It could be a Zen koan: if everybody in the class gets an A, what does an A mean?

The answer: Not what it should, says Andrew Perrin, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “An A should mean outstanding work; it should not be the default grade,” Mr. Perrin said. “If everyone gets an A for adequate completion of tasks, it cripples our ability to recognize exemplary scholarship.” Read more…

Posted via email from Simply Charly’s Posterous

Since University College London began transcribing the papers of the Enlightenment philosopher Jeremy Bentham more than 50 years ago, it has published 27 volumes of his writings — less than half of the 70 or so ultimately expected.

The painstaking job of transcribing often hard-to-decipher handwritten documents from history’s lead players — not to mention a lack of money — has meant that most originals are seen by a just a handful of scholars and kept out of the public’s reach altogether. After more than five decades, only slightly more than half of James Madison’s papers have been transcribed and published, while work on Thomas Jefferson’s papers, begun in 1943, probably won’t be finished until around 2025. Read more…

Posted via email from Simply Charly’s Posterous

Posted via email from Simply Charly’s Posterous

With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities. Read more…

Posted via email from Simply Charly’s Posterous