As often happens at the end of a semester, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about grades: What they mean, what purpose they serve, and how to best assign them. In thinking about this, I’m also thinking about a comment that a number of my colleagues put on each class syllabus: something to the effect of “I don’t give grades, you earn them.” These colleagues are gifted teachers whose examples I strive to follow, and I appreciate the sentiment behind their statement, but it’s also always struck me as oversimplifying what it means to grade. I don’t like the suggestion that grades are objective, straightforward representations of what a student has been up to in class.

One of the more interesting passages of scripture produced by Joseph Smith Jr. is in Section 36 of the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants (or the Book of Moses in the Latter-day Saint Pearl of Great Price):

And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residee of the people, and he wept, and Enoch bore record of it, saying, How is it the heavens weeps and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains? And Enoch said unto the Lord, How is it that you can weep, seeing you are holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?