Smart students? Duh...
Apr. 24th, 2003 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blodeueddA token toward proving myself an intelligent, interesting and articulate person:
It seems that Canadian universities are giving out higher and higher grades but there's no consensus so far on why. One article suggests that it's because our self-esteem educational system is so good kids would be scarred for life if they got a bad mark on anything, no matter how awful it is. Another says students are more competitive and/or competent now than they were in decades gone by.
If you're talking about subjects like biology or physics, it could very well be that the students are brighter and work harder. In literature, however (and I guess social sciences as well), I would venture to say that many, many people can't write worth shit, regardless of what they're studying, and don't care. Case in point: I was in the French literature programme in cegep and some students complained when one of our French teachers dared deduct marks for spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes in an essay. What the hell are you doing studying literature if you can't write 750 words without making 20 mistakes? Sure, that cegep doesn't attract the cream of the crop, but that was beyond idiotic. That teacher won my admiration for telling them like it was.
What bothers me is that I got very good marks throughout university and it seems to me that a many of them weren't deserved*; I got away with an A+ for an essay I knew was nowhere near what I could have done (lazy, lazy) and in another class, an essay into which I had put a similar amount of effort (not a whole lot) got me B, which seemed much more reasonable. In some classes, I could tell that a B+ was high praise and in others an A left me nonplussed because I was so sick of my essay that I couldn't tell anymore whether or not it was any good.
See, I don't think my marks would have been significantly higher if I had put more effort into my work. This was supposed to motivate me how?
* Old English, Celtic lit. and Chinese were
It seems that Canadian universities are giving out higher and higher grades but there's no consensus so far on why. One article suggests that it's because our self-esteem educational system is so good kids would be scarred for life if they got a bad mark on anything, no matter how awful it is. Another says students are more competitive and/or competent now than they were in decades gone by.
If you're talking about subjects like biology or physics, it could very well be that the students are brighter and work harder. In literature, however (and I guess social sciences as well), I would venture to say that many, many people can't write worth shit, regardless of what they're studying, and don't care. Case in point: I was in the French literature programme in cegep and some students complained when one of our French teachers dared deduct marks for spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes in an essay. What the hell are you doing studying literature if you can't write 750 words without making 20 mistakes? Sure, that cegep doesn't attract the cream of the crop, but that was beyond idiotic. That teacher won my admiration for telling them like it was.
What bothers me is that I got very good marks throughout university and it seems to me that a many of them weren't deserved*; I got away with an A+ for an essay I knew was nowhere near what I could have done (lazy, lazy) and in another class, an essay into which I had put a similar amount of effort (not a whole lot) got me B, which seemed much more reasonable. In some classes, I could tell that a B+ was high praise and in others an A left me nonplussed because I was so sick of my essay that I couldn't tell anymore whether or not it was any good.
See, I don't think my marks would have been significantly higher if I had put more effort into my work. This was supposed to motivate me how?
* Old English, Celtic lit. and Chinese were
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-25 08:23 am (UTC)As a result, even if you barely worked, but were in a class full of idiots or people who worked even less (is that even possible in my case??).... your A was almost automatic.
Although I saw the logic of applying this to a class of 200 students, it was apparently done for much smaller classes of 15-30 as well...
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As for the marks getting better and better, I think thats partly a result of practically everyone going to University and getting a degree (I do not personally know anyone who didnt get a degree because of bad marks... most who don't finish just got bored, sick of studying and/or attracted to something else and ran off to do that other stuff). I guess that has an impact on the standard that is expected of students... and since standards are lower, any modicum of intelligence or brilliance shown by a student is more easily rewarded by even better marks.
Therefore... the marks creep up, the standards creep down...
Everyone gets good grades!!
Re:
Date: 2003-04-25 11:42 am (UTC)I don't know, it's really hard to compare now and then in these cases. Much more people get a chance to go to university nowadays, people from different backgrounds and all that. Students change, teachers change, grading systems change and there's no way to go back and test everyone using the same standards.