And thats whats wrong with everything. People come to school to get their grade, get their degree and get out. Does anyone factor in learning anymore?
This is my problem. This is why I started this thread. I can only chalk it up to greed that schools have not fought to deal with this. If you are not here to learn, then get the hell out and stop impeding my education. It’s angering to see the drones that walk into the classroom and have the nerve to call themselves “students”. I guess what I’d really like to see is something like Plato’s Academy, a place where people go to seek knowledge and enlightenment. “Go to school, get a degree so you can get a good job and make lots of money.” Aaarrrggghhh!
“It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”
Well, nowadays we have this article of trade commonly referred to as “money.” For some reason, in the past few thousand years, the “wandering sage” field has lost its prestige and currently a pretty damn tough way to make a living.
(I tried that one, too.)
I’m not knocking people who go to school primarily for the sake of career. We need those people to keep society running, period.I’m even a little jealous of those who have the pragmatism to sit through boring classes in order to get whatever certificate they were seeking. If I had that sort of diligence, I might have majored in something practical and would now be able to afford things like new glasses or an apartment.
Practical people make this world go round.
Scholastic people entertain each other on BBS’s.
As an added note to this (for I don’t think anyone has successfully defended the use of grades, just rationalized them), a local school district here in NW Ohio has decided to put the elementary schools on a totally non-graded report basis. Replacing letter grades will be written evaluations. Reasons cited for the change include avoiding comparisons and providing parents with better information regarding the progress of their children.
And one last thought for the grade defenders: what do you do about the simple difference in grading philosophy between absolute grades and grades on the ‘curve’, a philosophical difference with potentially substantial effect and no identification?
Here’s another question: Should all education end in your twenties?
It seems to me that college is wasted on many 18-24 year olds. This year, I have had more of a drive to learn than any of the years I spent in school and in many ways, it’s too late.
I’d love to see some kind of organized system where adults can continue taking classes throughout their lives (without overly prohibitive tuition fees), not just to learn some new technical skills, but to explore entirely new subjects when the curiosity strikes.
Ideally, we would start working 4-day weeks and have 1 day for university. In some stages of life, the drive to learn might be weak, so a person might take technical or art/craft classes. Most times, however, people would open up and learn new foreign languages, philosophy, geology, etc.
Heck, with the booming job market, this could be a hook to attract highly motivated, intelligent workers. A group of employers could team up with a local university to buy one day a week of classes for each employee (the university would need to offer once-a-week classes for the program).
What say ye?
Meara
Unfortunately, I don’t really have anything more deep to add to this discussion.
I just wanted to bop in and say that
a)I went to Gradeless U and had a horrible experience and I am lucky I got out without EST, and
b)I am now a doctoral student anyway.
which can only lead me to conclude that:
There are people out there who study out of love of learning AND care about grades.
Well, as a teacher I have to say that sometimes curves are ideal. If I design a tool, a system to gauge the students’ knowledge and they do not perform to my specs, then I’ve done something wrong. When the scores are clustered together ( as they usually are when they need to be curved), then I have to alter the data a bit to make it more obvious exactly where I misinterpreted, in order to correct it. It helps me to determine where my students really are, too.
What absolute grades, DSY? 90% of WHAT = A. Tests can be written so that an average student scores anywhere between 10% & 90%. The ones at either end lose a lot of their power to discriminate subtle differences in the knowledge of students beyond that mark.
In most of the classes I took with “absolute” grades, ~25% made As, 50% made Bs, & 25% made Cs, Ds, & Fs (mostly Cs). In the “curved” classes, however ~15% made As, 35% Bs, 35% Cs, & 15% Ds & Fs. When the boundary between an A & a B is down around 80%, luck or losing a minus sign along the way play a lot smaller role in arriving at the overall grades. Curving helps, IMO, to distinguish between good students & the best students.
My FIRST college test was in Organic Chem. I walked out thinking I had made a 65-70%. Since it was supposed to be a sophomore class, the prof assumed we all knew it was curved…
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
My point in asking the question was to note that a letter grade is meaningless information in the absence of data regarding how it is determined. If a teacher uses a ‘curve’ to grade (that is, attempts to fit the grades into some sort of bell curve distribution, with a specific percentage always excelling and a certain percentage always failing), then the meaning of ‘A’ (Excellence) is different from that of an ‘A’ given to a student in a class where simply achieving a pre-determined score results in that grade (regardless of the number of students who manage it). As an example from my real-life experience, my first year law school class was divided up into three sections. Two sections too Property law from professors who graded on the ‘curve’. The third section was taught by a teacher who used absolute values to determine grades. Needless to say, the resulting grade distributions were somewhat different. Yet, an employer looking at the transcript could hardly know that.
I used this example (curve v. absolute values) because one of the most common grading differences in high school through graduate school is whether or not grades will be ‘curved.’ Other less common differences in grading philosophy have the same result.
Face it, folks, a letter grade is meaningless data to anyone other than the teacher assigning it and the student receiving it, and even the latter won’t necessarily understand the reason for it unless he or she asks and gets a full explanation.
Hmmmm- meaningless to all but the teachers and the students. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that the teacher and the student were considered to be the “primary players” (the most important figures) in any question of education.
Melatonin, your question shows that you either didn’t read the posts or fail to understand the issue.
If all that grades were was a way of communicating an evaluation by the teacher to the student of the extent of understanding, then there would be little reason to ‘grade’ with a letter grade, because certainly a teacher could also write an evaluation that explains the progress of the student. No one so far has defended letter grades on the basis that they are for the convenience of the person teaching the course.
Letter grades exist to provide others outside the class with a way to evaluate the extent to which the student has mastered the material. The main defense presented has been that they make such evaluations by those outside the system easier, avoiding therefor the need for extensive time-consuming review of actual evaluations by the teachers.
It was with this in mind that the paragraph you quoted was written.
Sorry- I guess we’re not on the same page.
I just wanted to give my input, from experience, on the utility of grades. For some people. Not for all.( Even at Gradeless U’s, instructors use a 100-point system to help determine students’ mastery of materials. The score is simply not recorded.)
Perhaps if grades had never been thought up, someone would have come up with a better system to the benefit of all. As it is, this is the system we have, and the one within which the vast majority of our students and teachers are able to function and do their jobs at a minimal functional level. The students, for the most part, don’t think to question this. The teachers are too overworked and stressed out to spare the time neccessary for thinking up a new system and debating it’s ideological effects. Which is exactly why I should probably stay away from GD.
Good luck finding your answer.
Meara said:
Meara, that’s a fantastic idea. When I was getting my transfer(AA) degree I was working full time 8-4:30, school 2 nights a week from 5-10pm and all day saturday, and i was pulling call on 4 nights a week as well. I had the opportunity to work 4 10’s and be off on one day, but there were NO classes offered on just one day.
When I got accepted to UC Berkeley, I was planning on working 2 days and schooling 3 days. Once again, not only are there no one day classes, but there are classes that I would have needed that were ONLY offered as five day a week classes! What kind of crap is that? Of course the UC doesn’t offer any night courses either… Are they discouraging people who have a real life other than school from not going? I just didn’t understand, and there was no way I could have not worked(especially since the bastards wanted me to pay nonresident tuition, no matter that I’ve been a CA resident my whole life and was just coming back from a seven year stint in the Army during which I paid CA taxes! But I digress).
I guess my point is that it is very hard to go back to {upper level} classes when you need to work. I think your idea is great though Meara. I am depressed about not being able to learn…
“It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”