Students and Grades: Do Looks Matter?
In response to my last entry on looks and teaching evaluations, a friend asked whether I thought that students’ grades were influenced by professorial perceptions of their attractiveness. I can say that my students aren’t. No, not because I’m perfectly able to be objective. I do try to be aware of my own biases but even that awareness doesn’t go far enough. No, the grades I give aren’t influenced by how attractive I judge students to be because I grade their papers by student number, not name. I must admit that there are some fonts I like more than others. I also really dislike small type and coloured print. I also despise those slippy plastic folders that make stacks of essays topple over. I try not to overreact to the use of an apostrophe in the possessive of "it." I have a special comment I can cut and paste about the use of the phrase "the fact that." So all of this is just to say that there are some irrational criteria lurking around the edges of my grading practise but student looks aren’t part of it.
