" Hence a report from Harvard’s own “Committee on Raising the Standard”: “Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily—Grade A for work of not very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity. . . . One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work.” Except that report was written in—you saw this coming, didn’t you?—1894. "

― Alfie Kohn , The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Coddled Kids, Helicopter Parents, and Other Phony Crises