How Come You Never Got an "E" in School? With most schools in
the US about to let out for the summer, reader Sarah in
California had report cards on her mind. She wrote to ask how
letter grades originated, and why no one ever gets an "E."
Making the Grade Credit for the idea of grading students' work
quantitatively generally goes to William Farish, a tutor at the
University of Cambridge in the late 18th century. The Industrial
Revolution was in full swing in Britain, and piecework payment
systems—payment based on the number of pieces produced rather
than hours worked—were becoming popular even outside of
manufacturing. Some schools were paying teachers per student
instead of per hour. Under this payment system, Farish saw that
any limit on the number of students he could take on would limit
the amount of money he could make. So he followed the lead of
the industrialists and devised a teaching tool that would allow
him to streamline his work and process more students: grades.
The time and effort it took to eva