This was an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Mary took a journalism course to improve her job and got a C+ on her paper while Rhoda and others got B’s.
Mary asked why and the instructor told her she’s a professional and he’d have to grade her on a different scale. When Mary was about to complain he said “Mrs XXX, took this class 'cause the pottery class was filled up. Why did you take this class?” And she said “To be better at her job.”
And of course the instructor asks her out, to wit, Rhoda replies “I’ll trade my B for you C+ and the invitation”
Paper is worth a whopping 60% of the course grade, btw.
All I can find is something for the class itself: “Written [A-level] work signifies an essay that is persuasive, demonstrates mastery of the material, and reaches conclusions that transcend the block material. Essay is concise, adheres to the style guide [whatever the heck that is], exhibits appropriate tone, and has no spelling or grammar errors. The writer uses appropriate and sufficient evidence with correct documentation.”
I’m not sure how “coasting” is considered gaming the system. There’s no intention of cheating, just using time wisely. If I have many classes to master, do I focus on one at the expense of others? Or do I throw in an 80% effort in class that I’m already strong in where, normally, that should earn me an A or a B, all so that I can spend more time on classes that I’m weak in?
Just to be clear, I’m not getting wrapped around the axle on this. It’s an interesting teaching method which my gut felt wasn’t entirely fair, which prompted me to look further into whether or not the teaching establishment had some sort of inside gouge on it; i.e., whether it’s considered teacher’s prerogative or if it’s considered immoral and not allowed, whether it’s a hotly debated issue, or if no one cares. That’s what I’m interested in.
Okay, that alone is ridiculous. For the initial assignment to be worth 60% of the final grade seems unreasonable to me. Or do you mean this paper and subsequent revisions? Even so. I rarely have assignments exceed 25% of a grade, and never above 50%.
Not much time at the moment, but just to be clear.
Coasting meant doing the minimum to get the A or B or C or whatever you’d be happpy with with a minimum effort on “your” part to get that grade under a “normal” grading system.
“Cheating” would be as described earlier where you know beforehand how the instructor grades in this class so you purposely submit something REALLY bad to start off with so you can “improve” as you work your way through the course.
In this case, coasting and cheating are not really related, other than the fact that you arent getting as much from this class as you could if you didnt do either.
Ah. Must have misread earlier, so thanks for clarifying. I’m not sure I’d call tanking a paper cheating, but it is slimy, and dishonest… well, ok, I can see where you’re coming from. If my daughter did that, I’d definitely tell her she was cheating.
I am an English as a Foreign Language teacher. I teach rather large classes with students who range from “pretty much fluent” to “can barely speak a few words.” I have one student in particular who has a very different background than the others, and because of that his English is way beyond the others.
However, by any account, he is a lazy student. He sits in the back of class listening to his MP3 player. During group work he participates, but just barely. For his presentations his English is good enough, but you can tell he did no real preparation.
I feel like as a teacher, it is my job to help this kid improve his English. It’s not just to hand him an A.
In reality, my grades mean nothing, so it’s not a real issue. But if the grading system were different, how do you propose I handle this situation? Just be comfortable with a brilliant kid learning nothing in my class? Seems like a waste of all of our time.
This is a B- for effort, not for the actual subject. That’s fair enough; if you want to grade students on effort there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. However, I think it’s unfair to give someone a grade for effort and then list it on their academic record as a grade for history, or English, or whatever.
It would probably be a good way of forcing talented students not to coast through an easy subject. However, someone looking at a B- on your record is going to assume that you have a B- level of knowledge about that subject, and that seems unfair if you (and the person giving you the grade) know damn well that you have an A+ level of knowledge about that subject.
How does the teacher know for a fact who can do better and who cannot? If it’s the first or second paper that’s turned in, how does a teacher know what the baseline is for that individual? Answer: They don’t. So it’s a bunch of BS, unless the teacher has prior familiarity with every student in the class.
Even if they can do better, that doesn’t mean it is cost-effective to do better. I don’t think it’s too unlikely that you’d see diminishing returns once you’re working above the level the teacher is teaching, and you’re always going to have other things you could be spending your time on. Punishing good time management seems rather counter-productive.
There is only really one situation where I can see this being ok: if you had to turn in a rough draft, and every rough draft was turned back with very specific recommendations–like “need concrete evidence in this paragraph”, “refine this topic sentence, it doesn’t really describe the function of this paragraph”, “this paragraph seems irrelevant”–and then you were graded by how your revision repaired the weaknesses highlighted. In such a case, a weaker student might be mostly tasked with simple corrections, a more advanced student with more sophisticated things. In a case like this, I can see it working very well because each student has clear expectations. But this is a far cry from just assuming each student’s native level and making a knee-jerk judgment about how much they have improved.
This is exactly why most classes have around 10% of the grade as “participation,” to make sure that students like MP3-boy don’t get an A. That said, why are you allowing him to remain in the classroom while he listens to music?
This kind of situation is why it was possible in one of my classes in college for Peter to get an A which was hemoraging red ink and Joe to get a C with no red marks whatsoever.
My professor felt strongly about linking the amount of effort/time he spent grading to the effort/time exerted by the student.
So Peter, a student for whom English was not his first language, got the helpful tip that “to pass water” means “to piss”, and Joe who put in the bare minimum amount of effort, got a passing grade but limited direction as to what he should work on the next time.
This upset the Peters of the world, but not the Joes of the world. Although, once the policy was explained, and once enough students pointed out that if you got a 98 on the paper, who cared how much red ink it contained . . . things improved.
I don’t know that this solution works for you. But it’s a philosophy to keep in mind.
This is true. I’m a writing teacher myself, in a university, and I have too many students in my class to sit and evaluate each paper individually based on how well I think that particular student could do as opposed to how well the student actually did. I don’t even know the names of some of my students; how could I fairly estimate their potential? Plus, I teach some classes online, which means I don’t get to meet the students at all.
When giving an assignment, a teacher should outline the criteria for grading. Nowadays, most do this by providing a rubric. Even with a rubric it is still somewhat difficult to be completely objective when grading, but it does help the teacher evaluate the paper based on how closely it matched the criteria. If I see potential in a student’s writing, I will write a supportive comment on the paper to encourage the student to want to work harder/do better, but I won’t lower the grade in the hopes that the student will realize he or she needs to work harder than the other students to get a good grade.
I think your teacher’s heart is in the right place, but what he or she is doing doesn’t work in the real world.