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Get this: Most people are not hypersmart creative individuals. They are normal people who need to learn some basic material about the world that they likely wil

Get this: Most people are not hypersmart creative individuals. They are normal people who need to learn some basic material about the world that they likely will never use because they don't care. The grading system caters to them, and it's a pretty good indicator of which of those people is going to be able to successfully do a standard job placed in front of him. School was made for average people, if you are so much above the average, then you can surely figure out a way to be the best in a system that is so much below you. If you failed a test designed for average people, then by that criteria, you are below average. People that are very much above average do not need the grades, because they will have a lot to show for themselves anyways. People who are average need the grades, because they need a way of showing their ability to do work in comparison to their peers. So the logic of the writer is fundamentally flawed, because assuming he is indeed above average, he cannot use the failure of the system on him to mean that the system fails for the average person.

tokenadult 17y ago
If you failed a test designed for average people, then by that criteria, you are below average. There are numerous counterexamples to this in the gifted education literature. If a teacher writes a test without fact-checking the approved answers, it is possible for a child who has a better grasp of the facts than the teacher to get a bad score on the test, while a child who parrots the teacher's mistaken view of the facts gets a good score. The system actually lets down all learners, above-average, average, and below-average, but that's not only in the form of lousy grading standards. For detailed references to this, see the books http://books.google.com/books?id=EjkKBotJcyIC&dq=Knowing+and+Teaching+Elementary+Mathematics&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=ZDx8S837BY7MMqKWsNMH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CC8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=EjkKBotJcyIC&dq=Knowing... and http://books.google.com/books?id=7ncMKDdCd84C&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Teaching+Gap&ei=lDx8S6ONNoKOMtvC3KgH&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=7ncMKDdCd84C&printsec=f... and the articles http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99/wu.pdf http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99... and http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf and http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2009/wu.pdf http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues... There are more articles on similar subjects showing that much school improvement is necessary. P.S. It may be you are not a native speaker of English, or you are a native speaker of English like me who types rapidly under conditions of distraction. I just wanted to point out, in a way that I hope will be friendly, that "criteria" is the plural of "criterion," so one can write of "that criterion" (singular) or "those criteria" (plural) as occasion demands.
- maxklein 17y ago
  Criteria as a singular is in common usage, and common usage is good enough for me, a commoner.

tokenadult 17y ago

If you failed a test designed for average people, then by that criteria, you are below average. There are numerous counterexamples to this in the gifted education literature. If a teacher writes a test without fact-checking the approved answers, it is possible for a child who has a better grasp of the facts than the teacher to get a bad score on the test, while a child who parrots the teacher's mistaken view of the facts gets a good score. The system actually lets down all learners, above-average, average, and below-average, but that's not only in the form of lousy grading standards. For detailed references to this, see the books http://books.google.com/books?id=EjkKBotJcyIC&dq=Knowing+and+Teaching+Elementary+Mathematics&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=ZDx8S837BY7MMqKWsNMH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CC8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=EjkKBotJcyIC&dq=Knowing... and http://books.google.com/books?id=7ncMKDdCd84C&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Teaching+Gap&ei=lDx8S6ONNoKOMtvC3KgH&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=7ncMKDdCd84C&printsec=f... and the articles http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99/wu.pdf http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99... and http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf and http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2009/wu.pdf http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues... There are more articles on similar subjects showing that much school improvement is necessary. P.S. It may be you are not a native speaker of English, or you are a native speaker of English like me who types rapidly under conditions of distraction. I just wanted to point out, in a way that I hope will be friendly, that "criteria" is the plural of "criterion," so one can write of "that criterion" (singular) or "those criteria" (plural) as occasion demands.

maxklein 17y ago
Criteria as a singular is in common usage, and common usage is good enough for me, a commoner.