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I'd dispute the statement that good grades are a useful measurement of ability to function in society. All grades really measure is students' abilities to get

by Jebdm 18y ago

I'd dispute the statement that good grades are a useful measurement of ability to function in society. All grades really measure is students' abilities to get good grades. There are lots of factors that can go into getting a good grade, especially in courses where the grading process is necessarily subjective: writing in a style which appeals to the grader, building a relationship with the grader, studying in an optimal way for taking exams, being dedicated to your studies, etc. Parts of this skillset are obviously useful in general. A person who is able to figure out how to appeal to their audience will do well in many fields. Some are more tricky; for instance, one might assume that someone who studies optimally for their exams will be able to figure how to perform other tasks optimally as well, but this is often not the case. One particularly misleading thing about grades is that they are often seen as an indicator of how dedicated/good of a worker students are. This might sometimes be the case; some students get good grades primarily because they work very hard. But some students get good grades without much effort, some only work hard because they have someone driving them (such as their parents), and some do well in an academic atmosphere but will burn out in a more job-oriented one. The biggest of these fallacies is that a student with low grades is a poor worker or bad in their subject; there are students who worked hard but just had a bad teacher, students who are overworked, students who prioritize certain classes over others, and students who are disenchanted with academic work but who will do well in a "real-world" atmosphere". As an anecdote: I go to a fairly alternative liberal arts school that is nonetheless highly ranked (not that rankings are good judges of schools, but here's the US News page: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/items/9645 http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/items/... ). My school accepts a fair number of students who in high school did not perform well academically. Many of these students pick up their grades while here; nearly all of these students are very smart and capable. The problem with grades is that they fail to provide any breakdown of the factors which contribute to them, which is the truly useful information. Even in the cases where a student got all A+'s or all F's, where it seems that the student is probably overall competent or incompetent respectively, there are still external motivations which are not taken into account but which are nonetheless vitally important. Another big problem with grades is that they fail to take into account differences between environments, school policies, and graders; that is, even when grading policies are objective, they differ from place to place but are compared nonetheless. Different graders grade differently; some may give A's to everyone who is qualified, while some may give them to only those who are most qualified. Some of these effects can be damped through normalization, but usefully normalizing grades seems difficult as well. Imagine trying to normalize grades between MIT and community college students. Additionally, the information required to do any significant statistical tricks is often not avaliable to those who could use it, and those who could use it would probably not take the time to even if they could. Finally, I feel like you completely missed the professor's point. (I'm assuming he believes arguments similar to mine.) Since grades don't provide signifcant metrics of anything, using them to judge people is both discriminatory and a bad idea. Thus, the responsible thing to do would be to get rid of them altogether (or at least reform them so that they actually measured something). But since he doesn't have the power to do that, he does the closest thing he can: give everyone the best grade possible. This has several positive effects: it lessens the potential future discrimination against his students; it, as you said, "compromis[es] that whole system", making more obvious how arbitrary it is and hopefully leads to its undoing; and it (he believes) makes students learn better. He hasn't ignored the second task at all.

TomOfTTB 18y ago
Honestly, though I know you are well meaning, I think you (and hte professor) missed the point. You (and he) could be completely right about grades. But It's not his place to do away with a system simply because he believes it to be ineffective. In fact, that mentality is nothing short of disasterous. To give an example, I live about 2 miles from my work. In that 2 miles there are 9 stop lights. They are timed so that you hit each one. This was done on purpose to prevent speeding. I feel that's ineffective (they're timed at 45mph meaning speeders can go 65 mph and get greens). But I don't run the lights. If he truely feels grades are ineffective he should lobby his industry and get things officially changed.
- Jebdm 18y ago
  You're comparing apples and oranges. In many cases, it really is a bad idea to circumvent the current system. But there are a couple of big differences between traffic lights and school grades. For one, traffic lights work. When people obey them, they (excepting a faulty light) don't get into wrecks. They may not be efficient, but they get the job done. School grades don't work. Because people make comparisons between things that aren't really comparable, a lot of people get jobs when perhaps they shouldn't or don't when they should. This is much more like a system where traffic lights are sometimes all green than ones which are timed in an annoying way. What's the right thing to do when traffic lights are malfunctioning this way? The first thing you should do, obviously, is call the authorities. But what if the authorities don't believe you? You tell them that the lights are all green, but they know their system works perfectly. This is further complicated in the case of grading, because there isn't one central authority. There are thousands of schools and employers who all work with this system; getting them all to switch is no mean feat. So let's instead imagine that every traffic light is independently owned and operated, and that while the traffic light operators feel like they are all working together, there are some subtle differences between their algorithms which obviously lead to screwups. Since the people who run the traffic lights aren't responding to you, what should you do? Obviously, for your own safety and the safety of those around you you should stop at every intersection regardless of the light color. And if you have the ability, it would probably be a good idea to climb up and cover up the lights yourself, so that others who come to the broken intersection don't get confused.

by Jebdm 18y ago

TomOfTTB 18y ago

Honestly, though I know you are well meaning, I think you (and hte professor) missed the point. You (and he) could be completely right about grades. But It's not his place to do away with a system simply because he believes it to be ineffective. In fact, that mentality is nothing short of disasterous. To give an example, I live about 2 miles from my work. In that 2 miles there are 9 stop lights. They are timed so that you hit each one. This was done on purpose to prevent speeding. I feel that's ineffective (they're timed at 45mph meaning speeders can go 65 mph and get greens). But I don't run the lights. If he truely feels grades are ineffective he should lobby his industry and get things officially changed.

Jebdm 18y ago
You're comparing apples and oranges. In many cases, it really is a bad idea to circumvent the current system. But there are a couple of big differences between traffic lights and school grades. For one, traffic lights work. When people obey them, they (excepting a faulty light) don't get into wrecks. They may not be efficient, but they get the job done. School grades don't work. Because people make comparisons between things that aren't really comparable, a lot of people get jobs when perhaps they shouldn't or don't when they should. This is much more like a system where traffic lights are sometimes all green than ones which are timed in an annoying way. What's the right thing to do when traffic lights are malfunctioning this way? The first thing you should do, obviously, is call the authorities. But what if the authorities don't believe you? You tell them that the lights are all green, but they know their system works perfectly. This is further complicated in the case of grading, because there isn't one central authority. There are thousands of schools and employers who all work with this system; getting them all to switch is no mean feat. So let's instead imagine that every traffic light is independently owned and operated, and that while the traffic light operators feel like they are all working together, there are some subtle differences between their algorithms which obviously lead to screwups. Since the people who run the traffic lights aren't responding to you, what should you do? Obviously, for your own safety and the safety of those around you you should stop at every intersection regardless of the light color. And if you have the ability, it would probably be a good idea to climb up and cover up the lights yourself, so that others who come to the broken intersection don't get confused.