Nicomachean EthicsAristotle Book I1. Every art and every .docx

Nicomachean Ethics/Aristotle
Book I
1. Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and
pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the
good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things
aim. But a certain difference is found among ends; some are
activities, others are products apart from the activities that
produce them. Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is
the nature of the products to be better than the activities.
1. Why is that?
2. If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we
desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the
sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of
something else (for at that rate the process would go on to
infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly
this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the
knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we
not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to
hit upon what is right?
This supreme good, Aristotle goes on to say, is “happiness”
(well-being). He then goes on to inquire as to what this is.
5. To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, and men of
the most vulgar type, seem (not without some ground) to
identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the
reason why they love the life of enjoyment. For there are, we
may say, three prominent types of life- that just mentioned, the
political, and thirdly the contemplative life. Now the mass of
mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a

life suitable to beasts, but they get some ground for their view
from the fact that many of those in high places share the tastes
of Sardanapallus. A consideration of the prominent types of life
shows that people of superior refinement and of active
disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is, roughly
speaking, the end of the political life. But it seems too
superficial to be what we are looking for, since it is thought to
depend on those who bestow honour rather than on him who
receives it, but the good we divine to be something proper to a
man and not easily taken from him. Further, men seem to pursue
honour in order that they may be assured of their goodness; at
least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be
honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground
of their virtue; clearly, then, according to them, at any rate,
virtue is better. And perhaps one might even suppose this to be,
rather than honour, the end of the political life. But even this
appears somewhat incomplete; for possession of virtue seems
actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong
inactivity, and, further, with the greatest sufferings and
misfortunes; but a man who was living so no one would call
happy, unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs. But
enough of this; for the subject has been sufficiently treated even
in the current discussions. Third comes the contemplative life,
which we shall consider later.
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion,
and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is
merely useful and for the sake of something else. And so one
might rather take the previously mentioned objects to be ends;
for they are loved for themselves. But it is evident that not even
these are ends; yet many arguments have been thrown away in
support of them. Let us leave this subject, then.
6. We had perhaps better consider the universal good and
discuss thoroughly what is meant by it, although such an inquiry
is made an uphill one by the fact that the Forms have been

introduced by friends of our own. He goes on to criticize Plato,
observing that while these Forms may be “eternal” they are no
better for that “since that which lasts long is no whiter than that
which perishes in a day.”
Happiness, he continues, is the supreme good, for this we
choose always for itself and never for the sake of something
else, but honour, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose
indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we
should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for
the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall
be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the
sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself.
From the point of view of self-sufficiency the same result seems
to follow; for the final good is thought to be self-sufficient.
Now by self-sufficient we do not mean that which is sufficient
for a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary life, but also
for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends and
fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship. But some
limit must be set to this; for if we extend our requirement to
ancestors and descendants and friends' friends we are in for an
infinite series. Let us examine this question, however, on
another occasion; the self-sufficient we now define as that
which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in
nothing; and such we think happiness to be; and further we
think it most desirable of all things, without being counted as
one good thing among others- if it were so counted it would
clearly be made more desirable by the addition of even the least
of goods; for that which is added becomes an excess of goods,
and of goods the greater is always more desirable. Happiness,
then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of
action.
Presumably, however, to say that happiness is the chief good
seems a platitude, and a clearer account of what it is still
desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain

the function of man. For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or
an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or
activity, the good and the 'well' is thought to reside in the
function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.
Have the carpenter, then, and the tanner certain functions or
activities, and has man none? Is he born without a function? Or
as eye, hand, foot, and in general each of the parts evidently has
a function, may one lay it down that man similarly has a
function apart from all these? What then can this be? Life seems
to be common even to plants, but we are seeking what is
peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition
and growth. Next there would be a life of perception, but it also
seems to be common even to the horse, the ox, and every
animal. There remains, then, an active life of the element that
has a rational principle; of this, one part has such a principle in
the sense of being obedient to one, the other in the sense of
possessing one and exercising thought. And, as 'life of the
rational element' also has two meanings, we must state that life
in the sense of activity is what we mean; for this seems to be
the more proper sense of the term. Now if the function of man is
an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational principle,
and if we say 'so-and-so-and 'a good so-and-so' have a function
which is the same in kind, e.g. a lyre, and a good lyre-player,
and so without qualification in all cases, eminence in respect of
goodness being added to the name of the function (for the
function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of a good
lyre-player is to do so well): if this is the case, and we state the
function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an
activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and
the function of a good man to be the good and noble
performance of these, and if any action is well performed when
it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence: if
this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of soul in
accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in
accordance with the best and most complete.

But we must add 'in a complete life.' For one swallow does not
make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a
short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
2. Summarize Aristotle’s account of what happiness for human
being consists in.
Book II
1. Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral,
intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth
to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time),
while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also
its name is one that is formed by a slight variation from the
word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the
moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by
nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the
stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated
to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it
up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move
downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one
way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then,
nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are
adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by
habit.
Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first
acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is
plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or
often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we
had them before we used them, and did not come to have them
by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them,
as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we
have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them,
e.g. men become builders by building and lyre players by

playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts,
temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
This is confirmed by what happens in states; for legislators
make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is
the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss
their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from
a bad one.
Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that
every virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every
art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-
players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true
of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders
as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so,
there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would
have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case
with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our
transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by
doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being
habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or
cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger;
some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-
indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in
the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of
character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities
we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of
character correspond to the differences between these. It makes
no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or
of another from our very youth; it makes a very great
difference, or rather all the difference.
3. Summarize Aristotle’s account of the nature of moral virtue
and how it is acquired.
3. We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or

pain that ensues on acts; for the man who abstains from bodily
pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the
man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent, and he who stands
his ground against things that are terrible and delights in this or
at least is not pained is brave, while the man who is pained is a
coward. For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and
pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and
on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence
we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our
very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be
pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right
education.
Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions,
and every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure
and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with
pleasures and pains. This is indicated also by the fact that
punishment is inflicted by these means; for it is a kind of cure,
and it is the nature of cures to be effected by contraries.
4. ‘We should judge people not by how susceptible they are to
“pleasure” but by what things they typically take pleasure in.’
Comment.
5. Next we must consider what virtue is. Since things that are
found in the soul are of three kinds- passions, faculties, states
of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean
appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling,
hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that
are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in
virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, e.g.
of becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states of
character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly
with reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we
stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we
feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other

passions.
Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we
are not called good or bad on the ground of our passions, but
are so called on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and
because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for
the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man
who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a
certain way), but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or
blamed.
Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are
modes of choice or involve choice. Further, in respect of the
passions we are said to be moved, but in respect of the virtues
and the vices we are said not to be moved but to be disposed in
a particular way.
For these reasons also they are not faculties; for we are neither
called good nor bad, nor praised nor blamed, for the simple
capacity of feeling the passions; again, we have the faculties by
nature, but we are not made good or bad by nature; we have
spoken of this before. If, then, the virtues are neither passions
nor faculties, all that remains is that they should be states of
character.
5. Explain, using the example of anger, why the virtues are
“dispositions?”
6. We must, however, not only describe virtue as a state of
character, but also say what sort of state it is. We may remark,
then, that every virtue or excellence both brings into good
condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the
work of that thing be done well; e.g. the excellence of the eye
makes both the eye and its work good; for it is by the excellence
of the eye that we see well. Similarly the excellence of the
horse makes a horse both good in itself and good at running and

at carrying its rider and at awaiting the attack of the enemy.
Therefore, if this is true in every case, the virtue of man also
will be the state of character which makes a man good and
which makes him do his own work well.
How this is to happen we have stated already, but it will be
made plain also by the following consideration of the specific
nature of virtue. In everything that is continuous and divisible it
is possible to take more, less, or an equal amount, and that
either in terms of the thing itself or relatively to us; and the
equal is an intermediate between excess and defect. By the
intermediate in the object I mean that which is equidistant from
each of the extremes, which is one and the same for all men; by
the intermediate relatively to us that which is neither too much
nor too little- and this is not one, nor the same for all. For
instance, if ten is many and two is few, six is the intermediate,
taken in terms of the object; for it exceeds and is exceeded by
an equal amount; this is intermediate according to arithmetical
proportion. But the intermediate relatively to us is not to be
taken so; if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to
eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will
order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the
person who is to take it, or too little- too little for Milo, too
much for the beginner in athletic exercises. The same is true of
running and wrestling. Thus a master of any art avoids excess
and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this- the
intermediate not in the object but relatively to us.
If it is thus, then, that every art does its work well- by looking
to the intermediate and judging its works by this standard (so
that we often say of good works of art that it is not possible
either to take away or to add anything, implying that excess and
defect destroy the goodness of works of art, while the mean
preserves it; and good artists, as we say, look to this in their
work), and if, further, virtue is more exact and better than any
art, as nature also is, then virtue must have the quality of

aiming at the intermediate. I mean moral virtue; for it is this
that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is
excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and
confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general
pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and
in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with
reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the
right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate
and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. Similarly with
regard to actions also there is excess, defect, and the
intermediate. Now virtue is concerned with passions and
actions, in which excess is a form of failure, and so is defect,
while the intermediate is praised and is a form of success; and
being praised and being successful are both characteristics of
virtue. Therefore virtue is a kind of mean, since, as we have
seen, it aims at what is intermediate.
Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to
the class of the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans conjectured, and
good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in
one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other
difficult- to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these
reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice,
and the mean of virtue;
For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.
Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying
in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by
a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of
practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between
two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends
on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively
fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and
actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is
intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the

definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard
to what is best and right an extreme.
But not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for
some have names that already imply badness, e.g. spite,
shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft,
murder; for all of these and suchlike things imply by their
names that they are themselves bad, and not the excesses or
deficiencies of them. It is not possible, then, ever to be right
with regard to them; one must always be wrong. Nor does
goodness or badness with regard to such things depend on
committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and
in the right way, but simply to do any of them is to go wrong. It
would be equally absurd, then, to expect that in unjust,
cowardly, and voluptuous action there should be a mean, an
excess, and a deficiency; for at that rate there would be a mean
of excess and of deficiency, an excess of excess, and a
deficiency of deficiency. But as there is no excess and
deficiency of temperance and courage because what is
intermediate is in a sense an extreme, so too of the actions we
have mentioned there is no mean nor any excess and deficiency,
but however they are done they are wrong; for in general there
is neither a mean of excess and deficiency, nor excess and
deficiency of a mean.
6. Using the example of courage, explain what Aristotle means
by saying that a virtue is a mean (a middle point).
BOOK IV
3. Pride seems even from its name to be concerned with great
things; what sort of great things, is the first question we must
try to answer. It makes no difference whether we consider the
state of character or the man characterized by it. Now the man
is thought to be proud who thinks himself worthy of great

things, being worthy of them; for he who does so beyond his
deserts is a fool, but no virtuous man is foolish or silly. The
proud man, then, is the man we have described. For he who is
worthy of little and thinks himself worthy of little is temperate,
but not proud; for pride implies greatness, as beauty implies a
good sized body, and little people may be neat and well-
proportioned but cannot be beautiful. On the other hand, he who
thinks himself worthy of great things, being unworthy of them,
is vain; though not every one who thinks himself worthy of
more than he really is worthy of in vain. The man who thinks
himself worthy of worthy of less than he is really worthy of is
unduly humble, whether his deserts be great or moderate, or his
deserts be small but his claims yet smaller. And the man whose
deserts are great would seem most unduly humble; for what
would he have done if they had been less? The proud man, then,
is an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims, but a
mean in respect of the rightness of them; for he claims what is
accordance with his merits, while the others go to excess or fall
short.
If, then, he deserves and claims great things, and above all the
great things, he will be concerned with one thing in particular.
Desert is relative to external goods; and the greatest of these,
we should say, is that which we render to the gods, and which
people of position most aim at, and which is the prize appointed
for the noblest deeds; and this is honour; that is surely the
greatest of external goods. Honours and dishonours, therefore,
are the objects with respect to which the proud man is as he
should be. And even apart from argument it is with honour that
proud men appear to be concerned; for it is honour that they
chiefly claim, but in accordance with their deserts. The unduly
humble man falls short both in comparison with his own merits
and in comparison with the proud man's claims. The vain man
goes to excess in comparison with his own merits, but does not
exceed the proud man's claims.

Now the proud man, since he deserves most, must be good in
the highest degree; for the better man always deserves more,
and the best man most. Therefore the truly proud man must be
good. And greatness in every virtue would seem to be
characteristic of a proud man. And it would be most
unbecoming for a proud man to fly from danger, swinging his
arms by his sides, or to wrong another; for to what end should
he do disgraceful acts, he to whom nothing is great? If we
consider him point by point we shall see the utter absurdity of a
proud man who is not good. Nor, again, would he be worthy of
honour if he were bad; for honour is the prize of virtue, and it is
to the good that it is rendered. Pride, then, seems to be a sort of
crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not
found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it
is impossible without nobility and goodness of character. It is
chiefly with honours and dishonours, then, that the proud man is
concerned; and at honours that are great and conferred by good
men he will be moderately Pleased, thinking that he is coming
by his own or even less than his own; for there can be no
honour that is worthy of perfect virtue, yet he will at any rate
accept it since they have nothing greater to bestow on him; but
honour from casual people and on trifling grounds he will
utterly despise, since it is not this that he deserves, and
dishonour too, since in his case it cannot be just. In the first
place, then, as has been said, the proud man is concerned with
honours; yet he will also bear himself with moderation towards
wealth and power and all good or evil fortune, whatever may
befall him, and will be neither over-joyed by good fortune nor
over-pained by evil. For not even towards honour does he bear
himself as if it were a very great thing. Power and wealth are
desirable for the sake of honour (at least those who have them
wish to get honour by means of them); and for him to whom
even honour is a little thing the others must be so too. Hence
proud men are thought to be disdainful.
The goods of fortune also are thought to contribute towards

pride. For men who are well-born are thought worthy of honour,
and so are those who enjoy power or wealth; for they are in a
superior position, and everything that has a superiority in
something good is held in greater honour. Hence even such
things make men prouder; for they are honoured by some for
having them; but in truth the good man alone is to be honoured;
he, however, who has both advantages is thought the more
worthy of honour. But those who without virtue have such
goods are neither justified in making great claims nor entitled to
the name of 'proud'; for these things imply perfect virtue.
Disdainful and insolent, however, even those who have such
goods become. For without virtue it is not easy to bear
gracefully the goods of fortune; and, being unable to bear them,
and thinking themselves superior to others, they despise others
and themselves do what they please. They imitate the proud man
without being like him, and this they do where they can; so they
do not act virtuously, but they do despise others. For the proud
man despises justly (since he thinks truly), but the many do so
at random.
He does not run into trifling dangers, nor is he fond of danger,
because he honours few things; but he will face great dangers,
and when he is in danger he is unsparing of his life, knowing
that there are conditions on which life is not worth having. And
he is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is ashamed of
receiving them; for the one is the mark of a superior, the other
of an inferior. And he is apt to confer greater benefits in return;
for thus the original benefactor besides being paid will incur a
debt to him, and will be the gainer by the transaction. They
seem also to remember any service they have done, but not
those they have received (for he who receives a service is
inferior to him who has done it, but the proud man wishes to be
superior), and to hear of the former with pleasure, of the latter
with displeasure; this, it seems, is why Thetis did not mention
to Zeus the services she had done him, and why the Spartans did
not recount their services to the Athenians, but those they had

received. It is a mark of the proud man also to ask for nothing
or scarcely anything, but to give help readily, and to be
dignified towards people who enjoy high position and good
fortune, but unassuming towards those of the middle class; for it
is a difficult and lofty thing to be superior to the former, but
easy to be so to the latter, and a lofty bearing over the former is
no mark of ill-breeding, but among humble people it is as
vulgar as a display of strength against the weak. Again, it is
characteristic of the proud man not to aim at the things
commonly held in honour, or the things in which others excel;
to be sluggish and to hold back except where great honour or a
great work is at stake, and to be a man of few deeds, but of
great and notable ones. He must also be open in his hate and in
his love (for to conceal one's feelings, i.e. to care less for truth
than for what people will think, is a coward's part), and must
speak and act openly; for he is free of speech because he is
contemptuous, and he is given to telling the truth, except when
he speaks in irony to the vulgar. He must be unable to make his
life revolve round another, unless it be a friend; for this is
slavish, and for this reason all flatterers are servile and people
lacking in self-respect are flatterers. Nor is he given to
admiration; for nothing to him is great. Nor is he mindful of
wrongs; for it is not the part of a proud man to have a long
memory, especially for wrongs, but rather to overlook them.
Nor is he a gossip; for he will speak neither about himself nor
about another, since he cares not to be praised nor for others to
be blamed; nor again is he given to praise; and for the same
reason he is not an evil-speaker, even about his enemies, except
from haughtiness. With regard to necessary or small matters he
is least of all me given to lamentation or the asking of favours;
for it is the part of one who takes such matters seriously to
behave so with respect to them. He is one who will possess
beautiful and profitless things rather than profitable and useful
ones; for this is more proper to a character that suffices to
itself.

Further, a slow step is thought proper to the proud man, a deep
voice, and a level utterance; for the man who takes few things
seriously is not likely to be hurried, nor the man who thinks
nothing great to be excited, while a shrill voice and a rapid gait
are the results of hurry and excitement.
Such, then, is the proud man; the man who falls short of him is
unduly humble, and the man who goes beyond him is vain. Now
even these are not thought to be bad (for they are not
malicious), but only mistaken. For the unduly humble man,
being worthy of good things, robs himself of what he deserves,
and to have something bad about him from the fact that he does
not think himself worthy of good things, and seems also not to
know himself; else he would have desired the things he was
worthy of, since these were good. Yet such people are not
thought to be fools, but rather unduly retiring. Such a
reputation, however, seems actually to make them worse; for
each class of people aims at what corresponds to its worth, and
these people stand back even from noble actions and
undertakings, deeming themselves unworthy, and from external
goods no less. Vain people, on the other hand, are fools and
ignorant of themselves, and that manifestly; for, not being
worthy of them, they attempt honourable undertakings, and then
are found out; and tetadorn themselves with clothing and
outward show and such things, and wish their strokes of good
fortune to be made public, and speak about them as if they
would be honoured for them. But undue humility is more
opposed to pride than vanity is; for it is both commoner and
worse.
7. Summarize his account of this ‘prideful man’: He is a
midpoint between which two inferior type of people?
Book VIII

3. Now these reasons differ from each other in kind; so,
therefore, do the corresponding forms of love and friendship.
There are therefore three kinds of friendship, equal in number to
the things that are lovable; for with respect to each there is a
mutual and recognized love, and those who love each other wish
well to each other in that respect in which they love one
another. Now those who love each other for their utility do not
love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which
they get from each other. So too with those who love for the
sake of pleasure; it is not for their character that men love
ready-witted people, but because they find them pleasant.
Therefore those who love for the sake of utility love for the
sake of what is good for themselves, and those who love for the
sake of pleasure do so for the sake of what is pleasant to
themselves, and not in so far as the other is the person loved but
in so far as he is useful or pleasant. And thus these friendships
are only incidental; for it is not as being the man he is that the
loved person is loved, but as providing some good or pleasure.
Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties do not
remain like themselves; for if the one party is no longer
pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him.
Now the useful is not permanent but is always changing. Thus
when the motive of the friendship is done away, the friendship
is dissolved, inasmuch as it existed only for the ends in
question. This kind of friendship seems to exist chiefly between
old people (for at that age people pursue not the pleasant but the
useful) and, of those who are in their prime or young, between
those who pursue utility. And such people do not live much with
each other either; for sometimes they do not even find each
other pleasant; therefore they do not need such companionship
unless they are useful to each other; for they are pleasant to
each other only in so far as they rouse in each other hopes of
something good to come. Among such friendships people also
class the friendship of a host and guest. On the other hand the

friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they
live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what
is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them;
but with increasing age their pleasures become different. This is
why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so;
their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant,
and such pleasure alters quickly. Young people are amorous too;
for the greater part of the friendship of love depends on emotion
and aims at pleasure; this is why they fall in love and quickly
fall out of love, changing often within a single day. But these
people do wish to spend their days and lives together; for it is
thus that they attain the purpose of their friendship.
Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and
alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good,
and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their
friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by
reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their
friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an
enduring thing. And each is good without qualification and to
his friend, for the good are both good without qualification and
useful to each other. So too they are pleasant; for the good are
pleasant both without qualification and to each other, since to
each his own activities and others like them are pleasurable, and
the actions of the good are the same or like. And such a
friendship is as might be expected permanent, since there meet
in it all the qualities that friends should have. For all friendship
is for the sake of good or of pleasure-good or pleasure either in
the abstract or such as will be enjoyed by him who has the
friendly feeling-and is based on a certain resemblance; and to a
friendship of good men all the qualities we have named belong
in virtue of the nature of the friends themselves; for in the case
of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are alike in
both friends, and that which is good without qualification is
also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most
lovable qualities. Love and friendship therefore are found most

and in their best form between such men.
But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for
such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and
familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till
they have 'eaten salt together'; nor can they admit each other to
friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and
been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of
friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends
unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for
friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.
This kind of friendship, then, is perfect both in respect of
duration and in all other respects, and in it each gets from each
in all respects the same as, or something like what, he gives;
which is what ought to happen between friends. Friendship for
the sake of pleasure bears a resemblance to this kind; for good
people too are pleasant to each other. So too does friendship for
the sake of utility; for the good are also useful to each other.
Among men of these inferior sorts too, friendships are most
permanent when the friends get the same thing from each other
(e.g. pleasure), and not only that but also from the same source,
as happens between readywitted people, not as happens between
lover and beloved. For these do not take pleasure in the same
things, but the one in seeing the beloved and the other in
receiving attentions from his lover; and when the bloom of
youth is passing the friendship sometimes passes too (for the
one finds no pleasure in the sight of the other, and the other
gets no attentions from the first); but many lovers on the other
hand are constant, if familiarity has led them to love each
other's characters, these being alike. But those who exchange
not pleasure but utility in their amour are both less truly friends
and less constant. Those who are friends for the sake of utility
part when the advantage is at an end; for they were lovers not of
each other but of profit.

For the sake of pleasure or utility, then, even bad men may be
friends of each other, or good men of bad, or one who is neither
good nor bad may be a friend to any sort of person, but for their
own sake clearly only good men can be friends; for bad men do
not delight in each other unless some advantage come of the
relation.
The friendship of the good too and this alone is proof against
slander; for it is not easy to trust any one talk about a man who
has long been tested by oneself; and it is among good men that
trust and the feeling that 'he would never wrong me' and all the
other things that are demanded in true friendship are found. In
the other kinds of friendship, however, there is nothing to
prevent these evils arising. For men apply the name of friends
even to those whose motive is utility, in which sense states are
said to be friendly (for the alliances of states seem to aim at
advantage), and to those who love each other for the sake of
pleasure, in which sense children are called friends. Therefore
we too ought perhaps to call such people friends, and say that
there are several kinds of friendship-firstly and in the proper
sense that of good men qua good, and by analogy the other
kinds; for it is in virtue of something good and something akin
to what is found in true friendship that they are friends, since
even the pleasant is good for the lovers of pleasure. But these
two kinds of friendship are not often united, nor do the same
people become friends for the sake of utility and of pleasure;
for things that are only incidentally connected are not often
coupled together.
Friendship being divided into these kinds, bad men will be
friends for the sake of pleasure or of utility, being in this
respect like each other, but good men will be friends for their
own sake, i.e. in virtue of their goodness. These, then, are
friends without qualification; the others are friends incidentally
and through a resemblance to these.

8. Explain the three types of friendship.
5
READINGS: “How Many Zombies Do You Know?” Using
Indirect Survey Methods to Measure Alien Attacks and
Outbreaks of the Undead
· ANDREW GELMAN AND GEORGE A. ROMEROY
· Andrew Gelman, a respected and award-winning professor of
statistics and political science at Columbia University, wrote on
his blog that he created this unpublished paper to do some
“humorous fun-poking” but also to illustrate how a very real
cutting-edge survey method could be used for solving difficult
research problems. As you read and enjoy this, notice he uses
the conventions of the scientific-article genre.
1 Introduction
Zombification is a serious public-health and public-safety
concern (Romero, 1968, 1978) but is difficult to study using
traditional survey methods. Zombies are believed to have very
low rates of telephone usage and in any case may be reluctant to
identify themselves as such to a researcher. Face-to-face
surveying involves too much risk to the interviewers, and
internet surveys, although they originally were believed to have
much promise, have recently had to be abandoned in this area
because of the potential for zombie infection via computer
virus.
In the absence of hard data, zombie researchers1 have studied
outbreaks and their dynamics using differential equation models
(Munz et al., 2009, Lakeland, 2010) and, more recently, agent-
based models (Messer, 2010). Figure 1 shows an example of
such work.
But mathematical models are not enough. We need data.

1 By “zombie researchers,” we are talking about people who
research zombies. We are not for a moment suggesting that
these researchers are themselves zombies. Just to be on the safe
side, however, we have conducted all our interactions with these
scientists via mail.
2 Measuring zombification using network survey data
Zheng, Salganik, and Gelman (2006) discuss how to learn about
groups that are not directly sampled in a survey. The basic idea
is to ask respondents questions such as, “How many people do
you know named Stephen/Margaret/etc.” to learn the sizes of
their social networks, questions such as “How many
290
291
lawyers/teachers/police officers/etc. do you know,” to learn
about the properties of these networks, and questions such as
“How many prisoners do you know” to learn about groups that
are hard to reach in a sample survey. Zheng et al. report that, on
average, each respondent knows 750 people; thus, a survey of
1500 Americans can give us indirect information on about a
million people.
Figure 1: From Lakeland (2010) and Messer (2010). There were
other zombie graphs at these sites, but these were the coolest.
5 This methodology should be directly applicable to zombies or,
for that matter, ghosts, aliens, angels, and other hard-to-reach
entities. In addition to giving us estimates of the populations of
these groups, we can also learn, through national surveys, where
they are more prevalent (as measured by the residences of the
people who know them), and who is more likely to know them.
A natural concern in this research is potential underreporting;

for example, what if your wife2 is actually a zombie or an alien
and you are not aware of the fact. This bias can be corrected via
extrapolation using the estimates of different populations with
varying levels of reporting error; Zheng et al. (2006) discuss in
the context of questions ranging from names (essentially no
reporting error) to medical conditions such as diabetes and HIV
that are often hidden.
3 Discussion
As Lakeland (2010) puts it, “Clearly, Hollywood plays a vital
role in educating the public about the proper response to zombie
infestation.” In this article we have discussed how modern
survey methods based on social networks can help us estimate
the size of the problem.
Other, related, approaches are worth studying too. Social
researchers have recently used Google Trends to study hard-to-
measure trends using search volume (Askitas and
Zimmerman, 2009, Goel, Hofman, et al., 2010); Figure
2 illustrates how this might be done in the zombie context. It
would also make sense to take advantage of social networking
tools such as Facebook (Goel, Mason, et al., 2010) and more
zombie-specific sites such as ZDate. We envision vast unfolding
vistas of funding in this area.
4 Technical note
We originally wrote this article in Word, but then we converted
it to Latex to make it look more like science.
291292
Figure 2: Google Trends report on “zombie,” “ghost,” and
“alien.” The patterns show fascinating trends from which, we
feel, much could be learned if resources were made available to
us in the form of a sizable research grant from the Department
of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, or a major film
studio. Please make out any checks to the first author or deposit
directly to his PayPal account.
5 References
Askitas, N., and Zimmermann, K. F. (2009). Google

econometrics and unemployment forecasting. Applied
Economics Quarterly 55, 107-120.
Goel, S., Hofman, J. M., Lahaie, S., Pennock, D. M., and Watts,
D. J. (2010). What can search predict? Technical report, Yahoo
Research.
Goel, S., Mason, W., and Watts, D. J. (2010). Real and
perceived attitude homophily in social networks. Technical
report, Yahoo Research.
Lakeland, D. (2010). Improved zombie dynamics. Models of
Reality blog, 1 March. http://models.street-artists.org/?p=554
Messer, B. (2010). Agent-based computational model of
humanity’s prospects for post zombie outbreak survival. The
Tortise’s Lens blog, 10
March. http://thetortoiseslens.blogspot.com/2010/03/agent-
based-computational-model-of.html
Munz, P., Hudea, I., Imad, J., and Smith, R. J. (2009). When
zombies attack!: Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of
zombie infection. InInfectious Disease Modelling Research
Progress, ed. J. M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka, 133-150.
Hauppage, New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Romero, G. A. (1968). Night of the Living Dead. Image Ten.
Romero, G. A. (1978). Dawn of the Dead. Laurel Group.
Zheng, T., Slaganik, M., and Gelman, A. (2006). “How many
people do you know in prison?”: Using overdispersion in count
data to estimate social structure in networks. Journal of the
American Statistical Association 101, 409-423.
From Degrading to De-Grading
· ALFIE KOHN
· In this proposal, which was published in High
School magazine, Alfie Kohn first explains the problems with
using grades to motivate students in high school. Then he
describes how high schools could evaluate students in other

ways. Kohn, an education reformer, has published numerous
books, has been featured in a variety of magazines and
newspapers, and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
You can tell a lot about a teacher’s values and personality just
by asking how he or she feels about giving grades. Some defend
the practice, claiming that grades are necessary to “motivate”
students. Many of these teachers actually seem to enjoy keeping
intricate records of students’ marks. Such teachers periodically
warn students that they’re “going to have to know this for the
test” as a way of compelling them to pay attention or do the
assigned readings—and they may even use surprise quizzes for
that purpose, keeping their grade books at the ready.
Frankly, we ought to be worried for these teachers’ students. In
my experience, the most impressive teachers are those who
despise the whole process of giving grades. Their aversion, as it
turns out, is supported by solid evidence that raises questions
about the very idea of traditional grading.
Three main effects of grading
Researchers have found three consistent effects of using—and
especially, emphasizing the importance of—letter or number
grades:
1. Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning
itself. One of the most well-researched findings in the field of
motivational psychology is that the more people are rewarded
for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in
whatever they had to do to get the reward (Kohn, 1993). Thus, it
shouldn’t be surprising that when students are told they’ll need
to know something for a test—or, more generally, that
something they’re about to do will count for a grade—they are
likely to come to view that task (or book or idea) as a chore.
5 While it’s not impossible for a student to be concerned about
getting high marks and also to like what he or she is doing, the
practical reality is that these two ways of thinking generally
pull in opposite directions. Some research has explicitly
demonstrated that a “grade orientation” and a “learning

orientation” are inversely related (Beck et al., 1991; Milton et
al., 1986). More strikingly, study after study has found that
students—from elementary school to graduate school, and
across cultures—demonstrate less interest in learning as a result
of being graded (Benware and Deci, 1984; Butler, 1987; Butler
and Nisan, 1986; Grolnick and Ryan, 1987; Harter and
Guzman, 1986; Hughes et al., 1985; Kage, 1991; Salili et
al., 1976). Thus, anyone who wants to see students get hooked
on words and numbers and ideas already has reason
to 254255look for other ways of assessing and describing their
achievement.
2. Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging
tasks. Students of all ages who have been led to concentrate on
getting a good grade are likely to pick the easiest possible
assignment if given a choice (Harter, 1978; Harter and
Guzman, 1986; Kage, 1991; Milton et al.,1986). The more
pressure to get an A, the less inclination to truly challenge
oneself. Thus, students who cut corners may not be lazy so
much as rational; they are adapting to an environment where
good grades, not intellectual exploration, are what count. They
might well say to us, “Hey, you told me the point here is to
bring up my GPA, to get on the honor roll. Well, I’m not stupid:
the easier the assignment, the more likely that I can give you
what you want. So don’t blame me when I try to find the easiest
thing to do and end up not learning anything.”
3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking. Given
that students may lose interest in what they’re learning as a
result of grades, it makes sense that they’re also apt to think
less deeply. One series of studies, for example, found that
students given numerical grades were significantly less creative
than those who received qualitative feedback but no grades. The
more the task required creative thinking, in fact, the worse the
performance of students who knew they were going to be
graded. Providing students with comments in addition to a grade
didn’t help: the highest achievement occurred only when
comments were given instead of numerical scores (Butler, 1987;

Butler, 1988; Butler and Nisan, 1986).
In another experiment, students told they would be graded on
how well they learned a social studies lesson had more trouble
understanding the main point of the text than did students who
were told that no grades would be involved. Even on a measure
of rote recall, the graded group remembered fewer facts a week
later (Grolnick and Ryan, 1987). A brand-new study discovered
that students who tended to think about current events in terms
of what they’d need to know for a grade were less
knowledgeable than their peers, even after taking other
variables into account (Anderman and Johnston, 1998).
More Reasons to Just Say No to Grades
The preceding three results should be enough to cause any
conscientious educator to rethink the practice of giving students
grades. But as they say on late-night TV commercials, Wait—
there’s more.
10 4. Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective. A “B” in
English says nothing about what a student can do, what she
understands, where she needs help. Moreover, the basis for that
grade is as subjective as the result is uninformative. A teacher
can meticulously record scores for one test or assignment after
another, eventually calculating averages down to a hundredth of
a percentage point, but that doesn’t change the arbitrariness of
each of these individual marks. Even the score on a math test is
largely a reflection of how the test was written: what skills the
teacher decided to assess, what kinds of questions happened to
be left out, and how many points each section was “worth.”
Moreover, research has long been available to confirm what all
of us know: any given assignment may well be given two
different grades by two equally qualified teachers. It may even
be given two different grades by a single teacher who reads it at
two different times (for example, see some of the early research
reviewed in Kirschenbaum et al., 1971). In short, what grades

offer is spurious precision—a subjective rating masquerading as
an objective evaluation.
255256
5. Grades distort the curriculum. A school’s use of letter or
number grades may encourage what I like to call a “bunch o’
facts” approach to instruction because that sort of learning is
easier to score. The tail of assessment thus comes to wag the
educational dog.
6. Grades waste a lot of time that could be spent on
learning. Add up all the hours that teachers spend fussing with
their grade books. Then factor in all the (mostly unpleasant)
conversations they have with students and their parents about
grades. It’s tempting to just roll our eyes when confronted with
whining or wheedling, but the real problem rests with the
practice of grading itself.
7. Grades encourage cheating. Again, we can continue to blame
and punish all the students who cheat—or we can look for the
structural reasons this keeps happening. Researchers have found
that the more students are led to focus on getting good grades,
the more likely they are to cheat, even if they themselves regard
cheating as wrong (Anderman et al., 1998; Milton et al., 1986;
also see “Who’s Cheating Whom?”).
15 8. Grades spoil teachers’ relationships with
students. Consider this lament, which could have been offered
by a teacher in your district:
· I’m getting tired of running a classroom in which everything
we do revolves around grades. I’m tired of being suspicious
when students give me compliments, wondering whether or not
they are just trying to raise their grade. I’m tired of spending so
much time and energy grading your papers, when there are
probably a dozen more productive and enjoyable ways for all of
us to handle the evaluation of papers. I’m tired of hearing you
ask me ‘Does this count?’ And, heaven knows, I’m certainly
tired of all those little arguments and disagreements we get into

concerning marks which take so much fun out of the teaching
and the learning… (Kirschenbaum et al., 1971, p. 115.
9. Grades spoil students’ relationships with each other. The
quality of students’ thinking has been shown to depend partly
on the extent to which they are permitted to learn cooperatively
(Johnson and Johnson, 1989; Kohn, 1992). Thus, the ill
feelings, suspicion, and resentment generated by grades aren’t
just disagreeable in their own right; they interfere with learning.
The most destructive form of grading by far is that which is
done “on a curve,” such that the number of top grades is
artificially limited: no matter how well all the students do, not
all of them can get an A. Apart from the intrinsic unfairness of
this arrangement, its practical effect is to teach students that
others are potential obstacles to their own success. The kind of
collaboration that can help all students to learn more effectively
doesn’t stand a chance in such an environment.
Sadly, even teachers who don’t explicitly grade on a curve may
assume, perhaps unconsciously, that the final grades “ought to”
come out looking more or less this way: a few very good grades,
a few very bad grades, and the majority somewhere in the
middle. But as one group of researchers pointed out, “It is not a
symbol of rigor to have grades fall into a ‘normal’ distribution;
rather, it is a symbol of failure—failure to teach well, failure to
test well, and failure to have any influence at all on the
intellectual lives of students” (Milton et al., 1986, p. 225).
The competition that turns schooling into a quest for triumph
and ruptures relationships among students doesn’t just happen
within classrooms, of course. The same 256257effect is
witnessed at a schoolwide level when kids are not just rated but
ranked, sending the message that the point isn’t to learn, or
even to perform well, but to defeat others. Some students might
be motivated to improve their class rank, but that is completely
different from being motivated to understand ideas. (Wise
educators realize that it doesn’t matter how motivated students
are; what matters is how students are motivated. It is the type of

motivation that counts, not the amount.)
Grade Inflation… and Other Distractions
20 Most of us are directly acquainted with at least some of these
disturbing consequences of grades, yet we continue to reduce
students to letters or numbers on a regular basis. Perhaps we’ve
become inured to these effects and take them for granted. This
is the way it’s always been, we assume, and the way it has to
be. It’s rather like people who have spent all their lives in a
terribly polluted city and have come to assume that this is just
the way air looks—and that it’s natural to be coughing all the
time.
Oddly, when educators are shown that it doesn’t have to be this
way, some react with suspicion instead of relief. They want to
know why you’re making trouble, or they assert that you’re
exaggerating the negative effects of grades (it’s really not so
bad—cough, cough), or they dismiss proven alternatives to
grading on the grounds that our school could never do what
others schools have done.
The practical difficulties of abolishing letter grades are real.
But the key question is whether those difficulties are seen as
problems to be solved or as excuses for perpetuating the status
quo. The logical response to the arguments and data summarized
here is to say: “Good Heavens! If even half of this is true, then
it’s imperative we do whatever we can, as soon as we can, to
phase out traditional grading.” Yet many people begin and end
with the problems of implementation, responding to all this
evidence by saying, in effect, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we’ll
never get rid of grades because…”
It is also striking how many educators never get beyond
relatively insignificant questions, such as how many tests to
give, or how often to send home grade reports, or what grade
should be given for a specified level of achievement (e.g., what
constitutes “B” work), or what number corresponds to what
letter. Some even reserve their outrage for the possibility that
too many students are ending up with good grades, a reaction
that suggests stinginess with A’s is being confused with

intellectual rigor. The evidence indicates that the real problem
isn’t grade inflation; it’s grades. The proper occasion for
outrage is not that too many students are getting A’s, but that
too many students have accepted that getting A’s is the point of
going to school.
Common objections
Let’s consider the most frequently heard responses to the above
arguments—which is to say, the most common objections to
getting rid of grades.
25 First, it is said that students expect to receive grades and
even seem addicted to them. This is often true; personally, I’ve
taught high school students who reacted to the absence of
grades with what I can only describe as existential vertigo.
(Who am I, if not a B+?) But as more elementary and even some
middle schools move to replace grades with more informative
(and less destructive) systems of assessment, the damage
doesn’t begin until students get to high school. Moreover,
elementary and middle schools that haven’t changed their
practices often cite the local high school as the reason they must
get students used to getting grades regardless of their damaging
effects—just as high schools point the finger at colleges.
257258
Even when students arrive in high school already accustomed to
grades, already primed to ask teachers, “Do we have to know
this?” or “What do I have to do to get an A?”, this is a sign that
something is very wrong. It’s more an indictment of what has
happened to them in the past than an argument to keep doing it
in the future.
Perhaps because of this training, grades can succeed in getting
students to show up on time, hand in their work, and otherwise
do what they’re told. Many teachers are loath to give up what is
essentially an instrument of control. But even to the extent this
instrument works (which is not always), we are obliged to
reflect on whether mindless compliance is really our goal. The
teacher who exclaims, “These kids would blow off my course in
a minute if they weren’t getting a grade for it!” may be issuing

a powerful indictment of his or her course. Who would be more
reluctant to give up grades than a teacher who spends the period
slapping transparencies on the overhead projector and lecturing
endlessly at students about Romantic poets or genetic codes?
Without bribes (A’s) and threats (F’s), students would have no
reason to do such assignments. To maintain that this proves
something is wrong with the kids—or that grades are simply
“necessary”—suggests a willful refusal to examine one’s
classroom practices and assumptions about teaching and
learning.
“If I can’t give a child a better reason for studying than a grade
on a report card, I ought to lock my desk and go home and stay
there.” So wrote Dorothy De Zouche, a Missouri teacher, in an
article published in February… of 1945. But teachers who can
give a child a better reason for studying don’t need grades.
Research substantiates this: when the curriculum is engaging—
for example, when it involves hands-on, interactive learning
activities—students who aren’t graded at all perform just as
well as those who are graded (Moeller and Reschke, 1993).
Another objection: it is sometimes argued that students must be
given grades because colleges demand them. One might reply
that “high schools have no responsibility to serve colleges by
performing the sorting function for them”—particularly if that
process undermines learning (Krumboltz and Yeh, 1996, p.
325). But in any case the premise of this argument is erroneous:
traditional grades are not mandatory for admission to colleges
and universities.
Making change
30 A friend of mine likes to say that people don’t resist
change—they resist being changed. Even terrific ideas (like
moving a school from a grade orientation to a learning
orientation) are guaranteed to self-destruct if they are simply
forced down people’s throats. The first step for an
administrator, therefore, is to open up a conversation—to spend
perhaps a full year just encouraging people to think and talk
about the effects of (and alternatives to) traditional grades. This

can happen in individual classes, as teachers facilitate
discussions about how students regard grades, as well as in
evening meetings with parents, or on a website—all with the
help of relevant books, articles, speakers, videos, and visits to
neighboring schools that are farther along in this journey.
The actual process of “de-grading” can be done in stages. For
example, a high school might start by freeing ninth-grade
classes from grades before doing the same for upperclassmen.
(Even a school that never gets beyond the first stage will have
done a considerable service, giving students one full year where
they can think about what they’re learning instead of their
GPAs.)
Another route to gradual change is to begin by eliminating only
the most pernicious practices, such as grading on a curve
or 258259ranking students. Although grades, per se, may
continue for a while, at least the message will be sent from the
beginning that all students can do well, and that the point is to
succeed rather than to beat others.
Anyone who has heard the term “authentic assessment” knows
that abolishing grades doesn’t mean eliminating the process of
gathering information about student performance—and
communicating that information to students and parents. Rather,
abolishing grades opens up possibilities that are far more
meaningful and constructive. These include narratives (written
comments), portfolios (carefully chosen collections of students’
writings and projects that demonstrate their interests,
achievement, and improvement over time), student-led parent-
teacher conferences, exhibitions and other opportunities for
students to show what they can do.
Of course, it’s harder for a teacher to do these kinds of
assessments if he or she has 150 or more students and sees each
of them for 45–55 minutes a day. But that’s not an argument for
continuing to use traditional grades; it’s an argument for
challenging these archaic remnants of a factory-oriented
approach to instruction, structural aspects of high schools that
are bad news for reasons that go well beyond the issue of

assessment. It’s an argument for looking into block scheduling,
team teaching, interdisciplinary courses—and learning more
about schools that have arranged things so each teacher can
spend more time with fewer students (e.g., Meier, 1995).
35 Administrators should be prepared to respond to parental
concerns, some of them completely reasonable, about the
prospect of edging away from grades. “Don’t you value
excellence?” You bet—and here’s the evidence that traditional
grading undermines excellence. “Are you just trying to spare
the self-esteem of students who do poorly?” We are concerned
that grades may be making things worse for such students, yes,
but the problem isn’t just that some kids won’t get A’s and will
have their feelings hurt. The real problem is that almost all kids
(including yours) will come to focus on grades and, as a result,
their learning will be hurt.
If parents worry that grades are the only window they have into
the school, we need to assure them that alternative assessments
provide a far better view. But if parents don’t seem to care
about getting the most useful information or helping their
children become more excited learners—if they demand grades
for the purpose of documenting how much better their kids are
than everyone else’s, then we need to engage them in a
discussion about whether this is a legitimate goal, and whether
schools exist for the purpose of competitive credentialing or for
the purpose of helping everyone to learn (Kohn, 1998;
Labaree, 1997).
Above all, we need to make sure that objections and concerns
about the details don’t obscure the main message, which is the
demonstrated harm of traditional grading on the quality of
students’ learning and their interest in exploring ideas.
High school administrators can do a world of good in their
districts by actively supporting efforts to eliminate conventional
grading in elementary and middle schools. Working with their
colleagues in these schools can help pave the way for making
such changes at the secondary school level.
In the meantime

Finally, there is the question of what classroom teachers can do
while grades continue to be required. The short answer is that
they should do everything within their power to make grades as
invisible as possible for as long as possible. Helping students
forget about grades is the single best piece of advice for
creating a learning-oriented classroom.
259260
40 When I was teaching high school, I did a lot of things I now
regret. But one policy that still seems sensible to me was saying
to students on the first day of class that, while I was compelled
to give them a grade at the end of the term, I could not in good
conscience ever put a letter or number on anything they did
during the term—and I would not do so. I would, however, write
a comment—or, better, sit down and talk with them—as often as
possible to give them feedback.
At this particular school I frequently faced students who had
been prepared for admission to Harvard since their early
childhood—a process I have come to call “Preparation H.” I
knew that my refusal to rate their learning might only cause
some students to worry about their marks all the more, or to
create suspense about what would appear on their final grade
reports, which of course would defeat the whole purpose. So I
said that anyone who absolutely had to know what grade a given
paper would get could come see me and we would figure it out
together. An amazing thing happened: as the days went by,
fewer and fewer students felt the need to ask me about grades.
They began to be more involved with what we were learning
because I had taken responsibility as a teacher to stop pushing
grades into their faces, so to speak, whenever they completed an
assignment.
What I didn’t do very well, however, was to get students
involved in devising the criteria for excellence (what makes a
math solution elegant, an experiment well-designed, an essay
persuasive, a story compelling) as well as deciding how well
their projects met those criteria. I’m afraid I unilaterally set the
criteria and evaluated the students’ efforts. But I have seen

teachers who were more willing to give up control, more
committed to helping students participate in assessment and
turn that into part of the learning. Teachers who work with their
students to design powerful alternatives to letter grades have a
replacement ready to go when the school finally abandons
traditional grading—and are able to minimize the harm of such
grading in the meantime.
References
Anderman, E. M., and J. Johnston. “Television News in the
Classroom: What Are Adolescents Learning?” Journal of
Adolescent Research 13 (1998): 73–100.
Beck, H. P., S. Rorrer-Woody, and L. G. Pierce. “The Relations
of Learning and Grade Orientations to Academic
Performance.” Teaching of Psychology 18 (1991): 35–37.
Benware, C. A., and E. L. Deci. “Quality of Learning With an
Active Versus Passive Motivational Set.” American Educational
Research Journal 21 (1984): 755–65.
Butler, R. “Task-Involving and Ego-Involving Properties of
Evaluation: Effects of Different Feedback Conditions on
Motivational Perceptions, Interest, and Performance.” Journal
of Educational Psychology 79 (1987): 474–82.
Butler, R. “Enhancing and Undermining Intrinsic Motivation:
The Effects of Task-Involving and Ego-Involving Evaluation on
Interest and Performance.” British Journal of Educational
Psychology 58 (1988): 1–14.
Butler, R., and M. Nisan. “Effects of No Feedback, Task-
Related Comments, and Grades on Intrinsic Motivation and
Performance.” Journal of Educational Psychology 78 (1986):
210–16.
De Zouche, D. “‘The Wound Is Mortal’: Marks, Honors,
Unsound Activities.” The Clearing House 19 (1945): 339–44.
Grolnick, W. S., and R. M. Ryan. “Autonomy in Children’s
Learning: An Experimental and Individual Difference
Investigation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52
(1987): 890–98.
Harter, S. “Pleasure Derived from Challenge and the Effects of

Receiving Grades on 260261Children’s Difficulty Level
Choices.” Child Development49 (1978): 788–99.
Harter, S. and Guzman, M. E. “The Effect of Perceived
Cognitive Competence and Anxiety on Children’s Problem-
Solving Performance, Difficulty Level Choices, and Preference
for Challenge.” Unpublished manuscript, University of Denver.
1986.
Hughes, B., H. J. Sullivan, and M. L. Mosley. “External
Evaluation, Task Difficulty, and Continuing
Motivation.” Journal of Educational Research 78 (1985): 210–
15.
Kage, M. “The Effects of Evaluation on Intrinsic Motivation.”
Paper presented at the meeting of the Japan Association of
Educational Psychology, Joetsu, Japan, 1991.
Kohn, A. Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars,
Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
Kohn, A. “Only for My Kid: How Privileged Parents Undermine
School Reform.” Phi Delta Kappan, April 1998: 569–77.
Krumboltz, J. D., and C. J. Yeh. “Competitive Grading
Sabotages Good Teaching.” Phi Delta Kappan, December 1996:
324–26.
Labaree, D. F. How to Succeed in School Without Really
Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.
Meier, D. The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from
a Small School in Harlem. Boston: Beacon, 1995.
Milton, O., H. R. Pollio, and J. A. Eison. Making Sense of
College Grades. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986.
Moeller, A. J., and C. Reschke. “A Second Look at Grading and
Classroom Performance: Report of a Research Study.” Modern
Language Journal 77 (1993): 163–69.
Salili, F., M. L. Maehr, R. L. Sorensen, and L. J. Fyans, Jr. “A
Further Consideration of the Effects of Evaluation on
Motivation.” American Educational Research Journal 13 (1976):
85–102.

Alfie Kohn, “From Degrading to De-Grading.” Copyright 1999
by Alfie Kohn. Abridged from an article in High
School magazine with the author’s permission. For the complete
text, as well as other resources, please see www.alfiekohn.org.
READINGS: Nervous Nellies
· TAYLOR CLARK
· People usually assume, in general, that women are naturally
more nervous or anxious than men. In this research paper, which
is based on the book Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity
Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and
Cool, Taylor Clark argues that scientists have demonstrated that
women are not biologically inclined to be more anxious.
Instead, they are socialized to be this way. While reading this
argument, look at the ways Clark uses sources to back up his
arguments.
In the jittery world of anxiety research, one of the field’s most
consistent findings is also perhaps its biggest source of
controversy: Women, according to countless studies, are twice
as prone to anxiety as men (Kendler & Prescott, 1999; Todero,
Biing-Jiun, Raffa, Tilkemeier & Niaura, 2007). When pollsters
call women up, they always confess to far higher levels of
worry than men about everything from crime to the economy.
Psychologists diagnose women with anxiety disorders two times
as often as men, and research confirms—perhaps
unsurprisingly—that women are significantly more inclined
toward negative emotion, self-criticism, and endless rumination
about problems. From statistics like these, some have even leapt
to the Larry Summers-esque claim that women are simply built
to be much more nervous than men—an idea that has outraged
many women inside (and outside) the psychology community
(Summers, 2005).
According to new evidence, however, the outraged are right:

When it comes to our preconceived notions about women and
anxiety, women are unfairly being dragged through the mud.
While women are indeed more fretful than men on average right
now, this difference is mostly the result of a cultural setup—one
in which major social and parenting biases lead to girls
becoming needlessly nervous adults. In reality, the idea that
women are “naturally” twice as anxious as men is nothing more
than a pernicious illusion.
Before we can unleash the vengeance of the furies on this
falsehood, though, there’s some bad news we need to get out of
the way first: a few recent studies have indicated that the
hormonal differences between the sexes really do make women
a touch more biologically inclined toward anxiety than men.
One noteworthy experiment from last year, for example, found
that female brains—well, female rat brains—get more rattled by
small levels of a major stress hormone called corticotrophin-
releasing factor than male brains (Valentino, 2010). Another
2010 study, at Florida State University, likewise revealed that
male rats’ higher testosterone levels seem to give them a larger
buffer against anxiety than female rats have (Hartung, 2010).
(Don’t get hung up on the fact that these studies were on
rodents; most of what we know about the neuroscience of fear
actually comes from tormenting lab rats.) Just how big a role
these biological factors play in human women’s anxiety isn’t
yet clear. But one thing we do know for certain is that the way
we raise children plays a huge role in determining how disposed
toward anxiety they are later in life, and thus the difference in
the way we treat boys and girls explains a lot about the
heightened nerves we 328329see in many adult women. To show
just how important this is, let’s start at the very beginning. If
women really were fated to be significantly more anxious than
men, we would expect them to start showing this nervousness at
a very young age, right? Yet precisely the opposite is true:
According to the UCLA anxiety expert Michelle Craske, in the
first few months of infants’ lives, it’s boys who show greater
emotional neediness. While girls become slightly more prone to

negative feelings than boys at two years (which, coincidentally,
is the age at which kids begin learning gender roles), research
has shown that up until age 11, girls and boys are equally likely
to develop an anxiety disorder. By age 15, however, girls are
six times more likely to have one than boys are (McGee,
Feehan, Williams & Anderson, 1992).
5 Why the sudden gap in diagnosed anxiety? Well, one answer
is that as a flood of adolescent hormones sends these boys’ and
girls’ emotions into overdrive, the difference in their
upbringings finally catches up with them. After all, whether
parents intend to or not, they usually treat the emotional
outbursts of girls far differently than those of boys. “From a
socialization angle, there’s quite a lot of evidence that little
girls who exhibit shyness or anxiety are reinforced for it,
whereas little boys who exhibit that behavior might even be
punished for it,” Craske told me.
In my book Nerve, I call this the “skinned knee effect”: Parents
coddle girls who cry after a painful scrape but tell boys to suck
it up, and this formative link between emotional outbursts and
kisses from mom predisposes girls to react to unpleasant
situations with “negative” feelings like anxiety later in life. On
top of this, cultural biases about boys being more capable than
girls also lead parents to push sons to show courage and
confront their fears, while daughters are far more likely to be
sheltered from life’s challenges. If little Olivia shows fear, she
gets a hug; if little Oliver shows fear, he gets urged to
overcome it.
The result of these parenting disparities is that by the time girls
grow into young women, they’ve learned fewer effective coping
strategies than their male counterparts, which translates to
higher anxiety. The sexes learn to deal with fear in two very
different ways: men have been conditioned to tackle problems
head-on, while women have been taught to worry, ruminate, and
complain to each other (hey, I’m just reporting the research)
rather than actively confront challenges. These are
generalizations, of course; the fact that I have always been an

Olympic-caliber worrier offers us just one example of how men
can fret with the best of them, and everyone knows at least one
woman who appears not even to know what fear is. Still, these
differences in upbringing clarify quite a bit about the gender
gap in anxiety.
Yet parenting doesn’t tell the full story of feminine nerves,
because even if a young woman emerges from childhood as a
relatively cool and resilient adult, she still has to do battle with
social forces that seem bent on making her anxious. You may
expect me to dwell here on the viselike pressure that
contemporary culture exerts on women to look beautiful and
young forever (one highly questionable survey found that
women worry about their bodies an average of 252 times a
week), but while this is a significant issue, the cultural biases
about women and anxiety run deeper still (Alexander, 2009).
We have an odd tendency to label women as anxious even when
they aren’t. A recent, highly revealing study showed that even
in situations in which male and female subjects experience the
same level of an emotion, women are consistently seen—and
even see themselves—as being “more emotional” than men. It
shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that this bias holds for anxiety
as well; we buy into the fretful-women stereotypes far too often.
Another report, for 329330example, found significant
differences in the way doctors respond to patients who report
common stress symptoms like chest pain: Whereas men get full
cardiac workups, women are more often told that they’re just
stressed or anxious, and that their symptoms are in their heads.
10 It should be pretty clear by now that the claims about women
being far more innately anxious than men are suspect, but
before I depart in a blaze of justice, one final point is in order:
Men are getting off much too easily in the anxiety discussion.
Probably the most significant reason why women get diagnosed
with anxiety disorders twice as often as men isn’t that they’re
doubly fearful. It’s because anxious men are much less likely to

seek psychological help.
The flip side of being raised to always show strength is that
men come to feel that going to a therapist is a sign of weakness
or failure (think of Tony Soprano’s mopey resistance to the
benefits of psychiatry), which is why men constitute just 37
percent of therapy patients, by some estimates. If nearly twice
as many women seek help from a psychologist, then they’ll
obviously be diagnosed more often with anxiety disorders.
Troublingly enough, the evidence shows that while women deal
with anxiety and stress by worrying, men are more likely to try
to bury these feelings with alcohol or drugs—which offers one
rationale for why men are at higher risk for “antisocial”
disorders like alcoholism.
So take heart, women of the world: You’re not necessarily
bioengineered to be worry machines. The deeper truth behind
the great anxiety divide is this: We all get stressed-out and
nervous sometimes. Women are simply more honest about their
anxiety, because they’ve been taught to deal with it through
unencumbered fretting. Of course, I’m not about to declare that
if we raised boys and girls exactly the same, eradicated the
cultural anxiety bias against women, and frogmarched more men
into therapy, the gender nervousness gap would magically
disappear. We would almost certainly see, though, that this gap
is far smaller than we think.
References
Alexander, H. (2009, November 23). Women worry about their
bodies 252 times a week. Telegraph.co.uk. The Telegraph.
Retrieved
fromhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6634686/Women-
worry-about-their-bodies-252-times-a-week.html
Clark, T. (2011). Nerve: Poise under pressure, serenity under
stress, and the brave new science of fear and cool. Little, Brown
and Company.
Harting, R. (2010, September 1). Why does anxiety target
women more? Florida State University. Retrieved April 27,
2011, fromhttp://www.fsu.com/News-Archive

/2010/September/Why-does-anxiety-target-women -more-FSU-
researcher-awarded-1.8M-grant-to-find-out
Kendler, K., & Prescott, C. (1999). A population-based twin
study of lifetime major depression in men and women. Archives
of General Psychology, 56, 39–44.
McGee, R., Feehan, M., Williams, S., & Anderson, J. (1992).
DSM-III disorders from age 11 to age 15 years. Journal of
American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychology, 31(1), 50–
59.
Summers, L. (2005, January 14). Remarks at NBER Conference
on diversifying the science & engineering workforce. Office of
the President, Harvard University. Retrieved April 27, 2011,
from http://classic-
web.archive.org/web/20080130023006/http://www.president.har
vard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html
Todaro, J., Biing-Jiun, S., Raffa, S., Tilkemeier, P., & Niaura,
R. (2007). Prevalence of anxiety disorders in men and women
with established coronary heart disease. Journal of
Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation & Prevention, 27(2), 86–91.
doi:10.1097/01. HCR.0000265036.24157.e7
330331
Valentino, R. (2010, August 20). Stress hormone receptors less
adaptive in female brain. National Institute of Mental Health.
Retrieved April 27, 2011,
from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/media/audio/stress-hormone-
receptors-less-adaptive-in-female-brain.shtml

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