Torn Between Two Lovers

Dear Colleagues Across the Curriculum:

The TWO ECONOMIES


So, you're talking to a guy
who grew up essentially
gradeless and would
prefer not to give
letter grades.

Yet my difficulty
has come from trying
to operate in two economies.

…if I institute my own grading
(non-grading) system within an
economy otherwise functioning
in its standard paradigmatic way,
then what have I done?

Wrench in the works, yes. But
to what end? I fear that student
confusion results (mostly because
[we] don't have the whole institution
on board re-training students
o a new paradigm).

May we play with the idea of
The 2 Economies?

Call them Gradeless and Graded
Call the free-play and work-to-do.
Call them laissez fair and lasso fair.
Call them the Creating and Consuming
Economies (MAKING on the one hand;
Give&Taking work&service on the other hand. )

Try not to collapse, conflate, and confuse,
but rather: separate and turn up the split:
polarize so they don’t bleed into each other
(the 2 sets of values) and contaminate the
whole deal.

This is school mode, yes? Not church&state.

Characterize the 2 and then wonder at the
possibility of a complementary relationship
--recognizable & shared by the learning
community: one that does no injustice to
either economy,

Like building an ice cream parlor in hell
without damage to hot and cold



Blake called it: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
It’s possible, but we all have to be on the same
paradigmatic page, true? Otherwise, my friend, it’s
like being torn between two lovers: an agony rather
than agon.

Need we argue?

xxxooo, Sam