What Justice Requires when Grading and

Testing

‘Should test scores and grades be used outside of school?’

Brian Valenzuela Sotomayor

2011

Within a meritocratic society it is very agreeable that “man develops little by little

through his own efforts” (Kant, 1960), after all academic performance is based on the

judgement of a student‟s ability in producing work that satisfies a particular

expectation of a test. Within this process teachers approve or disapprove the

attempts of students who aim to achieve the required standards required for

educational attainment, those fortunate phew who receive an accumulation of

approval are rewarded with credentials that open up a world of opportunities in

employment or in further education. Those who accumulate disapproval miss out on

such opportunities. With future opportunity and disadvantage at stake, there is a

huge responsibility amongst teachers and external verifiers when grading and testing

children, a responsibility that coincides with the immorality of creating social injustice.

According to Curren (2007) teachers have a “constitutive‟ responsibility towards their

“students state of intellectual virtue” (ibid, p7), or you could say intellectual worth;

where each student should be finding within themselves the purpose and worth of

intellect in their lives.

By combining the prior meritocratic example with the teacher‟s constitutive

responsibility of a student‟s intellectual virtue, can it be justifiable that children should

suffer as a result of bad grades and experience fewer opportunities than others?

According to Curren Adults, teachers and institutions have a constitutive

responsibility of formulating academic and moral standards that are largely out of a

child‟s control (ibid, p7). So, if children are in fact subordinated by the educator‟s

duty of intellectual stimulation, why are children‟s opportunities in life being

determined by a child‟s intellectual ignorance? Curren identifies this paradox where

children are being made to learn with “an unnecessary burden” because

accumulated grades are in fact “morally illegitimate” (ibid, p28). Furthermore if

indeed a teacher is responsible for the intellectual and moral virtue of children,

teachers should also take various factors in to account when grading students, such

as the possible advantages and disadvantages caused by a child‟s “constitutive

luck‟.

Constitutive luck is believed to be an affect that has impeded the moral and

intellectual virtue of a child, formed outside of a child‟s control; such as problems at

home, interpersonal problems at school or the effects of malnutrition and health care.

So if a child‟s intellectual and moral virtue has been at the mercy of “constitutive

luck‟ why are the lives of children being determined by grades that bear the

“constitutive responsibility‟ of teachers, parents and institutions; who are all

responsible for flourishing the intellectual worth and values of children?

Curren (2007) believes “children should not be held accountable for their choices

until the constitutive responsibility of teachers, parents and institutions has been

borne” (ibid, p18). It seems as if the „immaturity‟ of children‟s choices and academic

performance are being allowed to form a child‟s lifetime credentials that will provide a

particular access to employment and educational opportunities.

We must ask ourselves whether this promotes a sense of social justice and

whether children should be solely held accountable for their academic performance

at school. After exploring the constitutive responsibility of teachers, parents and

institutions, as well as the possible impacts of constitutive luck; it appears that

grades and test scores being used outside school could arguably be viewed as not

only unfair by socially unjust to children, therefore possibly morally illegitimate. For

example, according to Curren (2007) “Fair equality of opportunity is said to require

not merely that public offices and social positions be open (to all, in accordance with

talent) in the formal sense, but that all should have a fair chance to attain them” ( ibid,

pp9-10).

This meritocratic evaluation seems to described the pillars of a liberal and

democratic society in which man‟s effort and reward must be fair, this aligns with a

Kantian ideology that “man develops little by little through his own efforts”, but

according to Rawls “those who have the same level of „natural‟ talent and ability and

the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success

regardless of their social class origin, the class into which they are born and develop

until the age of reason” (Curren pg.: 10). What is striking about Rawls reference to

the age of reason is that according to Curren (2007) before a child has reached the

age of reason a child will have already have been “unnecessarily burdened‟ with

“illegitimate credentials‟ as a result of a Russian roulette experience with

“constitutive luck‟ or the mere absence of “constitutive responsibility‟ from their

teachers, parents and educational institutions.

It is clear in my mind that with clarity Curren and John Rawls have demonstrated that

justice requires that grades „should not‟ be accumulated until a child has reached the

age of reason and only after constitutive responsibility has been provided in

abundance; only then should a child‟s tests scores be used outside of school and

determine their position with a meritocratic society.

Bibliography

Curren, R. (2007). „Academic Standards and Constitutive Luck‟, in Maureen Eckert

and Robert Talisse (eds.), A Teacher‟s Life: Essays for Steven M. Cahn. Lanham,

MD: Lexington Books, pp.13-29

Curren, R. (2007). „Coercion and the Ethics of Grading and Testing‟, in Philosophy of

Education: An Anthology: Oxford: Blackwell. pp 465-476.

Kant, I. (1960). Education, United States of America: Michigan Press. pp 2-3