Think back (or forward?) to college, or even High School. What was the one question that almost always got asked at the beginning of the semester?
“Do you grade on a curve?”
You know what that means, right? There are different methods that teachers sometimes use, but essentially grading on a curve allows the teacher to raise the grade of most of the class by comparing their grades to the top grade-getter on a test. For example, if the highest score made on a test is 80 percent, then the teacher may raise all grades in class by twenty percentage points. You may have been the beneficiary of such a scheme. Grading on a curve certainly can help your overall grade. And it also balances the test scores among the class. Teachers get graded too, you know, and it doesn’t often look good to the school administrators if all of a classes’ grades are skewed in one direction.
So a lot of people do like the practice. But what about the top performers? They don’t benefit as much. If you have the highest grade, and it is already an A, then you don’t really benefit from a curve, but almost everyone else does. And curving can have the unfortunate side effect of vilifying the exceptional students. If everyone knows that a certain student made a 98 percent on the test, then they won’t take too kindly to this student for “busting the curve.”
The most interesting thing about grading on a curve I think is the fact that it forces you to compare your grades to others. Without grading on a curve it doesn’t matter what your fellow student does. Their grade doesn’t affect yours. But with a curve all of a sudden your scores are compared to the rest of the class. What if you were in a different class where your score was now the highest? Should your grade be any different just because of the people around you?
Now picture yourself running a race. You don’t care about placement. You just want to run. You like running and enjoy the feeling of accomplishing something like finishing a challenging race. Now what if, suddenly, you notice other runners passing you. What if a lot of runners started passing you? What if so many people passed you that you ended up one of the last runners to cross the finish line? Does this change your achievement any? Technically no, it doesn’t. But you might think it does when you compare yourself to the runners around you. That comparison has, in effect, stolen your joy.
Theodore Roosevelt said “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I think this is the kind of thing he was thinking of when he said it.
Luke 10:38-42
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Why is Martha upset? Well, she is having to do the work by herself. But ask yourself this: would she be upset if Mary wasn’t there? Is the comparison to Mary the thing that is getting her? What does this story tell you about the way we compare ourselves to others?
Matthew 20:1-16
20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Why are the workers that hired first upset? Would they have been upset if they were the ones hired last, or if they didn’t know anything about the other workers?
In both of these stories, comparison is the enemy.
Psychologists have studied this and what they found was interesting. They say there are really two different kinds of comparisons we make. Assimilative comparisons are made when we focus on our similarities with the person we compare ourselves to. This is the “good” kind of comparison, because it leads to the kind of thinking that inspires us. “If they can do it, so can I,” we think. Contrastive comparisons happen when we focus on the differences. We judge ourselves based on the success of others. And social media makes this worse. That’s because people generally post the good things happening, and we get a skewed sense of their lives. We wonder why others are having such a great life compared to us. The reality is people just don’t show you the bad things as much.
It is a big choice we make when we compare. We even do it with Jesus. We could do the wrong thing and think “He is perfect. I can never get close to that.” Or we could instead think “Wow what a role model. I’m going to get as close to that kind of life as I can.”
God Bless