In his thirteenth chapter, “Grades,” Eble discusses the use of letter grading, his feelings on the grading process, and student’s opinions and treatment of grades. Not a fan of grades, Eble has quite a bit to say – both positive and negative. To start us off, he shortly continues with the last chapter’s contents: that of the test. He points out that “testing is surely one way of providing emphasis, repetition, and reinforcement, all admitted aids to learning, and grades certainly provide a simple form of motivation.” Tests can definitely have their place, especially in learning, but there are a slew of negatives that come with the traditional A-F grading scale. Some studies of grading practices show that grades not only encourage cheating, they also encourage limiting one’s choice of classes, creating an unhealthy competitive atmosphere, and promoting conformity in learning. That said, Eble points out that “knowing how one is doing is a necessary part of learning.” That in mind, it may be important – in this world of letter-grading – to give the students a constant update of where they stand in the class. This doesn’t necessarily need to compare ‘student A’ to the rest of the class, but to give the student an idea of how their performance has been received.

Grades can encourage students to avoid certain courses. Eble points out in a short entry that “of graduating seniors at the University of Tennessee, one-half said they had not taken certain courses because of the possibility of poor grades. Pass-fail, credit-no-credit grading was adopted in part to work against this narrowing of choice, and the change constitutes a real gain in modifying the grading system.” Here, students outright avoid learning certain subjects in fear of receiving a low grade – whether it be from the content or the professor. This then has another rolling effect: grades keep students from learning what they want to learn. And this then leads to having, as University of Michigan professor Martin Gold states, “many students select their courses according to the reputation of the instructors.” While this can be a positive in encouraging good instruction, it can also hold students back with fear of a tougher instructor – or someone who grades “too harshly.”

There are positives to grading, as there must be (grades have been around for quite awhile!). As motivators, grades do their best “when they appear with some regularity . . . Giving many grades reduces the psychic wear and tear on the students. Everything doesn’t ride on the midterm or the final.” This method of grading makes receiving grades much less stressful. When something is only worth 5% of the grade, it's much more lax-feeling than a final exam worth 60% of the course. Additionally, grades can and should be considered earned by both instructor and student alike, as they show not only the student’s learning performance, but they show the instructor’s teaching performance.

All of this aside, Eble still isn’t a fan of traditional grading. He states that he makes no attempt “to disguise [his] own attitude toward grades. [He doesn’t] like them very much; [he distrusts] their accuracy and their effects; and, after more than thirty years of teaching, [he still has] problems giving them. He even points out that he refuses to take grades too seriously, and that he wishes other teachers would do the same. In an interesting story, Eble writes that “in some freer days of the past I used to meet some grade complaints by saying, ‘all right, what grade do you want? I’ll change it.’ And some I did change, though for the most part, the result was an embarrassed backing down on the part of the student.” So what does this tell us? Maybe we should reconsider our grading practices in order to expand on the possibilities of learning and encouragement.