[lit-ideas] Re: Grade inflation
- From: "Torgeir Fjeld" <torgfje2@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 02:39:33 +0100
Hello Judith
On 9 Apr 2004 at 22:57, Judith Evans wrote:
> The problem with your argument, Torgeir, is that you're making it to people
> who do the teaching and marking, and albeit they cannot compare their
> students with all students, can compare one group of students with another.
"Problem", I don't know. But, yes, I identify as teacher in this context. And
your point is well put, which is precisely my point.
Educators are certified to educate, inclusive of assessing students. We're the
pros.
-tor
> -----Original Message-----
> On 9 Apr 2004 at 10:19, Steven G. Cameron wrote:
>
> > Do any of you have additional insight(s) into this??
> >
> > Aiming to halt widespread grade inflation afflicting Ivy League
> > colleges, Princeton University officials are proposing to limit the
> > number of A's that its professors award.
>
> Well, insights, I don't know. But the sentiment is well known from multiple
> educational sites (Minnesota, kwaZulu/Natal and Norway). As a
> version of Moral Panic, it's basically the old Monty Python joke of "kids of
> today don't know how easy they have it. We had it rough." And
> since it's usually, as in this story, based on a numerical sort of argument,
> I find it most efficient to counter it ditto. It goes
> something like this:
>
> Even if it was the case that each birth cohort could be predicted in terms
> of their distribution according to a scale of, say,
> "intelligence", it would still remain impossible to predict the exact
> location of each distributed element. Perhaps ALL the A students of
> one particular cohort went to the University of Minnesota? Then we would
> surely agree that it would be wrong to apply this kind of doctrine
> STRICTLY. It can't be applied on a class level, and clearly even university
> level would be too small. Would a national level apply?
>
> It has been pointed out previously on this list that when it is applied to
> such a large social group, forms of instruction vary to the
> extent that it would be meaningless to test for the same things across the
> population. And then we're left with the general abstracts,
> "intelligence" and "population". Perhaps it would also be helpful to remind
> those who are not themselves assigning marks that these kinds
> of evaluations are spurious and huge simplications of massively complex
> matters. If only the world could be reduced to analytical
> categories...
--
Torgeir Fjeld
torgfje2@xxxxxxxxxx
http://home.no.net/torgfje/
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