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Colleges and universities across the country are continuing to water down higher education and diminish its value for future generations of college graduates. This time the regression is in the form of “inclusive grading.”
According to the College Fix, a number of schools, the latest of which is Boise State University, are advocating for “inclusive grading” as part of their diversity agenda.
The Fix reports Boise University is hosting an event called “Inclusive Teaching Means Inclusive Grading, Too.” This particular event does not include any information available for public consumption, but similarly named events held at other universities have focused on engaging instructors and professors in “conversations and activities designed to foreground diversity and inclusion in considerations of assessment and grading practices.” In practice what this might mean was made clear at a workshop at American University held in February, which sought to educate faculty on “how to assess writing without judging its quality.”
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The event is part of the school’s BUILD (Boise State Uniting for Inclusion and Leadership in Diversity) certificate program, intent on creating campus leaders who promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The seminar, entitled “Grading Ain’t Just Grading: Rethinking Writing Assessment Ecologies Towards Antiracist Ends,” was led by Washington-Tacoma professor Asao Inoue, who claimed grading practices should dispense completely with “judgements of quality” because American grammar is “racist” and an “unjust language structure.”
Inoue’s assertions even found their way onto a so-called anti-racist poster at the University of Washington, Tacoma’s Writing Center. The poster claimed American grammar is inherently “racist” and argued students should not be penalized for using slang or poor grammar in speech or in writing assignments.
According to the poster, “There is no inherent ‘standard’ of English” and “language is constantly changing.” As a result, there is no real justification for “placing people in hierarchies or restricting opportunities and privileges because of the way people communicate in particular versions of English.”
“We promise to emphasize the importance of rhetorical situations over grammatical ‘correctness’ in the production of texts,” announced the poster. “We promise to challenge conventional word choices and writing explanations.”
The so-called experts in communication ignore the fact that proper grammar and punctuation provide clarity in written communications — a central goal of communicating — and that adhering to the “Written Standard” also helps writers be mindful of writing to a specific audience so as not to confuse or offend readers.
Yet in August, American University invited one of its own faculty members, Neisha-Anne Green of the Academic Support and Access Center and Marnie Twigg of the Writing Studies Program, to lead a faculty workshop to reinforce Inoue’s ideas.
The session, entitled “How to Incorporate Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Your Classroom,” walked faculty through revising their course materials so as to avoid accidentally reinforcing racist practices.
Last year, the Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) hosted an “Inclusive Teaching Seminar,” which engaged participants in conversations on “diversity, growth mindset, microaggressions and implicit bias, trigger warnings, stereotype threat, and inclusive homework assessments,” PJ Media reported.
In 2017, staff at the CTL went so far as to urge professors to allow students to assess themselves because members claimed grades were a “currency for a capitalist system” — lest we forgot the SJW agenda is not only anti-white but also radically anti-capitalist.
Of course, the irony of these campaigns for “inclusivity” is that they themselves are inherently racist. They rest on the notion that non-whites cannot be held to the same standards because they simply cannot compete with their white counterparts. Inoue’s assertions presume minority students are incapable of speaking and writing in proper English and require the protection of academia to safeguard them from such unfair expectations.
And beyond being implicitly racist, these “inclusivity” campaigns reinforce dangerous divisiveness by separating students based on their identities. In fact, according to a recent study by the National Association of Scholars published earlier this year, American colleges have regressed to a system of neo-segregation because college campuses recruit minority students eagerly while simultaneously fostering campus arrangements that encourage the formation of separate social groups, all under the auspices of “diversity” and “inclusivity.”
But perhaps worst of all, campaigns for “inclusive grading,” student self-assessment, and grading practices that dispense with quality judgments undermine the very purpose of higher education, which is to hold students to the highest standard and encourage them to meet those expectations. Instead, colleges and universities have devolved entirely into a bastion of Left thought where education has been replaced by indoctrination.
Sadly, the fact that these practices set students up for failure once they find themselves far removed from their “safe spaces” and in the real world seems to be of no concern to the SJW agenda. Being “woke” is far more important than being “employable.”
Photo: Jerry Leer / iStock / Getty Images Plus
