Grading

Most graders should be familiar to that ambivalent feeling one gets when he is confronted by the prospect of having to curve an exam.

On one hand, a curved result discards the student's absolute abilities for a relative one. In this respect, such a curve defeats the purpose of examination as a licensing device. A student who passed calculus, upon confrontation with an integration problem, should be able to derive the proper solution, and not just spew out a wrong answer that is closer to the correct solution than the one given by his peers. One would never trust a physician who received his license by the merit of being just slightly better than his classmate. Similarly, a student of another subject should not pass his exams upon the same merit.

Yet, results to exams are so often dependent on factors that one can never control. Exams for the same subject must be different each year, with their respective qualities constantly in flux. It is hard to demand merit from students when the factors surrounding the materials and exam itself are out of your control. In this respect, curving itself is the only certainty that one can fully generate.