“Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts”

In the writing “Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts” written by Harvey C. Mansfield he discusses the inflation in grades that are given at the prestigious college of Harvard. Mansfield start off his essay strong with “ This term I decided to experiment with the grading of my political-philosophy course at Harvard.” Within that sentence Mansfield demonstrated a case of ethos by laying out his credentials for the readers letting them know that he is valid to write a topic about grade inflation since him himself is a teacher at one of the most prestigious colleges in the nation. The writer also uses good evidence by using his own class as an experiment and used them as the sample subject to prove that people in private schools do not deserve the high grades in which they earn, it is just mandatory for him to give out those grades according to school policy. “Moreover, everyone knows that C is an average grade, whereas a B+ is next to the top. Mere recalibration does not address the real problem: the raising of grades way beyond what students deserve.” In this section he uses logos because he points out a known fact that C is an average grade. But in this section he also says that EVERYONE KNOWS THAT C IS AN AVERAGE GRADE which is considered a logical fallacy because some people consider a C a more that average grade in some classes. Mansfield argument was well developed because he used his own class as an example and there is no true way to argue against that because it is a fact. Mansfield paper was well developed and was interesting enough to keep me focused on the writing.