THE sun is finally shining and the cameras are at Centre Court — it must be time to start marking exams. “Why are we doing this?” I am tempted to ask. “What is it all for?”

And now the pupils are getting their own back, through a website on which they can rate their teachers out of five, and add their own comments.

In all this, we are a muddle of contradictions. Our most popular virtue is tolerance, and the worst of sins is to be “judgmental”. Yet we spend as much effort on judging each other as on doing whatever is judged.

“Judge not, that you be not judged,” Jesus warned us. “For with the judgment that you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure that you get” (Matthew vii, 1-2).

He knew, of course, that we need to educate our youngsters and to restrain our criminals. Yet He urged His followers to pass judgment in a new way, with the humility that comes from first acknowledging their own faults, and with an honest recognition that any earthly judgments are pragmatic, superficial, and provisional. It is only God, who discerns “the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews iv, 12), who is able to know our true worth. We should judge cautiously and sparingly, when we have no choice but to do so; above all, our ultimate motive for making judgments should be love.

St Matthew also reports Jesus’s advice to His disciples about dealing with wrongdoers. First, the person who has been hurt ought to talk to the offender in private. If he listens, the matter must be taken no further; if he does not, a couple of others may be told. Only if he still refuses to listen should the offence be made public, by being reported to the whole Church (Matthew xviii, 15-17).

St Thomas Aquinas studies this passage in his exploration of Christian charity, in a section on what the monastic tradition calls “fraternal correction”, which means helping an errant brother or sister return to the straight and narrow. In this context, the point of putting others right is not to relieve your own feelings, or to get them into trouble, or even to stop them from upsetting you again. The point of it is to help them: fraternal correction is a part of love. St Thomas explains why Jesus recommends that we first correct our fellow-believers in private. It is to protect their good name, the solid respect they have among their peers.

Reputation, as an external good, is less important than goods of body or soul. However, Aquinas argues, it is the most valuable of the external goods, worth more than material wealth: to deprive people of their reputations without good reason is even worse than stealing.

We might ponder the confusion of our society, in which fame and celebrity are absurdly overvalued, while we care so little about reputations that a decent teacher can lose her good name on the word of one disaffected child.

St Thomas also asks whether people in subordinate positions ought to correct those above them. Is it appropriate, we may ask today, for students to criticise their teachers?

Thomas’s answer is careful. Those in authority are not better in every respect than every person who is under them. The French mistress may have a bilingual girl in her class; the head of geography may need help with IT from the computer whiz-kid. On the other hand, those with responsibilities have them because of their knowledge, abilities and experience. Their juniors ought to respect this. If we need to correct those set over us, Thomas concludes, we should do so “with gentleness and reverence”, and as discreetly as possible. Above all, we should be trying to help, and not punish, them; for no teacher actually wants to teach badly.

The website is a mistake. There are better ways to help teachers to improve on their weaknesses, and we should not provide a forum for the ignorant, the inexperienced and the indiscreet to damage their good names. Examinations grades are less misleading; after all they are decided by experts. But even they should be kept in proportion: for no artificial assessment can measure the real worth of a human being.

Margaret Atkins teaches theology at Trinity and All Saints, Leeds, and is a senior research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. Her translation of Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on the Virtues was recently published by CUP.