Day 16

I usually operate under the understanding that my husband's profession and mine are on very different planes, but after an interesting dinner conversation with a winemaker, I've finally found some common ground.

One of our six dinner guests last night (certainly not the wisest choice for a Monday night after Daylight Savings Time, and my bleary eyes are paying for it) is actively working to eradicate the scoring system he believes has plagued the wine industry. If you enjoy wine, you're probably familiar with the famous wine critic, Robert Parker, who in a regular publication, The Wine Advocate, assigns points to bottles of wine in what's called The Independent Consumer's Guide. His opponent, our guest, insists that this scoring system is robbing winemakers everywhere, giving disproportionate attention to a select few, and leaving the rest of the independent wine makers subject to either neglect or poor scores, which just isn't good for business. He went on to complain about a poor analogy that was recently presented to him: Wines are like runners in a race. The scores just measure where they come in at the finish line. I suggested it makes more sense to compare the system to the grades we give in school, more specifically, the grades we give in English.

The quality of writing, like the quality of wine, is difficult to measure. While one aspect of a grade can be attributed to the quantifiable (composition, mechanics, sentence structure, etc.), the remaining points are subjective. I see this every year when we work as a committee to score writing samples. From one reader to the next, it can be the difference between passing or failing. I work under a set of standards, of course, but when it comes to giving grades, it is the objectives I set for my students that I consider. I am merely one reader. Why do we trust Robert Parker, or any one taster for that matter, to assign points to a wine? And who am I to decide who has succeeded or failed as a writer?

Grades. We don't often stop to explore their purpose, nor do we examine the effects they have on students, parents, and us. If I weren't pregnant, I'd say we should all sit down with a glass of wine and talk it over.