Banjar and grading system

Professor Tanglao-Aguas and professor Palmer asked us about how we would like to be graded for our mid-term sharing. Since we just learned about Indonesian Dance and its culture which emphasizes the community called "banjar", the professors wanted us to have the class discussion and decide as a community. I thought it was very interesting and surprising that the professors gave students a chance to set the grading system for ourselves because, what we hear a lot in college is: professors are gods of the classroom in college; they can do whatever they want to do; you just need to follow his rules no matter what.

After the question was said and the class started the discussion, it was distinctively divided into two groups and as we discussed more, animosity between the two groups arose. One group wanted to be graded by only the professors, "two kings", because they were concerned about peer performers being able to evaluate the work. They argued that the classmates were not the experts, and some of them were too critical or too loose on grading. Another group wanted to be evaluated by the professors and the peer performers. They argued that since everyone was in the similar level that they could evaluate and too harsh critics and too loose critics would balance off. Also, since the performance was perceived by many audience, bahas, feelings and realization of the audience, and evaluation from all the audience were supposed to be reflected on the grading.             

Both sides had logical reasons for their arguments and I respected that they were expressing their opinions. However, as it got dragged on for more than an hour and neither group was willing to compromise in the middle, it made me frustrated  and made me realize how hard it is to come up with our own grading system. Also, I was amazed that how Indonesian performing groups made every decisions like this as a community and how well it was working for them. At the end, we agreed on one thing that we would perform for our kings, but our peer evaluation would go into our participation grade. I was glad we finally came up with one decision, but hoped that the process could have gone a little more smoothly and faster. However, it was a new interesting experience to learn about real banjar in the class that professor stressed over the whole semester.