I came across this short opinion essay in a 1919 edition of The Journal of Education. Consider this yet another entry into the “persistent challenges” folder:

CREDITS AND EDUCATION (F.B. Pearson)

If ever we come to place more emphasis upon credits than upon education it will be a sorry day for our institutions. Credits are but the label, while education is the contents of the package. We shall not get much nourishment if we devote our main attention to the label.

The office of the registrar has its use, of course, but it is not the power-plant of the institution whatever the students may think of it. A college student was copying statistics to exchange for credits, but growing weary and being resourceful he hired a girl at fifteen cents an hour to do the copying for him while he went off to the ball game. The college gave him credit for research work not knowing that his research-ing was done from the bleachers at the ballpark.

The college sometimes inveighs against the fractional credits that are brought to them by graduates of the high school, not realizing, apparently, that the teachers in the high school are graduates from the college and learned the trick of credits there. They wanted to fit out David with artificial trappings, but he put them aside and went forth with his own trained powers and slew Goliath.

Socrates and Agassiz were accounted great teachers, but if they ever said anything about marks and credits it is not a matter of record. Colleges, normal schools and high schools combined cannot build an elevator that will carry their students to the top of Mt. Parnassus. Climbing is the only mode of travel. These institutions have to do with civilization and human destiny and these cannot be measured in fractional percentages. They are dealing in eternal futures and such things cannot be estimated with calipers. We shall do well to keep our attention fixed upon the contents of the package and not the label. Let’s teach school.

Source: Pearson, F.B. “Credits and Education.” The Journal of Education 90, no. 22 (2258) (1919): 613–613. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4276