Thursday, December 09, 2004

Grading system gets an F

Oregon University of Oregon (article)

stupid says what?

"Although teachers cannot be responsible for the self-failings of their students, it still seems unfair that they are allowed to judge how much a particular student is learning. I pay the teacher to teach me, and then I get slapped with the label of failure if the teacher deems that I haven't learned the correct information?"

for more read the article. It's is prob. the least thought out campus newspaper article i have ever seen.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have several interesting points from that article. First there is a college in Oregon that does not use a grading system (Reed College). It is a fairly elite college and the system works fairly well for them. Also Hampshire College has a no-grade system. Instead of a transcript they get a portfolio of their projects and papers with detailed written critiques of their work. This is obviously not practical on a large scale, but it is not just some whacked out theory although I agree that her article is poorly written.
On a different note, one of her main reasons for thinking that students shouldn't be graded was the stress factor. She said something like anyone who thinks students learn under stress is crazy. In fact, you do learn more under stress. The release of corticosterone a stress induced hormone promotes both learning and memory of events (at least in animals and likely in humans as well).