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Yes, a prof at Stanford told me something along those lines a few years ago. But I figure if you can get into Stanford, then grade-padding is probably moot. Unless you're competing for grad school with others from state schools, etc, where they don't do that.
No, school should be harder, not easier. Kids have to be taught responsibility for the timeliness of their work. Responsibility for the correctness of their work. And the consequences for failing those responsibilities. These are habits and lessons that are learned early in life and stick with you for life.
Next time I do cpr on someone and they die, the patient isn't going to get an H stamped on them in heaven and then sent down for me to have a second go at them. It's ridiculous.
For most professions, there are multiple chances. In fact, they're demanded. In most professions, if you don't do it on time, you don't get an F and told to move on. You're told to go do it. Ditto for not doing it right the first time. So, not giving F's but, rather, requiring the student to do the work later or over is actually closer to real life than giving an F and moving on. I have never had a job where they would give me an F and move on if I failed to do something. There are many occaisions when I would have taken that offer,
Obviously, in professions like the medical profession there is only one shot and it must be on time so I would fail a nursing student or a med school student who didn't do things on time. I think you need to look at where the student is going and what will be real life for them out in the real world.
we'll i think that's not right, students really need to get F's, it makes it easier for the parents as well as the students to know that they've failed. Come on i got some F's before and i said to my self damm i got to fix this, getting an F is telling you that you're not trying hard enough.
Ivory, can you give me some examples? I am trying to imagine them. I know you must have some in mind.
I know my brother, a patent lawyer, isn't expected to do his work multiple times till he gets it right. He is expected and rewarded for doing it right the first time. He may have to refile a patent or argument, but this is not optimal.
My father and several friends are engineers and architects. Their work is also expected to be correct the first time they submit it. Friends who are scientists often have to repeat experiments, but again - it's not b/c it's optimal. It's just life. If they are diligent, they can get stuff done right with the minimal amount of tries.
The point is that maybe you will grow up to have a job where it doesn't matter if you do it right or on time (like a contractor!), but kids should have been taught this important habit.
How many times has my life been made more annoying or full of hassle b/c someone else can't get their sh*t together to do their job right the first time? That is not an attitude I would prefer to propagate.
Ivory, can you give me some examples? I am trying to imagine them. I know you must have some in mind.
I know my brother, a patent lawyer, isn't expected to do his work multiple times till he gets it right. He is expected and rewarded for doing it right the first time. He may have to refile a patent or argument, but this is not optimal.
My father and several friends are engineers and architects. Their work is also expected to be correct the first time they submit it. Friends who are scientists often have to repeat experiments, but again - it's not b/c it's optimal. It's just life. If they are diligent, they can get stuff done right with the minimal amount of tries.
The point is that maybe you will grow up to have a job where it doesn't matter if you do it right or on time (like a contractor!), but kids should have been taught this important habit.
How many times has my life been made more annoying or full of hassle b/c someone else can't get their sh*t together to do their job right the first time? That is not an attitude I would prefer to propagate.
The point is if he doesn't do his work right the first time, he's expected to go back and do it right. No one says "You get an F....next assignment". If you don't do something today, because say you have the flu, you have to do it tomorrow.
If I owed a report to a customer on Monday, no one gave me an F and told me to move on to the next report on Tuesday if I didn't get it done. Instead they were in my face until I got it done. If I missed a deadline, I was still expected to finish the work. Only people were mad.
Trust me, if I could have taken an F and moved on the next customer, there are a few times I would have. Some of the Japenese companies are anal when it comes to testing and reports. Analyzing second derivatives of the motion of a glove box to match a curve that has no meaning in real life is just plain silly but I spent countless hours doing just that to appease one customer. And then there's getting reports back, time and time again because they want a word bold faced or underlined or put in a different colored font .
The point is, if I missed the deadline, I still had to do the work (not without penalty but I had to do it). If I didn't get the job right the first time, I got to do it again.
I just wanted to add, as a high school teacher, what I'd like to see is students held accountable for their own success in school. If you don't get your work done Monday-Friday, don't worry, there's Saturday school where you can make it up. If you don't pass a test, you have to come after school for tutoring and retake the test on your time until you pass it.
The problem is, it's becomming more and more the school/teacher's problem to make the student pass. Extra opportunties don't come at high enough of a price to make them unattractive.
I require my students retake tests if they don't pass them but I, often, end up using class time to do that because they won't show up after school. They also, usually, flunk the second time too because they don't care. We need some aversion therapy here. I think if you make kids give up Saturdays to make up work, you just might do it. Of course this would require the school hiring people to come in on Saturday and they'll never do that. I wonder how they run Saturday schools in Japan? Anyone know?
College is another story. By then you're an adult and responsible for your own work. If you don't do it, you flunk. You can take the class over, with tuition, next term and your transcript will show a withdrawel or failure the first time.
we'll i think that's not right, students really need to get F's, it makes it easier for the parents as well as the students to know that they've failed. Come on i got some F's before and i said to my self damm i got to fix this, getting an F is telling you that you're not trying hard enough.
Alternate view to what you said...
Getting an "F" doesn't always mean the kid isn't trying hard enough. That's a blanket statement with no basis in fact.
If a child gets an "F", it means one of a number of things.
They're purposely not trying hard enough, i.e. not doing the work, not studying, etc. because they don't want to.
They're not trying hard enough because they just don't understand the curriculum and don't bother trying or telling anyone.
They don't understand the curriculum as presented by the teacher, and don't say anything because they think it's their fault.
The teacher is one of those "A or F" graders who believes if you're not doing everything, you're doing nothing.
The teacher takes your personality into account when grading you, and doesn't like yours for whatever reason (this was a HUGE issue which is part of the reason they introduced that second grading...but a lot of teachers ignored it)
The child did all of the homework but is unable to pass the test, which usually indicates improper association between the homework materials and the test questions. (and yes, some teachers will fail you if you do not pass all of the tests)
Teachers who just grade bass ackwards.
Teachers who fail students that don't do what they are told, even if they are told to do something that has nothing to do with the course material (I've seen it).
Classes like Art where grading should be based on effort and not whether the teacher's individual taste prefers what you created.
PE, where you're graded based on what you wear rather than your participation.
The list goes on and on, but those are the top ten reasons students fail. Yes, it's possible the kid doesn't want to do the work because they're rebellious. But there are a whole host of other reasons, all of which I have seen first hand.
In my opinion they need to lock down the grading system, instead of changing it. If a teacher is going to fail a student, they need to show a solid reasoning behind the failure to back it up. Failing one test out of 30 is not a valid reason to give a kid an F for the entire semester (I've seen it). If the kid failed a number of tests, the teacher should be reaching out to the kid first privately, to find out what the deal is. If the kid isn't sharing or isn't playing along, then approach the parents. If that doesn't work, send them to a counselor. If that doesn't work, send them to the principal. If that doesn't work, give them an F.
If a particular teacher has a track record of higher failure rates than other teachers, the school needs to start investigating. Either the teacher is flawed, the curriculum is flawed or how that teacher is presenting the information is flawed. Or, as I mentioned above in number 8, the teacher is failing based on things that have nothing to do with the course. This process isn't happening, or wasn't when I was in school. There were teachers who would fail you for not liking the music they would play in class. That kind of stuff is why we're in this situation now, working around the issue instead of fixing it.
I have to disagree on improper association between test material and homework. When I see students do all the homework and fail the tests, it's usually students who just copied someone elses homework. I'll see the same wrong answers over and over on homework assignments. I tell the kids it does them no good to copy someone elses work but they do it anyway. Then come test time, they have no clue.
In my class, you can, easily, do all the homework and fail the class because of the tests. Homework is 15% of your grade. Tests, however, are 50%. The rest is labs and projects. So you need to pass the tests to pass the class.
Yes, a prof at Stanford told me something along those lines a few years ago. But I figure if you can get into Stanford, then grade-padding is probably moot.
Many students who enter into Stanford and other schools of an equal caliber often find themselves in an unique situation; these students, most of which graduated in the top 1 to 10 % of their class, enter into a school such as Stanford and realize that they are just another student. In high school they were at the top, one of the few who were the best. Now that they are among other top students they realize that they are just average, nothing special anymore. That is a heavy burden for students who are perfectionists, espescially if they are not prepared for the possibility that they might just, gasp, receive a C in one of their courses.
I agree that there is something to be said of those students who make it into these top tier schools, but what is there to be said once they get there and realize that they are just average in the grand scheme of the student population?
Quote:
Originally Posted by stan4
No, school should be harder, not easier. Kids have to be taught responsibility for the timeliness of their work. Responsibility for the correctness of their work. And the consequences for failing those responsibilities. These are habits and lessons that are learned early in life and stick with you for life.
I agree, fully.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stan4
Next time I do cpr on someone and they die, the patient isn't going to get an H stamped on them in heaven and then sent down for me to have a second go at them. It's ridiculous.
The point is, if I missed the deadline, I still had to do the work (not without penalty but I had to do it). If I didn't get the job right the first time, I got to do it again.
The point is, why did you miss the deadline? Yeah, you're still responsible, you should get yelled at, and your reward should be reduced accordingly.
Saying you act irresponsibly now as an adult in your work environment is no reason to excuse children from doing it and getting them to learn those habits.
I'm not saying drop it and walk away. I'm saying miss it, screw it up, etc, and suffer the consequences.
For a test, your grade is your grade. I am so very sorry that there are some extra-special people out there who can't get the test to truly reflect their knowledge, but changing the whole system to cater to them seems a bit extreme.
The point is, if I missed the deadline, I still had to do the work (not without penalty but I had to do it). If I didn't get the job right the first time, I got to do it again.
The point is, why did you miss the deadline? Yeah, you're still responsible, you should get yelled at, and your reward should be reduced accordingly.
Saying you act irresponsibly now as an adult in your work environment is no reason to excuse children from doing it and getting them to learn those habits.
I'm not saying drop it and walk away. I'm saying miss it, screw it up, etc, and suffer the consequences.
For a test, your grade is your grade. I am so very sorry that there are some extra-special people out there who can't get the test to truly reflect their knowledge, but changing the whole system to cater to them seems a bit extreme.
There are many reasons why I might, and have, missed deadlines. Sometimes, you can't control what happens. I have had more than one test that had to be repeated IRL and back in college. I remember doing labs that took a week only to have to do them over because something went wrong. I once grew a beautiful specimen of an aspirin crystal only I was being graded on my percent yield not the beauty of the crystal.
In my work life, missing deadlines usually meant something went wrong during testing or I simply had more to do than I could in the time I had. Then you prioritize and deal with the fall out. Sometimes, the issue was an unreasonable deadline on the part of the customer. Customers would deliver parts 3 months after their due date but we were still held to the product timeline. You do what you can and you deal with the fall out.
Fortunatly, real life doesn't grade you like teachers do. People don't keep running GPA. They only remember the last thing you did for them unless you make a habit of screwing up and if you make a habit of it, shame on you.
In theory, I disagree on retesting. If a student demonstrates mastery of the material, even if late, I'm going to pass them. I teach chemistry and physics not "on time". However, I find students abuse this. So I'm not really sure how to handle it. I believe in second chances but giving them seems to only make a lot of work for me and I suspect that some of my students don't take learning it the first time seriously because they know they're getting as second chance (actually mandated by my school so I have no choice but to retest). So there's theory and reality. In reality, I make my life easier if I just flunk them the first time but is this about making my life easier or students learning all they can?
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