One of my favorite books (or, in this case, series of books) is the Lord of the Rings: the hero struggling against nigh-insurmountable odds to complete the quest, never knowing if he will succeed or not. One of the great dramatic tensions in the book is the possibility that Frodo could fail – it makes a good story, a compelling read, and a satisfying ending.

I, and many people like me, approached education that way in college as well: the readings, homework, and classes that seemed insurmountable! The temptation to give in and cheat to pass the class! The triumph at completing the class and earning my grade, whatever it was!

Why is it, then, that so much stock is put in the end result by students, parents, and administrators alike? No Child Left behind increased the emphasis on test results – absolutely, it did – but the problem was already there: students had to pass – NO! they had to succeed! – or the school was a failure long before George W. Bush put pen to paper to sign that law.

In Universities – no longer the “Ivory Towers” of state-and privately-sponsored public improvement – make every effort to not issue an “F” to a student who does not pass muster; mechanisms like “Incomplete” or “Withdraw” have replaced failing and marginally failing grades.

Why?

Maybe failed students get upset and either complain or drop out of school. Maybe this translates into loss of revenue for the school. Maybe angry parents (who theoretically might become donors) complain that their darling son/daughter was maligned, mistreated, or picked on. Maybe from banks who supply the ever-increasing loans (and their “originating fees”) to the would-be student and thus the school. Does it matter?

There was a time when ivy league colleges would confer “gentleman’s c” onto the scions of rich benefactors, a fact sneered at by hard-working students and faculty alike. Today, “C” is the new “F” and most students are expected to earn “A”s in every subject, regardless of their level of comprehension or participation.

For their part, many professors and teachers work hard to engage their students, make them do homework, require high standards from their students. By and large, however, these efforts are being undermined by a culture – American, corporate, collegic, whatever – that prizes the “A” over the knowledge gained in the class. Take for instance, Slate.com’s 2001 article “How to buy a good college term paper” A veritable buffet of brazen BS – how to pass off a biology report as your own, how to out-fox the overconfident Literary Criticism professor, how to pretend to learn history’s lessons without really thinking about unpleasant subject like slavery, colonization, and war.

Pre-industrial Chinese administrators and bureaucrats had to pass a rigorous, gut wrenching, mind-melting test before they could become a member of the government. Janissary administrators spent decades of their lives studying to become wardens of the Ottoman Empire. Thomas Jefferson studied Latin, philosophy, history, and poetry years before drafting the Declaration of Independence.

A nice story for a forgotten age? Am I Don Quixote? Do I yearn for a time of make believe honor and never-was ethics?

Or am I calling upon Americans to decide that the visible, tangible results of an “A” are worth less than the paper they’re printed on and demand students actually learn. Einstein was considered an indifferent student at best and Thomas Edison’s schoolmaster once remarked that young Tom was “addlebrained.”

In closing, what good is an “A” if the recipient doesn’t think, evaluate, and criticize? What “success” is worth being ignorant of the forces at work in the world? What amount of money is worth becoming the next Ken Lay, Bernard Madoff, or R. Allen Stanford?