Here, there is widespread agreement that it is better to have most of your students understand fewer topics, than to have most of your students not understand many topics.
Does this mean that it is not possible for students to have a shallow understanding of a topic in mathematics. In philosophy you find courses that offer a deep understanding of a few topics or a shallow understanding of many topics, and no real consensus as to which is better in what circumstances.
It sounds like in math a shallow understanding is as good as no understanding.
Although it's not usually phrased so starkly, I think most math instructors do believe that a shallow understanding is worthless.
Or at least, the right instructors do.
I suppose if I had to come up with a valid meaning of a shallow understanding in math, it would apply to a student who fully understood easy problems, and then got bogged down and lost in the harder problems. And of course there's no consensus as to what constitutes 'easy' or 'hard' problems. So maybe there's a place for this to be equally unresolved in math, where watering down a course means giving easier test questions on the same material.
As I recollect, grade inflation started around the time of the Vietnam war, and didn't coincide with a change in pedagogy so much as political atmosphere and the need to keep deferments.
More recently, at least in my neck of the woods (teaching History) there haven't been any big steps forward that could explain grade inflation. I suppose it's possible that this generation of students is just smarter or better educated than their parents and their grades are going up because they're being measured against the same, stable standard. But I doubt it. The mean and median grades have gone up because the "gentleman's C" is now the "gentleman's B+."
This site has a lot of good data (more than when I last linked it here).
Clearly, if I teach three topics well, then my class will have more As than a class where they teach five topics poorly. So it's possible that those two original complaints arise from professors attempting to do a better job teaching.
I don't think that follows. If you cared about preventing grade inflation (and you may not) you could teach a class with three topics in such a way that proficiency with all three would earn a B and an A would require demonstrating some expertise beyond basic proficiency (and, in an alternate world in which this also described students expectations of grading their wouldn't be any reason for students to be unhappy with that).
6: Among the interesting trends are a huge boost in the late '60s/early 70s, flattening for about a decade and then a slower, steady rise since the mid 80s. Also a split with private schools accelerating faster than publics. Potential support for both the Vietnam era and students (and parents) as consumers ideas.
Mentions that currently a good model is Avg. GPA = 2.8 + Rejection Percentage /200 + (if the school is private add 0.2).
Maybe the Vietnam war just made everyone want to be a better teacher.
Maybe the Vietnam war just made everyone want to be a better teacher so badly that they convinced themselves they were by subconsciously giving better grades.
What's the argument that one should care about grade inflation? I don't have the sense that grades matter much in the "real" world. Employers aren't actually looking to see whether one got a B or an A- in their Soc class, are they?
(There was a widespread consensus among undergrads at Chicago that grading there was much tougher than at other places, but I was never convinced.)
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What's the argument that one should care about grade inflation? I don't have the sense that grades matter much in the "real" world. Employers aren't actually looking to see whether one got a B or an A- in their Soc class, are they?
Probably not specific courses but I think some look at class rank or gpa. And if you are going to give grades at all it seems sensible to maximize the information content.
I've heard the Vietnam explanation before, but I wonder how much grade inflation pressure is caused by the explosion in tuition.
13, both make sense. If your students have gone into life-destroying levels of debt to take your class, you don't want to ruin their lives by making them fail. And you don't want to end their lives in the Mekong delta by making them fail, either. And you have that power.
Yeah, the student/parents as customers (always right!) with a choice model makes sense to me for the steady climb from 1980s on.
There's also the argument that students work harder now than in the past, and are more motivated by academic success. I suspect [from teaching experience] that's rampant bullshit at university level, but I could easily buy it at high school level.
In the UK, at least, tertiary education has become much more important and good high school grades vastly more desirable, so I could easily believe [and friends with high school age kids seem to bear this out] that they just work a fuck of a lot harder at getting good grades than we once did. I was a lazy shit. I got what were good grades by late 80s standards but pretty shitty grades by contemporary university entry standards. I'm pretty sure I also worked a damn sight less than the average contemporary 17 year old geared towards university entry.
Loosely related, but classic Unfogged discussion fodder written by a despicable law professor:
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
Why, Robert, why? Couldn't you have linked to a picture of puppies instead? Especially while I'm watching my beloved Eagles get eliminated from the playoffs.
Wow. That is some amazing trollery.
So now we know the answer; grade inflation tracks with increased Asian-American enrollment in colleges.
It's definitional, since Chinese kids never get Bs. It's not allowed. That's just how Chinese parents are.
I mean, is the race essentializing more horrible than the actual treatment of the children? Or is it the horrible treatment of the children combined with writing an article and forthcoming book about same? Hard to tell!
I've heard Canadians brag about not having grade inflation.
Canada doesn't have grade inflation because all students are graded in ounces of gold.
I read one of her other books and thought it was kinda interesting. (World on Fire.) But that's batshit crazy. Maybs she's decided that books on globalisation don't sell as well as crazified parenting?
Just for fun, replace "Chinese" with "White" and "Western" with "Black" in that essay.
Keir, what strikes you as batshit crazy is just the Chinese way of telling your children that they're garbage who need to get straight As because that's what they owe you.
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... But that's batshit crazy ...
Yeah, everybody knows Chinese kids do well academically because of their genes. Oh wait you guys don't like that explanantion either.
Keir, what strikes you as batshit crazy is just the Chinese way of telling your children that they're garbage who need to get straight As because that's what they owe you.
It is certainly batshit crazy if the Chinese are telling the children of some random guy in New Zealand that they need to get straight As because they owe him.
/pedantry
29: Actually, I am happy to admit that Chinese mothers are more likely to be unholy terrors than Western mothers. However,
1) That doesn't mean being an unholy terror is good.
2) That doesn't allow you to talk about being an unholy terror as if it were inherently Chinese, not even if you make a slight disclaimer about other ethnicities can be Chinese, too.
What fraction of the glass is full?
I was told there'd be no math.
I was told there would be no moths and now my wool sweater is ruined.
Anyway, I should probably work harder today. The new guy is from China.
Re: Chinese mothers, Yggles uncorks the snark:
The larger issue about Chua's piece is that it just seems very strange for her to be so worried about this. On the list of problems typically experienced by the children of Yale Law School faculty "not successful enough" comes way below "has dysfunctional relationship with mother."
This Slate review of the book, is an interesting counterweight.
Just for fun, replace "Chinese" with "White" and "Western" with "Black" in that essay.
Or the other way around, since, while African-American kids don't benefit/suffer from the "more successful" stereotype, there is a common discourse positioning the value of strictness and beatings in Black parenting against the perceived ineffectual indulgence of white parenting.
It would have been more interesting if she'd used "immigrant parenting" rather than "Chinese parenting" as the frame, but only if she'd used that to think comparatively and step outside of her own particular experiences and beliefs about what constitutes effective parenting.
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Actually, I am happy to admit that Chinese mothers are more likely to be unholy terrors than Western mothers. However,
So what are you saying here? That Chinese children do better academically because there parents push them harder but this is a bad thing?
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The larger issue about Chua's piece is that it just seems very strange for her to be so worried about this. On the list of problems typically experienced by the children of Yale Law School faculty "not successful enough" comes way below "has dysfunctional relationship with mother."
Not all that convincing since Chua would apparently much prefer that her children be successful than they have a good relationship with their parents. Also she probably has a different standard for not sucessful enough than Yglesias making that outcome not all that implausible.