| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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The Doc can go to: Doc: "Bill and Kathy believe it's their divine destiny to have a cloned baby." Kathy: "I think that God really wants us to do this, that it is the next step. I can't imagine any other reason why we haven't had a child, other than this is what we were meant to do." No no honey, its made VERY evident WHY dear lord jesus hasn't blessed you with a baby. fucking idiots. |
think their headline was " Sometimes God says NO" or something. Kazoo and I ranted about it for a while yesterday on IM, but not as much as about the case in FLorida where the 16 year old girl, in order to let a couple adopt her kid, has to post in the newspaper the names of all the boys she had sex with when she was 13 and got pregnant, so the father has a chance to come forward and claim the child if he wants. Thank you Florida legislators. |
"Normally, a student with a 4.5 GPA and high test scores would get into Berkeley and UCLA but I didn't," said high school student Kyle Taylor. Taylor might have had a better chance of being accepted at both schools if he’d suffered a gunshot wound, gone to a bad high school or was the son of divorced parents. That’s because a new University of California admissions policy called "comprehensive review" gives preference to students who have overcome personal hardships." Why would you need to go through some personel hell to get into a good college? What sense does that make at all? I could see this turning into a discrimination issue. Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60288,00.html |
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graduation rates of people with high gpas vs low gpas? I ask merely for information. Also, how do you get a 4.5 GPA? Don't they max out at 4.0? |
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Patrick, not on the mass scale required for college admissions. I just don't think that the GPA is a terribly valid thing in these days of grade inflation, and it would seem that UCs agree. I know that they're also thinking of throwing out the SAT. Private schools have the leisure to request examples of student work and evaluate based on this. I know there's a statistic on that somewhere, sem. I'm looking. |
What do you mean? Are we talking about some sort of giant Bell curve here? I wasnt aware we were in an age of grade inflation. That, to me, sounds suspect. Yeah, how does one get a 4.5? |
I'm all for a more comprehensive review just in general. I don't think it HAS to be a preference issue for colleges to take into consideration the circumstances that prevent some students from getting high GPAs and high test scores. Of course it is going to become a discrimination issue because part of the problem is that university applications departments are not equipt to execute this kind of thing fairly. GPAs and test scores are ways to sift through and quickly eliminate. What, is there going to be some kind of box you can check for trauma that they can rate and such? 12) Have you suffered any kind of trauma or hardship that may have affected your ability to attain a high GPA or test scores? (If no, skip to question 13) 12a) Please choose the letter which bests describes the trauma and/or hardship you have endured. a.) physical trauma such as gun or knife wound, or illness, such as cancer, or mental illness b.) physical and/or sexual abuse c.) death in immediate family d.) divorce, your own or parents e.) alcoholism/drug addiction, your own or parents f.) alien abduction, or any anal probing not otherwise explained g.) The Bush Administration h.) Matt Lauer's new haircut i.) Other, please explain: _______________ Or, maybe this is just another indication that we need to (insert some abstract, highly idealistic opinion about starting with changes in the primary and secondary levels of school that I am much too tired to articulate at this moment) |
Why not just expand the scale to 5.0? Why is the system even "inflated" to begin with? I took AP History and English. I don't recall receiving "extra" credit, just that I started out in a 103 History and English class in my freshmen year as opposed to 101. I would expect the same from attending community college. Im all about doing away with the SATs, and even revamping the entire college acceptance system, but what Ive heard thus far doesnt seem to be any better. This bullshit presented in the article of factoring in subjective circumstances is a total stage for discrimination and further unfairness in an already screwed system. So until someone has a better offer, Im ok with allowing GPAs to serve as the prime prerequisite to gaining acceptance. Special circumstances such as economic hardship should be dealt with similar benefits in college acceptance such as economic aid assuming they pass the academic standards to get in. |
everyone knows that none of this matters at the good schools. it's all about who you know. |
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patrick--the way it works is that college/ap classes are "weighted" a grade higher--an a is worth 5 grade points, a b 4, etc. grade inflation is happening big time. i don't believe that there are that many people working at the superduper above average level that the "a" is supposed to represent. yet there seem to be quite a few 4.0s around... |
The only grade inflation I can be accused of is bumping up some of my D+'s to C-'s so that students wouldn't have to take the class over. (It was also a GEC requirement) I was on a review board for giving money to graduate students and on of the things we discussed was how to distinguish between students who came from departments that inflated vs. those that didn't, not knowing which ones they were. We thought it would be better to ask where students were ranked along with their peers. Unfortunately, too many departments don't keep those records. Then I got yelled at for suggesting that it maybe unfair for students in inflated departments who would get A's regardless and so we had to look at how we weighted other application requirements. But at that moment I couldn't think of how. Don't you hate it when you point something out but no one takes your opinion seriously unless you can come up with a solution. |
no worries though... grade inflation sounds like a load of horseshit. id almost prefer the good ole standardized testing and grade averages as opposed to crap you guys speak of. god damn, what happend to good ole academic performance? |
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fuckkkkkkkk i AM getting old! |
I have always said that college acceptance should be on academic performances, after all, they are ACADEMIC institutions. |
Ignorance is bliss. Incorporating complex information and judgements into your worldview is just toooooooooo complicated, ain't it? |
pussy |
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the concept of grade inflation, as a concept in eduction, was new to me as of yesterday. so between yesterday and today ive read a few things ive found on the web about the idea. here are some things ive found: "...the strongest propensity for this trend exists among Ivy League schools. "Harvard University, for instance, came under sharp criticism for graduating 91 percent of the Class of 2001 with honors, and subsequently announced this semester that it is raising the minimum grade point average (GPA) needed for an honors degree. At Cornell, which graduated only eight percent of the Class of 2001 with honors, the number of A's awarded to students has more than doubled since 1965." taken from here another couple of ideas from a reputable source... "One troubling aspect of grade inflation is that it masks the failure of many impoverished schools. Many students in both low- and high-poverty schools get A's, but their achievement diverges dramatically as measured by 8th graders' scores on the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) standardized tests. "In high-poverty schools (where more than 75 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch), students who got A's in English scored roughly the same on the reading test as those who got C's or D's in the most affluent schools, according to a 1994 U.S. Department of Education study" from here is this not reason enough to make grade inflation a horseshit concept? |
Which, as eri points out, should be a deciding factor in college admission. |
What exactly is the point you're trying to prove? |
Fuck, I am getting tolerant. |
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I don't know. Isolde, i somehow took your "Why should your gpa reflect on your ability to attend college?" question and your admittance that you got inflated grades to support grade inflation. tiggy, sweet bitches, i made an assessment yesterday (i.e. horseshit) about the topic. i read items since that have supported my orignal assesment. the only thing i was proving, more or less to myself, was that my original impression is the correct one. i use the words "sweet" and "bitches" in all seriousness. |
OK. |
The emphasis is on their writing because it's a second level writing class that counts toward requirements. I take it so seriously. My students consistently complained on evaluations that I was too hard on them. They often failed to mention that I encouraged students to send me drafts, thesis sentences/intro paragraphs, some rough ideas, and make appointments to discuss how they can bring up their grades. I'm not bitter, I just find it rather disappointing. Speaking of Harvard (and not trying to change the topic) When I worked for them, the ranking system for measuring the various department's growth and development was a reverse grading system. I don't remember why exactly, but I think their explanation was that if people were giving Ds as the highest it would somehow alter their perspective and they would think harder about what they were doing instead of just shooting off an A for half-assed work (like the rest of Harvard apparently). |
See, this is where i have little or no tolerance. If you give them all the opportunity to ask for help, give ample time to discuss the subject matter, make it clear from the get go what you expect and how you will grade then im not sure id bump even the best of students up at all. if they are the better students then their single poor performance will be a great lesson, perhaps. Sometimes failure is as good a lesson as success no? I was raised to believe that you, and only you are responsible for your performance. For the most part, we all have fair teachers, yes? For the most part our teachers are decent. The rest is in your hands and its up to you to get it. I sometimes believe this can't be emphasised enough. i sometimes wish (especially after discussing this) that I had pursued my 11th and 12th grade inkling to become a teacher. |
you are intolerant to the students that I described, or my approach? Because I think I do exactly what you think is right. As far as bumping up students, I do believe that there are exceptions and this does not contribute to the kind of massive grade inflation we are talking about. For example, if I hadn't given one of those seniors a C- he would not have been able to take a job he had gotten because he would have had to take the class over. I thought it was reasonable. |
Yeah, patrick, you should have been a teacher. Maybe then you wouldn't be talking out of your abundant ass hole right now. |
I may have done the same thing you did with your D+ student. tiggy fuck off. unless you have something to add to the discussion, shut up already with your fence sitting equations of ignorance and "limited world views" etc etc. you sound like an ass. |
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You shoot your mouth off about things you're completely ignorant about. That's what's wrong with your POV. What if I kept spouting off about how I can get perfect pictures in every kind of light using a digital camera with a fixed focus lens which takes 640x480 resolution pictures? |
i shaved my fucking head. kaz, i think that you gave some kid a passing grade he didn't deserve just because it would have fucked up his job offer is pussy. our move away from merit in this society has contributed to the sorry state we are in now. that and WWII. fucking single mothers. christ. |
I hate the idea of "social promotion". And I do not see the harm in telling someone they failed. Eri and I have been watching Hayley's teachers. Some of them are way too hard and some are way to easy. It seems to ballance out. You find the same thing in the "real world". Some bosses are push overs, and some are hard asses. But, in the end, you usually find that the companies that hire the hard ass supervisors tend to stay around longer then the ones that hire the push overs. |
If it had anything to do with pussy, he would have gotten an A |
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all the way from high school through grad school i earned every grade i got. i honestly believe that. |
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antigone. listen fucko...i admitted i didnt know much of the concept of "grade inflation". I admitted that. am I not allowed to have impressions of an idea without necessarily knowing anything about it? ever think outloud? thats essentially what i was doing. does that fit in your scheme intellecual uppityness? "adding to conversation" was an invite to get your ideas instead on the subject rather than constant criticism of what i was saying. for someone who's P(SAT) numbers probably dwarf mine, you act like such a child sometimes. and as far as your 'what if' question? hell if i know and hell i care antigone. i have little to no opinion on the subject of digital photography. Screen resolution means nothing to me. however american education IS something i care about. |
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mostly you 'earn' a grade for diligence rather than for comprehension. when it comes to application of learned material, someone who 'earned' a C may well produce better than someone who 'earned' an A. by some criteria i earned every grade i got. by some criteria i didn't earn every grade i got. it all depends on how you define 'earn'. |
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When I was in college we had a teacher who told us everything that would be on the final and reviewed it all in class. He told us "I don't want you to study the wrong things, I want you study these things which will be on the final, and which have been the whole point of you taking this class. I want be sure you understand these major points or else your time here will have been worthless." I thought that was very cool and very reasonable. I feel very disappointed with many adults I meet through my workplace and would rate many as functionally illiterate. I'm not talking about complaints like 'I would have said that differently' or 'that could have been more strongly worded' - I mean people who are unable to draft correspondence whose message is understandable to others. It's distressing. No one should graduate college and have an insufficient command of their native tongue. I would say they write at a 7th - 9th grade level, but they are college graduates. |
it sounded like he pointed out the main points and asked you put them to memory, rather than comprehending and applying what you've learned. i had teachers like that and found their classes and their oh-so-obvious methods a bore. its one thing to spell out your expectations, another to spell it out the answers themselves. the point is to raise the bar, not lower it. |
no one should graduate from highschool without being able to read. no college should have a remedial reading program. college should be hard, not an extention of highschool. i drank and played music and smoked pot and ran around naked in college. i didn't need time to study. that's not right. |
That is not what college is about. But I don't think you need to have comprehended absolutely 100% of everything in a class to get an A. That is impossible to do when you are carrying a full course load, and maybe working part time, and enjoying various recreational activities. Just about everything I taught was on my final. But I was flexible, there was a lot of choice on my exam. It wasn't an easy exam, but that way, every student has the opportunity to demonstrate what they've learned. If you just didn't have time to read a book because you had three midterms that week, then you don't have to answer the questions on that book...comprehensive but fair and sensitive to the reality of student life. And now my next goal as a teacher is to actually live up to all of this. Now, about student's writing.... I was horrified. Utterly horrified. Some of it, as sad as it was, was also hysterical. The professor who was our supervisor keeps a book of classic student lines. For example, from a paper on *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* "When white women didn't have any control over their husbands, they often treated the slave women like escaped goats." (hint: read it aloud) |
i've seen a lot of that level of writing on sorabji.com, actually. that's why i come here (for the laughs). |
i know this because whatever is wrong with that sentence isnt popping out at me other than perhaps an awkward structure. Ive read it out loud for 5+ minutes now. can someone help my grammatically retarded ass out? Is it the use of "treated" |
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I was too busy in school with my escaped goats to pay attention in grammar. god i can be so dense sometimes. |
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Actually, you're wrong. The final wasn't multiple choice, it was all essay, but he told you specifically the topics that the questions would cover, and spoke about why these topics were the most important themes in the class. You still needed to show in your essay you had a comprehensive understanding of the topics, he just told you what topics he was going to be asking about rather than, unlike my art history teacher, making everybody remember 200 slides so she could show 20 and say 'what was the date this was done'? To me, this was useless - wrote memorization - and taught me nothing I have carried forward with me about art. He was a propaganda teacher. I'm sure there's something going on there with his ideas behind teaching. I think it's an interesting concept doing things this way, since there is something to be said for being very clear, laying out expectations and saying 'All you have to do is fulfill my request that you learn and show comprehension of this material and you will get an A.' I mean, even teachers who do things this way still experience students who fail. But why? Because they choose to fail? A friend of mine who is a sociology professor at college has many goat-type stories. The thing again that I find distressing is then the 'escaped goats' writer ends up with a degree, but they aren't really educated, so the degree is meaningless in what it's supposed to symbolize. I reckon that's capitalism. Kazoo - you sound like an awfully good teacher. Where do you teach again? |
im all for essay tests over multiple choice or true/false anyday. |
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the title how it is, when you do a search for new messages, it looks like it says ....to take a bat and beat some sense into whoever's name is shown. |
Dinner Lady, I just finished my master's at Ohio State where I taught a literature/writing/women's studies class on U.S. Women Writers. I wasn't a TA for a professor. I put together the syllabus and all the assignments. It was frustrating at times, but overall it was a good experience. I think most of my students were satisfied with me as a teacher, but I got a few really hostile evaluations over this past year. As in, "What improvements would you suggest for the course?" A: New instructor True story. Our department doesn't regard those unless there is a lot or if the students give some kind of specific and detailed description of why you suck so hard core. I won't be teaching for a while. At Emory my fellowship is structured so that you only have to teach for two semesters. I don't have any kind of assistantship this semester. I have no idea what that's going to feel like. I think it'll be okay. |
"ever think outloud? thats essentially what i was doing." I'll grant the "outloud" part. But that "thinking" claim is suspect. "does that fit in your scheme intellecual uppityness?" Sure. But I ain't the only one being uppity here, you piss drinking bitchface. |
you gotta do better than that. |
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Thank god the somebody is regarding the Constitution somewhere. |
Insanity seems rampant in the world. The Government keeps mandating earlier and earlier education for the children. And, they seem to come out dumber each year. They can barely read or write. They can't do elementary math without a computer. And, they would rather text than have an actual conversation with even their closest friends even if they are sitting next to each other. |
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math because of the pocket calculator. but we couldn't become billionaires when we were barely the legal drinking age. |
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Take the American Indian vs the the rest of us, especially white Anglo Saxons, in the USA. The kids are taught today that we took advantage of and slaughtered these poor defenseless "Native Americans" for their lands. They are not told that the Indians were even more savage and brutal than the settlers. That long before the white man came to settle here the tribes were doing exactly the same thing to each other. In fact if you care to look into it the Navajo are to this day encroaching on Hopi lands. It is true that a lot of treaties were violated in order to take valuable lands from the Indians. But, most of that came after generations of fighting them for survival. So the white settlers had very little respect for people who would do things that I will not go into detail about here. There is plenty of historical references that are available to verify these acts. That is just one area where the schools are failing. |
Stop. Talking. I would be surprised if any child would reach the dumbnessity of things you are filling up sorabji with these days. |
Too much of everything right now. I am not dumb. Only crazy. If I was dumb I would have voted for Obama. |