As a college dropout, mostly because I couldn’t abide paying tuition to a university whose professor made me draw and color maps of Europe, I appreciate this point of view. I also didn’t like being referred to as the devil in my Black Studies class. Or having my psyche destroyed in Acting so it could be remade by a maniac. All those “graduates” however got job interviews in the recession because they have the piece of paper I lack. It’s okay. I did fine ignoring academia, but not everyone can.
No, changing to pass vs fail would just result in everyone getting a pass.
The solution is rank grading. That is how it works in the real world after the little darlings leave the mommy environment of education and have to work. They have to compete not on some defined performance measure, but against their peers.
Working in a unionized steel mill when I was 18, I was surrounded by older coworkers that threatened me to slow my work so the bosses did not start expecting more from them. That is the collectivism sickness. There is a saying in Russia that the workers pretend to work and the bosses pretend to pay them.
But in our democratic capitalist society the spoils go to those with demonstrated productive skills in competition with everyone else's demonstrated productive skills.
Just like in athletics, the goal of the coach is to advance both individual and team demonstrated productive skills. The same should be for academics. Students should compete with each other for ranking, but that competition should include their performance working with other students to the benefit of the team (classroom). And the teacher will be required to rank all the students from one to the bottom number of students in the classroom.
That force-ranking requirement will fix grade inflation.
Hey, I know this is not on topic, but I hit the link to read Yascha's Modest Proposal (to abolish grades) and I couldn't comment. I assumed that if I was a paying member of Yascha's Persuasion, that I would also have privileges on his other site. Maybe I should drop this one and sign up for the other one? Anyone here paying for both?
Hi - in addition to getting a paid subscription to Persuasion, you need to opt in to receiving Yascha's content in your Substack account settings. Once people opt in it takes a few days to take effect. But I've bypassed this for you and unlocked the paid features on Yascha's site, so they should be accessible for you immediately.
Thank you! I'm not very good with all this stuff; your explanation is a bit over my head, but I see that it's working! You have the sincere thanks of this technophobic Boomer.
As a college dropout, mostly because I couldn’t abide paying tuition to a university whose professor made me draw and color maps of Europe, I appreciate this point of view. I also didn’t like being referred to as the devil in my Black Studies class. Or having my psyche destroyed in Acting so it could be remade by a maniac. All those “graduates” however got job interviews in the recession because they have the piece of paper I lack. It’s okay. I did fine ignoring academia, but not everyone can.
No, changing to pass vs fail would just result in everyone getting a pass.
The solution is rank grading. That is how it works in the real world after the little darlings leave the mommy environment of education and have to work. They have to compete not on some defined performance measure, but against their peers.
Working in a unionized steel mill when I was 18, I was surrounded by older coworkers that threatened me to slow my work so the bosses did not start expecting more from them. That is the collectivism sickness. There is a saying in Russia that the workers pretend to work and the bosses pretend to pay them.
But in our democratic capitalist society the spoils go to those with demonstrated productive skills in competition with everyone else's demonstrated productive skills.
Just like in athletics, the goal of the coach is to advance both individual and team demonstrated productive skills. The same should be for academics. Students should compete with each other for ranking, but that competition should include their performance working with other students to the benefit of the team (classroom). And the teacher will be required to rank all the students from one to the bottom number of students in the classroom.
That force-ranking requirement will fix grade inflation.
Hey, I know this is not on topic, but I hit the link to read Yascha's Modest Proposal (to abolish grades) and I couldn't comment. I assumed that if I was a paying member of Yascha's Persuasion, that I would also have privileges on his other site. Maybe I should drop this one and sign up for the other one? Anyone here paying for both?
Hi - in addition to getting a paid subscription to Persuasion, you need to opt in to receiving Yascha's content in your Substack account settings. Once people opt in it takes a few days to take effect. But I've bypassed this for you and unlocked the paid features on Yascha's site, so they should be accessible for you immediately.
Thank you! I'm not very good with all this stuff; your explanation is a bit over my head, but I see that it's working! You have the sincere thanks of this technophobic Boomer.