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Some schools are ditching traditional grading.
Instead, they use “labor-based grading,” an idea promoted by Arizona State University professor Asao Inoue.
Labor-based grading means basing grades more on effort than the quality of work.
In addition, Inoue lectured a conference of rhetoric professors “stop saying that we have to teach this dominant English. … If you use a single standard to grade your students’ languaging, you engage in racism!”
So I reported that Inoue opposes teaching standard English. He complained that I was being unfair.
“What I’m saying is that students should have choices,” says Inoue in my latest video. “Is it possible that a student comes in who wants to learn the standardized English in my classes? Absolutely.”
My German-speaking parents made me learn proper English. Where would I be if they hadn’t?
“There are absolutely benefits to a standardized English,” says Inoue. “But that same world creates those same benefits through certain kinds of biases. Those can be bad.”
Lecturing to professors, Inoue says, “White people like you … built the steel cage of white language supremacy … handmaiden to white bias in the world, the kind that kills Black men on the streets!”
What? Teaching standard English kills Black men?
“I think it can,” says Inoue. “We have Eric Garner saying, ‘I can’t breathe.’ But no one’s listening and he dies. That’s the logics that we get.”
I still don’t get it. Eric Garner died because white people teach standard English? He uses words like “logics”? “Languaging”?
Much of the time, I don’t understand what Inoue is talking about. If this is how professors speak now, I see why students are bored and depressed.
Twenty-six years ago, a school board in Oakland, California, announced that its Black students were “bilingual.” They spoke both Black English (Ebonics) and standard English, and the schools should give “instruction to African-American students in their primary language.”
Ebonics advocates told teachers not to correct students who “she here” instead of “she is here.”
When many people, including Black parents, objected, Oakland officials said that they never intended to teach Ebonics, just to recognize it as a legitimate language.
Inoue says that the Ebonics movement didn’t do enough.
“Everyone says, yes, we believe in that, but they didn’t do anything in their classrooms.”
No wonder his students label him “easy grader.” I’m glad he doesn’t teach engineering.
Inoue identifies as “Japanese American.”
I tell him that Japanese Americans earn, on average, $21,000 a year more than average Americans, yet he keeps talking about America’s “white supremacy.”
“What kind of white supremacist country lets that happen?” I joke.
Inoue replies, “Japanese American communities wanted to be seen as more American” and made great efforts to join American culture.
Exactly! Japanese Americans prospered because of it. So do other immigrant groups. Several now earn more than whites in America. They succeed by speaking standard English, and because America is relatively color blind.
“I get a little uncomfortable with colorblindness,” replies Inoue, “That’s not how humans work … there’s no such thing as a neutrality.”
“But there is,” I say. “Hire people based on the highest test score, you’re being neutral about other factors.”
“Depends on how you see the test,” he answers. Tests may be biased. He also criticizes high school honors classes, calling them “pretty white spaces.”
Inoue says he believes in “Marxian” ideas, and asks things like, “Who owns the means of opportunity production in the classroom?”
“Where has Marxian philosophy ever helped people?” I ask.
Marxian philosophies “don’t give us a plan of action. They’re not socialism,” he says. As for capitalism, “I think we can do better.”
I doubt it. For years, intellectuals promised Marx’s ideas will work better than capitalism. Instead, socialism perpetuated poverty.
Nevertheless, on campuses today, Marx’s views thrive. Students often hear them unchallenged.
At least Inoue was willing to come on Stossel TV to debate. Most “Marxian” professors refuse.
“What I’m saying is that students should have choices,” he says while disagreeing that he opposes standards. Wonder why your Chinese appliances fail? Ask any American engineer sent to China to solve their quality problems. They will tell you the Chinese believe centuries of engineering standards are mere choices.
Inoue kinda proves my point about most of our racial problems really being cultural. He’s bought the race studies bs lock, stock, and barrel. He’s basically saying he’s a racist, so everyone else must be too. He even sounds like the overeducated buffoons teaching race studies, down to “Logics.” It’s interesting to hear it from somebody of Japanese descent, but they can imbibe of grievance culture too. Anybody can adopt a culture.
I used to teach writing to undergrads at a prestigious college. Grading on “effort” provides an easy way for a professor to offer students grades that will please them, so they’ll give him/her good evaluations. But learning to write is not about absorbing the professor’s ideas and theories (and nonsense) about writing. Learning to write–like learning to play a musical instrument–is about developing skills in using language for clear and effective communication. And yes, those skills can indeed be learned, and they can be taught–if, that is, the teacher actually has those skills. Inoue, like most of today’s professors, clearly does not.
Thanks for the article, John. I hope you write more on this subject.
Since the subject of Marxism. , Communistm.has been brought up. It’s thus appropriate time to also mention the subject of Communist nation of China an appropriate time It’s important to define the concept of Marxism. There the pipe-dream of a pure Marxist society in the philosophical political economic fantasy that no one is ever really in need and everyone “Works according to his abilities and receives according to his needs”
In contrast, the is the reality of Communism which is that Marxism is a philosophy that no intelligent person can actually, truthfully accept is not only unrealistic and unnatural but also a joke and an excuse to set up and prop-up tyranny. For evil is always looking for an excuse. Marxism is just the excuse need to set up brutal regimes. Such as that of that Communist tyrannical and oppressive of Red China
Most historians agree that Karl Marx had good intentions when he labored so many hours writing his books .Such as the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO along with his long volumes which are entitled THE CAPITAL. Those volumes and his other written works were intended to remedy the terrible social conditions of the oppressed and exploited working class.
The reality was the only further tyrannical oppression and cruel exploitation came upon humankind as a result of his error filled philosophical economic political thesis. First, this awful disaster is what may be called “The law of unintended consequences.” Second, as already mentioned above Karl Marx had “good intentions.” So this serves a proof that the old saying must actually be true. Which is that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
What Marx could never figure out was what’s next after the tyrants and oppressors are eliminated. From my understanding, each successive “regime” necessarily has to be taken down because, in effect, it too is just filling the space that was just vacated. This cycle repeats until what can be determined to be success is achieved. And who makes that determination? From there Marx had to leave the vulgarities of human existence to create a new religion that elevates man above himself.
Any “historian” who saw this babble as well intended needs to go back and read his scribble again. It’s a philosophy that promotes the impossible. Re-creating man as his own god ignores the tenets of human nature that lead directly to tyrants and despots. Marx was a lazy bum who smooched off of anyone who would give him a handout. He spent his entire adult life trying to justify his own laziness. His only real “contribution” to society was to give those like him a reason to set on their asses and live off the productivity of others.
Communism is against human nature.
Communism and its “literary ideal”, the musings of Karl Marx, are the enemy of “good.” Communism is evil. Those who support Marxist theories are evil doers. History has born this out.
My 8 year old granddaughter was reading to me the other day. The book she was reading is about a dog and a little girl. The story is written in the voice of the dog. The dog introduces the reader to the little girl whom he calls “his human”. I asked my granddaughter if she knew what a human was. She said no. I said a human is a person. I then asked her, “Are all people humans?”; and she said, “No.”