"just as often we see that a student needs praise and support rather than a tough grade, even for her weak performance, if she is really to prosper as a student and a person-if we are really to nurture her fragile investment in her studies."
-Elbow
I don't know. I'm never a fan of undeserved praise. If the student writes an awful draft or paper, giving them praise for it isn't doing them any favors. Now support, that's a different issue, but why are support and a tough grade at all exclusive?
I see grades not in the negative, "post-modern" "post-structuralist" "post-whatever-you-got" new age, "why do we have to evaluate things?" light. I think grades offer a student feedback in a way, at least with freshman, that all the conferences and comments and praise and support and hand holding in the world will never do. You can argue that that's because the system has told them to value grades over hand holding, fine. But the system is there. We can't change it. So I think we should use it.
Grade hard. Grade accurately. Tell the students why they got the grade they did and how they can improve. Give them support, and praise, but be sure not to hold their hands, because that's sexual harassment.
P.S.
"Look at Socrates and Christ as archetypal good teachers-archetypal in being so paradoxical. They are extreme on the one hand in their impulse to share with everyone and to support all learners."
-Elbow
Does Rhetoric have a different Socrates? Is this like Dr. Socrates that teaches at penn state or something? 'Cause the Athenian Socrates had no "impulse to share with everyone and to support all learners." Maybe all Athenian land owning men. So like a few hundred people.
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