Comments on disequilibrium: On grading in a world less ordinal

I wasn't a good student and at school in London I ...

2007-11-12T13:35:00.000-06:00

I wasn't a good student and at school in London I "achieved" the following results in my O-Levels:

Latin.....U
French....D
Spanish...U
History....D

Reading my grades from top to bottom felt like a message from god.

Serendipitously, I had a similar conversation with...

2007-11-02T08:12:00.000-05:00

Serendipitously, I had a similar conversation with a student yesterday who asked me what I, as an education professor, thought of the term "fail." Did I think it sent the right message to students? Did I think it was as effective as other types of feedback.

I gave him four minutes on the uselessness of grades, two minutes on the far superior model of developmental narratives used in Montessori classrooms, and then about nine seconds on how, at the end of the day, I really couldn't empathize because I'd never gotten an F on anything and so I was really just guessing at how it might feel for the student in that position.

"It sucks a lot." He said.

I wonder if he would have been consoled by an X.

I think the grade thing is all part of the PC cult...

2007-10-30T16:58:00.000-05:00

I think the grade thing is all part of the PC culture and not stating the obvious. Where I come from grades are still given in a scale from 1 to 10 (or 100, depending on the school). You get everything right, you get a 10 (or 100), and it goes down from there. Sure, sometimes there are curves and all, but your effort is all numerically recorded... no "subjective" grading...

As for Starbucks and its sizes, I think it is just part of the whole "trying to be cool by using foreign words" that seems completely retarded. Whatever happened to the good old "Big, Medium, Small"? They should have Grande and Chico, but anyway... if they are going to use those words, they should at least learn to pronounce them properly...

As for the blender... I do like that my blender has a thousand buttons for different things :)

When I was in college - in the 70s - we had an 'al...

2007-10-30T13:21:00.000-05:00

When I was in college - in the 70s - we had an 'alternative' grading system of High Honors, Honors, Pass, and Fail. There were no GPAs and no class rankings. Of course, when you applied to a graduate program or interviewed for a job in the real world, the grad school or prospective employer immediately converted the grades to A, B, C, and F and assigned numerical values (4.0, 3.0, 2.0, and 0) as one would expect. right after I graduated the college voted in a traditional grading system.
Witnessing us going in reverse here at Owen is indicative of the times. We are taking a simple-to-understand, universal system and replacing it with an alien, muddy substitute that inevitably causes some initial confusion and makes it just a bit more challenging to deal with us. That is known as 'Progress' - change for change's sake.

Grades for your rant:Point of rant: White oakWriti...

2007-10-30T13:02:00.001-05:00

Grades for your rant:

Point of rant: White oak
Writing: Eucalyptus

And two smiley faces.