In bionet.women-in-bio S L Forsburg <forsburg at nospamsalk.edu> wrote:
: >If test scores are made that important, students will stop helping
: >their peers, because now it's a competition.
: Only if you grade on a curve! ;-) If you grade on an
: absolute scale, rather than a curve, then students are only competing
: "against the clock", not against each other. 95% is an A for everyone
I guess my age is showing...I've never personally experienced a
grading curve (and it would have been a blessing in P-chem) nor
have I ever used other than an absolute grading scale. With the
exception of a few utterly spectacular sections, one still gets
a nice bell without resorting to a curve. Mind you, if I see
the bell nudge over a standard deviation away from what I ajudge
to be 'average' comprehension, I deem it to be something wrong with
presentation rather than learning ability.
Marks grade instrutors too, you know. If an entire class is failing
then that instructor isn't very effective. And the Powers-That-Be,
in schools that care, *are* watching for high failure rates because
it helps them weed out inept instructors. (Mind you, these tend to be
smaller, private schools as opposed to the big, public ones.)
Something that has always amazed me is that so often one hears
about how the student suffers at the hands of a supervisor, yet
rarely does anyone stop to consider the pressure said supervisor
may be dealing with from above themself. Even those Brilliant
Arseholes that everyone complains about are under enormous pressure
to produce results...and funding bodies have a knack of *expecting*
miracles after they've beheld one.
The scientific community is a competitive, high-pressure, frequently
fast-paced arena. So it the financial community. I expect *any*
discipline where the stakes are high is as well. This is the
beauty of the system...those that are naturally competitive have
an advantage, those that are passionate and resolved, hang in. Those
that can't compete probably don't belong...they'll be miserable and
unfulfilled, ultimately they'll leave. If a few ideas are lost in
the process, well, that's the price paid...eventually someone else
will hit on the same idea, particularly in a competitive field.
While I'm sympathetic to those who find this process onerous, it
still does nothing to convince me that the bar of competition/
confrontation should be lowered. Pursuing a career in science
is *hard*...it always has been, it *should* be. There will always
be those whose reality is ill-suited to their dreams...those
whose dreams were formed at the behest of parents...those who
simply do *not* belong in the scientific arena, it is the instructor's
job to allow those people to realise this. And I concede, it's
an absolute bitch of a realisation, but a necessary one.
The ones who ultimately succeed are those who can set aside
their personal feelings of self-esteem, etc. in order to pursue
scientific fact. Those who know that while validation from
without is nice, determination from within is what really counts.
Scientific progress is built on the backs of the stayers...and
it's a very simple truth that not everyone who wants to be one,
can be.
Deirdre
--
| Deirdre Sholto-Douglas | e-mail: finch at mcs.com |
| | |
******* The only acceptable substitute for intelligence *******
is silence.
