Under the law

It is spring break and the midterms are behind me. One of my best students came to talk to me about her grade. While she had given excellent answers to most questions on the test, she had completely messed up the big one on the redistributive effects of unexpected inflation. Putting together her class participation, results from earlier pop quizzes, ability to reason, positive attitude, and work ethic, and seeing the nature of her mistake, it was easy for me to conclude that this student has accomplished much more than was reflected by her current grade.

What should I do? I could not change the grading criteria, nor could I inflate everyone's grades---both would stand against everything I teach. I tried to help the student by encouraging her to keep up the good work, cautioning her to be more careful on the next big exam, and expressing my time-tested conviction that she will reap long-term rewards by studying hard. As painful as it was for me, there was noting I could do to change her midterm score in an attempt to reward her more fairly for what she has learned in this course.

I woke up the night after confronting my student wondering if I had done the right thing. Have I acted as a mean person, one who cares for rules more than he cares for people? I found an answer in Paul Heyne's essays on economics, ethics, and religion. Reading through his discussion of justice, I was reminded that the proper functioning of any social system larger than a family (such as a school or an economy) depends on how well the referees (teachers or public servants) resist the temptation to break the general rules in order to better "serve the known interests of particular people."

I face the same information problem as any other professor, judge, congressman, or president---I am not omniscient. I learn more about some of my students than about others. Knowing the special circumstances of one particular case is precisely what makes me unqualified to interfere with the goal of fixing a seemingly unfair outcome. I may have created the rules for this course, but as soon as I release them I am subject to them as much as any of my students. And every person selected to serve us in one of the three branches of our government should never forget that.