A Proposal to Abolish Grading

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Kendrick Ellis Professor Long EN 81103-81 14 October 2011 Analysis of “A Proposal to Abolish Grading” “A Proposal to Abolish Grading” is a short essay written by Paul Goodman, who illustrates his feelings on abolishing grading. Goodman thinks that grading is a waste of time and it discourages students; to Goodman tests are a hindrance to students. The beginning of the essay is somewhat of a challenge to Ivy League schools to do away with grading. In the short essay “A Proposal to Abolish Grading” Goodman uses logos, ethos, and pathos to convey a message to various institutions. In the beginning of the essay, Goodman makes an appeal to pathos by stating “I think that a great majority of professors agree that grading hinders teaching and creates a bad spirit, going as far as cheating and plagiarizing.”(191). Goodman has made up in his mind that professors know that grading is not helping students but is causing them to cheat. Students tend to think that by taking someone else’s work that has scored a decent grade on it that it will help them do the same. If a person put their heart into their work and they do not do as well as they would have hoped than that person might get discouraged. That particular person might decide to cheat. In the middle of the essay, Goodman narrates “For the students, it seems to me that a primary duty of the university is to deprive them of their props, their dependence on extrinsic valuation and motivation, and to force them to confront the difficult enterprise itself and finally lose themselves in it.”(192). In this quote Goodman uses pathos to show his point of view of the universities duties for students. He is pointing out how students are deprived of their props by universities and their grading scales. This has a strong emotional appeal towards students.?? Goodman makes an appeal to logos by logically
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