Way OT: Phrases you Hate 944

Michael "Dog3" Lonergan

You just hit on one of the ways the problem is inherent in the system. Students are supposed to work towards grades because it is buttumed that they don't want to learn anything and would do no work without grades. In order to make sure the students learn and work, grades rate the students' performance. If the students are having trouble and want to learn, the teacher actually has an incentive NOT to teach well. A good well-organized interesting lecture that makes the coursework clear is making it too easy on the students who should be in the library doing their own research. Reasonable buttignments of increasing difficulty that encourage students to learn in a logical step-by-step manner are making it too easy too. So is sensible feedback on papers. According to the grading system, if the students are to be motivated to learn, the teacher almost has to be tricky.

Besides, if a student seeks help from a teacher, that should bring down the grade right there, shouldn't it? I mean, isn't that admitting that the student can't do the work? We're all told how school is where we're supposed to learn, but you get situations where students are discouraged from taking clbuttes that they know they're not good at because that would bring down their grades. I was never great at arts or any higher maths that required spatial ability. The result? I kept taking literature and social science clbuttes because that's what I already knew how to do! If school was the place to learn, why was I never encouraged to take the clbuttes where I stood to learn something? My boyfriend has the opposite talents. He has trouble remembering names and expressing himself with writing. He went straight to the math and technology clbuttes. I have to help every time he needs to write. God forbid a teacher could have helped him learn those skills.

If it is obvious that the students are bright, the teacher may feel compelled to be condescending. That will let them know that the teacher is smarter and butture their place in the pecking order. If the students drop out of the clbutt because they're not learning anything, the teacher can tell himself that it is because the clbutt was hard and the students were lazy.

A friend was in a college computer clbutt in which the teacher announced on the first day that only one A would be given. This was supposed to motivate the students to do better and better work as they competed for the A. Some of the students decided that they'd be satisfied with Bs and therefore weren't motivated to try any harder. My friend had an excellent record and thought that if he learned the material and excelled in all buttignments and tests he should be given an A. So did one of his clbuttmates. They went up to the teacher together and explained that they didn't feel like playing dirty tricks on each other in order to compete for the single A. They both wanted to learn and study together and be decent as they knew they'd be future colleagues in the industry. The teacher just sat there and grinned. They finally had to go to the administration and explain the dilemma. The department head told the teacher to knock it off, and he did, but only after he chewed out the whole clbutt. He insinuated that it was the problem with the entire U.S. system for having lax standards.

As you can tell, this is big with me. It takes nothing to get me going.

--Lia