefit of the doubt, awarding him what might have been an extra half grade point.

I remember those details because I was left with a nagging feeling that I had made a mistake. Recently, in a discussion of grading practices with a colleague, I described my internal debate. "What was the student's name?" the colleague asked. It turned out that Rick had taken a course with him, too. "He got under my skin," my colleague said. "He liked to get a rise out of all of us. I now realize that I gave him a higher grade than he really deserved."

"Oh, no!" I responded. "I probably did the same thing. Do you think Rick went through college manipulating the guilty conscience of his liberal professors?"

"I don't know. It's a difficult situation to deal with. I wonder how many of his classes involved the same pattern."

At the root of the situation may have been not Rick's particular political and religious beliefs, but his character and psychology. He needed to be embroiled in controversy and to feel that he was standing up for the truth against an oppressive liberal orthodoxy. Ironically he seemed to enjoy playing the victim, even as he criticized those in our society who claim some kind of special consideration because they are victims of prejudice.

I've taught conservative students who were better than Rick at engaging in dialogue, and who considered other points of view in a more reflective, disinterested way. But maybe my particular slant on what makes a good student reflects a liberal bias, too: I like the more genial, thoughtful, and considerate approach of most of my students better than Rick's aggressive, confrontational style. Perhaps my approach to liberal education reflects liberal political values.

Thus, much as I would like to, I can't put all the blame for my difficulties with Rick on his psychology. My own orientation contributed to what may have been bad judgment on my part.

I wonder whether I am representative of a larger pattern, in which liberal professors bend over backward to be sure that they are being fair to conservative students. In my course, the issue was theological understandings of homosexuality and poverty; in other academic disciplines, deep convictions might clash on other topics. In trying to be fair to points of view with which we disagree, do we override our better judgment?

I would like to think that Rick deserved his final grade because of the role he played as a catalyst for the class. His outspoken opinions forced the rest of us to think more deeply about what we were studying and our own values. If so, I was right to fudge my grading standards, in effect awarding him a little extra credit for enriching the learning of others.

When I tried out that interpretation on my colleague, however, he dismissed it: "I think Rick bamboozled you, and he may not even know he did it. Rick has a shtick, and it works with people like you. He wasn't a catalyst for thought, but a provocateur. He doesn't really engage with the ideas of his peers. You are trying to be charitable to him, but once again you are bending over backward to make sure that he isn't penalized by the difference of opinions."

I suspect now that I probably graded Rick too highly, although I'm still not certain. I continue to ponder the implications of my relationship with him for grading practices, faculty-student interactions, and the challenges of teaching controversial religious and political issues.

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 53, Issue 42, Page B16

John D. Barbour is a professor of religion at St. Olaf College and author of The Value of Solitude: The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography (University of Virginia Press, 2004).

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.