1. 11
Unit
Letter to a B Student
Robert Oliphant

2. Pre-reading questions
1. What grades do you mostly get for the English courses you have been taking? Are you happy or are you disappointed with the grades you get?
2. Imagine yourself to be a teacher and that you are to write a letter to a student who is disappointed with the grade he gets. What would you say to him in the letter?

3. Read Paragraph 1 and answer the following questions:
What change about grades has the writer mentioned briefly?
What, according to the writer, has caused the change?
Has the writer stated his purpose of writing in this paragraph? If yes, what is it? If not, where is it stated in the text?

4. The writer has mentioned briefly the change in the way grades are regarded, i.e. the norm has shifted upward.
The changes has to do with the general social climate where grades determine eligibility for graduate school and special programs. This is why the writer says there is nothing he can do to remove the feeling of disappointment.
The purpose of writing the letter is not stated in this paragraph. It is not specifically mentioned until the third paragraph.

5. 1. Your final grade for the course is B. A respectable grade
1. Your final grade for the course is B. A respectable grade. Far superior to the "Gentleman's C" that served as the norm a couple of generations ago. But in those days A's were rare: only two out of twenty-five, as I recall. Whatever our norm is, it has shifted upward, with the result that you are probably disappointed at not doing better. I'm certain that nothing I can say will remove that feeling of disappointment, particularly in a climate where grades determine eligibility for graduate school and special programs.

6. Read Paragraphs 2-5 and answer the following questions:
How do you interpret the second sentence in Paragraph 2 “The essence of success is that ….”?
What does a grade mean and what does it not mean?

7. How do you interpret the second sentence in Paragraph 2 “The essence of success is that ….”?
There does not exist the situation in which all those who are involved will turn out successful and no one feels disappointed. Wherever there are winners, there are losers. When someone feels happy about his success, there must be someone else or some others who feel disappointed. In a highly competitive society where the importance of winning is emphasized so much, it is inevitable that those who fail in the competition will feel disappointed.

8. What does a grade mean and what does it not mean?
It means the successful completion of a specific course at a certain level of proficiency. It is an indication of level of the student’s performance of some conventional tasks. It may also be an indication of the knowledge the student has acquired.
It may not be a truthful indication of the student’s knowledge. It does not represent a judgment of the student’s basic ability or of his character.

9. 2. Disappointment. It's the stuff bad dreams are made of: dreams of failure, inadequacy, loss of position and good repute. The essence of success is that there's never enough of it to go round in a zero-sum game where one person's winning must be offset by another's losing, one person's joy offset by another's disappointment. You've grown up in a society where winning is not the most important thing—it's the only thing. To lose, to fail, to go under, to go broke—these are deadly sins in a world where prosperity in the present is seen as a sure sign of salvation in the future. In a different society, your disappointment might be something you could shrug away. But not in ours.

10. 3. My purpose in writing you is to put your disappointment in perspective by considering exactly what your grade means and doesn't mean. I do not propose to argue here that grades are unimportant. Rather, I hope to show you that your grade, taken at face value, is apt to be dangerously misleading, both to you and to others.

11. 4. As a symbol on your college transcript, your grade simply means that you have successfully completed a specific course of study, doing so at a certain level of proficiency. The level of your proficiency has been determined by your performance of rather conventional tasks: taking tests, writing papers and reports, and so forth. Your performance is generally assumed to correspond to the knowledge you have acquired and will retain.

12. But this assumption, as we both know, is questionable; it may well be that you've actually gotten much more out of the course than your grade indicates—or less. Lacking more precise measurement tools, we must interpret your B as a rather fuzzy symbol at best, representing a questionable judgment of your mastery of the subject.

13. 5. Your grade does not represent a judgment of your basic ability or of your character. Courage, kindness, wisdom, good humor—these are the important characteristics of our species. Unfortunately they are not part of our curriculum. But they are important: crucially so, because they are always in short supply. If you value these characteristics in yourself, you will be valued—and far more so than those whose identities are measured only by little marks on a piece of paper. Your B is a price tag on a garment that is quite separate from the living, breathing human being underneath.

14. 6. The student as performer; the student as human being
6. The student as performer; the student as human being. The distinction is one we should always keep in mind. I first learned it years ago when I got out of the service and went back to college. There were a lot of us then: older than the norm, in a hurry to get our degrees and move on, impatient with the tests and rituals of academic life. Not an easy group to handle.

15. 7. One instructor handled us very wisely, it seems to me
7. One instructor handled us very wisely, it seems to me. On Sunday evenings in particular, he would make a point of stopping in at a local bar frequented by many of the GI-Bill students. There he would sit and drink, joke, and swap stories with men in his class, men who had but recently put away their uniforms and identities: former platoon sergeants, bomber pilots, corporals, captains, lieutenants, commanders, majors—even a lieutenant colonel, as I recall. They enjoyed his company greatly, as he theirs. The next morning he would walk into class and give these same men a test. A hard test. A test on which he usually flunked about half of them.

16. 8. Oddly enough, the men whom he flunked did not resent it
8. Oddly enough, the men whom he flunked did not resent it. Nor did they resent him for shifting suddenly from a friendly gear to a coercive one. Rather, they loved him, worked harder and harder at his course as the semester moved along, and ended up with a good grasp of his subject—economics. The technique is still rather difficult for me to explain; but I believe it can be described as one in which a clear distinction was made between the student as classroom performer and the student as human being. A good distinction to make. A distinction that should put your B in perspective—and your disappointment.

17. 1. What is the writer’s view concerning social labels?
Read Paragraphs 9-10 and answer the following questions:
1. What is the writer’s view concerning social labels?
2. How do you interpret the sentence “To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading?

18. 1. What is the writer’s view concerning social labels?
Social labels are, on the one hand, irrelevant and misleading, and, on the other hand, necessary in a complex society.

19. 2. How do you interpret the sentence “To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading?
The pronoun “them” does not refer to a single plural noun in the context such as “coordinates”, but it refers to what has been said in the first few lines in this paragraph. It we are aware of that human beings, despite their apparent differences, are basically identical physically and emotionally, we would definitely think that the social labels used to distinguish them are irrelevant, i.e. meaningless, and misleading, i.e. distorting the fact.

20. 9. Perspective. It is important to recognize that human beings, despite differences in class and educational labeling, are fundamentally hewn from the same material and knit together by common bonds of fear and joy, suffering and achievement. Warfare, sickness, disasters, public and private—these are the larger coordinates of life. To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading.

21. It is true that these labels are necessary in the functioning of a complex society as a way of letting us know who should be trusted to do what, with the result that we need to make distinctions on the basis of grades, degrees, rank, and responsibility. But these distinctions should never be taken seriously in human terms, either in the way we look at others or in the way we look at ourselves.

22. Even in achievement terms, your B label does not mean that you are permanently defined as a B achievement person. I'm well aware that B students tend to get B's in the courses they take later on, just as A students tend to get A's. But academic work is a narrow, neatly defined highway compared to the unmapped rolling country you will encounter after you leave school. What you have learned may help you find your way about at first; later on you will have to shift to yourself, locating goals and opportunities in the same fog that hampers us all as we move toward the future.

23. far superior to: better in quality than
The visiting team turned out to be far superior to the host team in teamwork.
vs.
superior
inferior

24. A few years ago the Gentleman's C prevailed in universities.
Gentleman's C: a decent grade.
A gentleman is supposed to be a man of decency, i. e. decent in speech and behavior, so Gentleman's C simply means a decent grade.
A few years ago the Gentleman's C prevailed in universities.

25. remove: to take away
Reference books are not to be removed from the library.
The doctors decided to operate on him immediately to remove the tumor on his liver.
Do you mind if I ask you to remove your hat so that I can have a better view of the screen?

26. to be eligible to do something: to be able or allowed to do something
eligibility: the qualifications or abilities required for doing something
eligible adj.
to be eligible to do something: to be able or allowed to do something
Citizens above the age of 18 are eligible to vote and to be voted.
Only those who have worked in this company for at least three years are eligible for housing allowance.

27. The extra cost for traveling to work is offset by the lower rent here.
offset: to counterbalance or compensate for
The extra cost for traveling to work is offset by the lower rent here.
What the company donates to charity can be offset against tax.

28. You should never take what he says at face value.
take something at face value: to accept something for what it appears to be
I took their offer at face value and did not suspect at all that they were trying to trick me.
You should never take what he says at face value.

29. The river is apt to overflow when there is a heavy rain.
be apt to: to have the tendency to
The river is apt to overflow when there is a heavy rain.
He is apt to get excited when people start to talk about football.
apt adj.
He made an apt comment that nicely summed up what every one of us had in mind.
This year we had quite a few apt students in our class.

30. cf. correspond with: to communicate with by writing letters
correspond to: to match, to be similar or equal to
The American FBI corresponds to the British M15.
His story of what happened that night does not correspond with the witness's version.
The date written on the letter does not correspond with the witness’s version.
cf. correspond with: to communicate with by writing letters
For many years they have never stopped corresponding with each other.

31. He knows best how to handle a problem of this type.
handle: to deal with something or someone; to control with hands; to be in charge of
He knows best how to handle a problem of this type.
He found great fun in handling a yacht.
We have got to speak to the person who handles the company's accounts.

32. He makes a point of jogging 6 miles every morning, rain or shine.
make a point of doing something: to take particular care to do something
He makes a point of jogging 6 miles every morning, rain or shine.
To prevent loss of data, I always make a point of making a copy on a floppy disk of what I have done during the day.

33. He resented having to get up early to catch the first train.
resent: to feel bitter or indignant at
He resented having to get up early to catch the first train.
I strongly resent his snobbish manner in dealing with different people.

34. make a distinction: to say what the difference is between two or more similar persons or things
Most societies make a distinction between the status of an unmarried woman and a married one.
In the government's education proposals there is a clear distinction made between academic and practical training.

35. Search efforts were hampered by strong winds and fifteen-foot waves.
hamper: to cause difficulty in activity
Search efforts were hampered by strong winds and fifteen-foot waves.
Staff problems are seriously hampering the work of the government central computers.