5 ms·

I predict that in ten years, we'll be astonished that we let the reign of a completely inane grading system continue so long. The letters A-F, printed on a shee

I predict that in ten years, we'll be astonished that we let the reign of a completely inane grading system continue so long. The letters A-F, printed on a sheet of paper? Disk is cheap. Processing is cheap. There's no reason to artificially restrict a person's educational data to such an incredibly limited, arbitrary schema. The problems described here - grade inflation, subjectivity, etc. - would be alleviated with more grades, not less.

run4yourlives 18y ago
The problem is that humans have an innate desire - need even - to classify and quantify nearly everything. We want to know simply: What are the best cars? Who are the prettiest? What grades are good and what are bad? It's the reason you get a web full of top 10 lists. Quick and easy evaluations of often subjective and arbitrary data. We simply can't process the amount of information it takes to evaluate whether a child is doing well in school beyond said child being an absolute genius, a dismal failure or "somewhere in between". So long as parents demand that they know whereabout in the "somewhere in between" spectrum their child stands, we'll have abstract and near useless grading mechanisms.
- hugh 18y ago
  The problem is that the leter-grade system doesn't give this information. "A" could mean you're a super-genius, or a plain old genius, or a reasonably good student, or a so-so student at a place with severe grade inflation. At my school (in Australia) we didn't have letter grades, we had a mark out of (say) one hundred combined with an indication of your ranking within the class. Bold, stark information which told you in no uncertain terms exactly how many people in your class or year were better than you. No doubt it was ego-destroying if you got "150/150", but pretty motivating if you got "11/150", and suitably rewarding if you got "1/150". This wasn't continued through to the university level, but at least we still got a nice high-resolution mark on a 0-100 scale for each course. And the grades weren't too inflated, so any mark over 90 was a real achievement even for the top students. Getting 100 for any course was unheard of (not quite true, I did hear of somebody getting one once.) I work at a university in the US now, and I'm really confused about why they still use such a low-resolution system for grading students.
  - run4yourlives 18y ago
    The letter grade system is basically this: A - 80-100 B - 70-80 C - 60-70 D - 50-60 F - Less than 50% In terms of rebuttal, what scott_s said.
    - jacktasia 18y ago
      In the U.S.? I have always seen closer to this: A 100-90 B 89-80 C 79-70 D 69-60 F 59-0
      - run4yourlives 18y ago
        Yeah, there are different versions... and I could be wrong. I gave the high school one since it's what I could remember off hand. Getting a "D" was just as bad as failing though.
        PieSquared 18y ago
        In some places, sadly, getting a low B is considered 'failing'... In most of my classes, at least. But I suppose the pressure gets you to work more quickly and efficiently.
        scott_s 18y ago
        Getting a B in grad school is basically failing.
        robg 18y ago
        In grad school, we were specifically told not to get too many A's and to focus on publications. If some industrious type got mostly (or all) A's the next question from their committee was: Why aren't you working on publishing? C's though were failing. Still, you had to try really hard to fail. The B's were inflated. The difference is probably domains - a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience doesn't prepare you for much else than doing science. There, judgment for a tenure-track job begins and ends with publications. And no one will want to see grades and no CV ever includes them.

run4yourlives 18y ago

The problem is that humans have an innate desire - need even - to classify and quantify nearly everything. We want to know simply: What are the best cars? Who are the prettiest? What grades are good and what are bad? It's the reason you get a web full of top 10 lists. Quick and easy evaluations of often subjective and arbitrary data. We simply can't process the amount of information it takes to evaluate whether a child is doing well in school beyond said child being an absolute genius, a dismal failure or "somewhere in between". So long as parents demand that they know whereabout in the "somewhere in between" spectrum their child stands, we'll have abstract and near useless grading mechanisms.

hugh 18y ago
The problem is that the leter-grade system doesn't give this information. "A" could mean you're a super-genius, or a plain old genius, or a reasonably good student, or a so-so student at a place with severe grade inflation. At my school (in Australia) we didn't have letter grades, we had a mark out of (say) one hundred combined with an indication of your ranking within the class. Bold, stark information which told you in no uncertain terms exactly how many people in your class or year were better than you. No doubt it was ego-destroying if you got "150/150", but pretty motivating if you got "11/150", and suitably rewarding if you got "1/150". This wasn't continued through to the university level, but at least we still got a nice high-resolution mark on a 0-100 scale for each course. And the grades weren't too inflated, so any mark over 90 was a real achievement even for the top students. Getting 100 for any course was unheard of (not quite true, I did hear of somebody getting one once.) I work at a university in the US now, and I'm really confused about why they still use such a low-resolution system for grading students.
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  The letter grade system is basically this: A - 80-100 B - 70-80 C - 60-70 D - 50-60 F - Less than 50% In terms of rebuttal, what scott_s said.
  - jacktasia 18y ago
    In the U.S.? I have always seen closer to this: A 100-90 B 89-80 C 79-70 D 69-60 F 59-0
    - run4yourlives 18y ago
      Yeah, there are different versions... and I could be wrong. I gave the high school one since it's what I could remember off hand. Getting a "D" was just as bad as failing though.
      - PieSquared 18y ago
        In some places, sadly, getting a low B is considered 'failing'... In most of my classes, at least. But I suppose the pressure gets you to work more quickly and efficiently.
        scott_s 18y ago
        Getting a B in grad school is basically failing.
        robg 18y ago
        In grad school, we were specifically told not to get too many A's and to focus on publications. If some industrious type got mostly (or all) A's the next question from their committee was: Why aren't you working on publishing? C's though were failing. Still, you had to try really hard to fail. The B's were inflated. The difference is probably domains - a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience doesn't prepare you for much else than doing science. There, judgment for a tenure-track job begins and ends with publications. And no one will want to see grades and no CV ever includes them.