Re: Schools: Bottom 10 percent -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1], 2 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 12:45:14 03/24/08 Mon
Author: Cs Holden
Subject: Re: Schools: Bottom 10 percent
In reply to: Katelyn R. 's message, "Bottom 10 percent" on 13:28:57 03/21/08 Fri

Just had another thought: Some professors grade on a curve, mainly because their classes are extremely difficult for some students and extremely easy for others. The idea is to find out how the average student did on the assignment based on how the best students did. Grades are raised in proportion with students' aptitude, or so goes the thought, so that the student with the best imperfect score gets a perfect score, and pulls everyone else's grades up with them.

But this good student, just like an excellent worker, is a pharmakon, liable to become a scapegoat. In many of these classes, as a big assignment approaches, the students may joke among themselves, "Why don't we all just agree to fail? That way we all get curved the same amount and we all get good grades." Inevitably, though, they discard the idea when someone reminds them that "So-and-So will probably do their best anyway, and then we're all screwed." The group wants to do something as a whole, but the one stands in their way.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]