On schools, grades, and your precious little snowflake

So, unless you don't have school-aged children, or don't have friends who have school-aged children, you wouldn't know about the increasing terror in the public education system about... da-da-da-DUM!!!

Letter Grades!!!!

Oooohh! I know - so scary. And yet, apparently, according to more and more school districts, letter grades are a horrible thing for our children to have to deal with...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518101,00.html

According to many school psychiatrists now, your precious little snowflake can't handle the pressures of school and the possibility of a failing grade, so they've change how they're handling things, to allow for all children to be able to do as little as possible and still get passed through.

How? Well, changing over from letter grades to P for "pass" or H for "held" (where basically, they get a do-over without being penalized for it) is apparently a start. "Administrators and teachers say the policies provide hope for underperforming students".

Oh puh-leeze!

Let's clear up a few things here about this whole grading process, shall we?

When I went to school (and no, I didn't have to walk both ways uphill, in the snow, barefooted), we were expected to do homework and turn it in on time. We were expected to study, to show up on time, to be respectful of both our fellow students and our teachers, and we took our exams. Even if we didn't PASS the exam, the overall work that we did in class, as well as our homework, showed whether we were competant with the material that was being doled out to us.

We may not have performed well on tests, but if we did everything else in class, we'd still pass the class with a C or better. And normally, the teacher would notice that we didn't do well on tests, and try to either work with us for different ways to try taking the test, or suggest ways to study better for them...

We were NOT told "Gee, it's too bad that you can't seem to pass the test, so we're going to simply put you on a hold for this class, and you'll get to open-book the test so you will pass it... And I'll even read you the answers so you'll get them right..."

We were NOT told "Oh, poor thing... I'm so sorry that you don't get enough time with your friends because you had to do your homework tonight - so we'll let it slide this semester, since we know that a letter grade doesn't reflect YOU as a person... Instead, you can write a short essay on how you feel now that you don't have any pressure placed on you."

And we CERTAINLY were NOT told "Oh! I'm so sorry that you feel like you're a failure because you've refused to do the work that was expected of you and you're falling behind... here - how about if I have the teacher fill out the answers for you, and you can sign your name at the top! Won't that make you feel better?!"


And we wonder why it is, we now have so many people who are disinterested in working, feel resentment at their bosses for expecting them to put in a full day's work for a full day's pay, and it's more and more difficult to get quality work out of new employees...

Hmmm... Maybe your precious little snowflake could have used a paddling...

~M