Posted on 07/29/2020 4:57:55 AM PDT by karpov
I just finished a fascinating book, The Recovery of the West, by polymath Englishman Michael Roberts. Roberts became famous as a poet, but was trained as a scientist and spent much of his life as a teacher.
Brief history of grading
The book was published in 1941. A teacher in a typical English school at that time would be very familiar with individual differences in ability because grading practices were unforgiving. After every exam, pupils’ “marks” would typically be posted outside the classroom so that everyone could see just how good he or she was in relation to everybody else. The results of national high-stakes A-Level (college-entrance) examinations were posted publicly outside the University of London Senate house. No effort was made to hide the performance of individual students from public view. Indeed, making individual results public was regarded as a useful incentive to effort.
Grades were treated in much the same way in U.S. colleges in the 1960s: Results after each exam were posted with students’ names. But this practice began to run into difficulties because it made students, or at least those lower down in the grade list, unhappy.
The first step to meet this objection was to anonymize the grades by using students’ Social Security numbers. A student could still see how she was doing in relation to others, but not vice versa.
But of course, that was not satisfactory, partly because Social Security numbers, even without the name of the student, could pose a “security risk.” I’m not sure just what kind of risk, but the prospect of any risk at all, combined with the by-now almost universal aversion to ranking, was enough to stop any kind of public posting at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
There’s a reason Blacks are talking about equal outcome, and not equal opportunity anymore.
“Created equal” means that they are all endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
As Jordan Peterson has often pointed out, Equal Opportunity is basic fairness, and any decent society (and ours is a decent society) provides for Equal Opportunity. But Equal Outcomes is different. It goes against human nature. It goes against reality. The only way to get anything like Equal Outcome is to impose tyranny. And here we are.
All men are created equal......and then it goes downhill from there................
...All men are created equal......
And Women are more equal... /duck
We’re not equal opportunity anymore.
I have to compete against “diversity spend” when bidding on jobs. We’re into anti White male now.
Created equal is a truism and a falsism...equally.
Exactly..each of us was born and should have an equal opportunity to live, do well and then die happy. But life’s gifts of ability do not factor equally in the effort of living.
I have a very high IQ and while I did very well in college and graduate school in my areas of specialty and many others, I learned long ago it did not mean s..t when it came to how well I could console a person, address anybody’s or my spirituality, my ability to draw and paint freehand or make original music...and the list just goes on and on.
Whoever is contemplating “ability” really needs to know there are many areas and times, distinctly different from each other where, where a person may be brilliant or a dullard. It is up to us as individuals to “grow” or not.
And, I think, those areas and times may show up as one gets older and older.
Our constant evolution as a learning and understanding human are absolutely never ending. It is part of the joy of being human regardless of our skin color, geographic area where were born, or our parentage.
Yeah, a lot of people seem to think that phrase means every person is created equal to every other person in every facet. Which is ridiculous. If that was true, we would all be the same height, same build, same IQ, and have the exact same skills and abilities. I certainly wasn't created equal to Einstein in intellect or to Michael Jordan in basketball skill or to Brad Pitt in looks.
Tests are part of the teaching process
1. Teaching
2. Studying
3. Using Information (tests)
Grades are (also) used to stimulate/encourage engagement
As a school teacher, I can assure you that, for the most part, we don’t have grades anymore. At the elementary and high school levels we have universal-trophy awards, parent-appeasement certificates, student-whining commendations and, most important of all, the get-the-school-administration-off-my-back-so-I-can-make-a-living meritorious citation. At the post-secondary level, in addition to these there are the I’m-striving-for-tenure evaluation, the we-need-to-show-our-students-achieve assessment, and the there’s-really-nothing-I-can-say-about-this-dolt appraisal, this last one given out at an ever-increasing scale to would-be academics and future “peaceful protesters”.
I demand to be a star basketball player along with equality in pay. It’s only fair whether I can play basketball or not.
Some more information about Pass/Fail: Pass/Fail was offered as an option at some colleges this year, due to Covid 19. With this option, “pass” required a “C” or higher. Students with grades “D” or lower failed, but their failed class was dropped from their transcripts as if they never took it. Grades “C” or higher were recorded as “Pass” but not counted in a student’s GPA.
We had a student a few years ago who had above a 4.0 (go figure). She then took the ASVAB twice and got a 4 and a 6. Her related IQ score was clearly less than 85. If you score below 15 on the ASVAB, you are considered legally mentally retarded and unfit for duty. Clearly grades mean something.
Admin ask us all the time if we want to go to the 50% grade scale - where a 0 is a 50% so that the kids who don’t do their work don’t have to “feel bad” or worry about the ability to catch up. Barf.
The most destructive part of our declaration is the lie “all men are created equal”.
It ends up setting unachievable expectations such as this article points out.
Rutgers just declared that grammar is racist.
“Created equal” means that they are all endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”
I would have preferred leaving the lie “created equal” out of it.
Simply say all men are endowed by god with certain inaliable attributes such as life, liberty and the desire to pursue their happiness. I wouldn’t even use the word “right” which has no easily understood meaning.
“Created equal” is obviously not true and it sets up expectation impossible to fulfill and inevitably leads to all the egalitarian crap that we’re seeing shoved down our throat today.
‘I would have preferred leaving the lie “created equal” out of it.’
Yeah, I’m sure the Left would have seized on something else to subvert our culture, but that phrase made it terribly easy on them. The Founders knew what they meant. They did not know about the twisting word games that were to come. In their day, if you went too far, it was pistols at dawn.
“I’m sure the Left would have seized on something else to subvert our culture, but that phrase made it terribly easy on them.”
It definitely gives the left cover for their agenda, but whether it was there or not, the left’s congenital attraction to equality would remain.
It is their lode star. I truly believe it is a genetic trait or should I say defect. They’re physically tormented at the sight of inequalities. To them fairness is synonymous with equality, not with the idea that fairness is being proportionately rewarded for the effort you put in.
To them rewards should have nothing to do with effort.
They have what Tocqueville called “a depraved taste for equality”.
“There is a passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level [Class Warfare], and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”
My only quibble with Tocqueville is that it isn’t the weak or the poor that have this depraved taste for equality but reasonably well to do, and relatively few in number, elites that have this congenital guilt at seeing inequality. And they agitate the poor by picking at the scab of envy that afflicts most of us and rile them up into protest and riots. Most poor people understand why they’re poor. They realize that they may not be as capable or talented as those that are better off, or if they do have the abilities but fate has them starting at a lower rung on the ladder, know that if they strive they can improve their lot.
Besides picking at the scab of the poor, they also have another powerful weapon to subdue the rest of us - guilting. They will turn the poor into victims and us the oppressors and guilt the rest of us into accepting their agenda of endless redistribution, appeasement and self flagellation.
All this to relieve their own sense of guilt,which of course will never happen because things will never be equal enough.
If you do not know what this sentence means then you need to spend a evening with a dictionary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.