Graduate students, and many profs, have a weird aversion to grading their students. It seems disingenuous, at best, since high marks have given them their privileged positions. However, I think this movement is built on three interconnected phenomena. Many graduate students are lazy; many academics are socially awkward; and academia has a fair bit of ingrained narcissism. Let's look at these in order.
Many graduate students are lazy? Despite being able to produce a tremendous amount of work, many grad students falter when things do not come easily to us. For many of us, myself included, the reason we chose grad school is it represented the path of least resistance towards a good career And for those of you who balk at this description allow me to answer--working for a living is much harder than graduate school, it isn't even close. So, when we discover the difficult process of grading, we sometimes resort to calls for the abolition of grades instead of working to be the best teachers we can be.
Also important, is that academics are often socially awkward. Graduate students and profs are more socially inept than your average person. As such, they do not deal with conflict very well. It takes real self-assurance and strength of character to tell someone that their work is not good enough. Of course, if university wasn't so insistent upon people's work equalling their worth, this might be less of a problem.
These first two points are exacerbated by the fact that too many academics are wildly narcissistic. We are not willing to discuss the possibility that many people are not suited for university education. This is the path I chose, and I'm clearly smart, therefore it is the path others should choose---makes sense. However, many of us are here because we have the right set of intellectual tools, not because of a belief in the power of education--even though we may espouse that belief. And because their is no immediate and measurable penalty for producing poor social scientists, we do not weed out students like they do in Architecture or Engineering.
Just as I would not make a great musician, despite playing most of my life, some people are not meant for university. If you need to learn somatically, perhaps you should be a dancer, or actor. It seems that the drive of academics to make all people eligible for a university experience is missing the point of the variety of human experiences. Some profs talk about the number of different learning styles, and they are probably on to something. But if you are a person who doesn't learn through reading, writing and thinking critically you don't need to be a university student--at least not in the humanities and social sciences. Be an artist, they have always been better at questioning the world we live in anyway.
In sum, grades are not our enemy. Our own laziness, inability to negotiate social conflict and narcissism are our enemies. Granted, thinking critically about grading and the system of education is useful but let's focus on the elementary or secondary system that everyone is compelled to go to. Let's find ways to inclusively teach everyone in grade 3, and then they can decide for themselves whether they want to train their critical thinking skills in university or experience the world through dance or whether they want to feel their way through life using a trade.
(And yes, it is obviously more complicated than that--just making a point).
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