Interesting. I grew up in an “exams count only” system that used a 2 decimal point score precision. So if you scored 89.75 at the end, you completed the course with 89.75. It wasn’t bucketed into grades.
There were 4 exams: two quarterlies, a half, and the final.
I don’t think it ever struck any of us that if we failed to study for an exam that it was anyone’s fault but our own.
I actually really like articles like this because they have so many unnecessary assumptions:
“Things are this way because students will complain if they suck at things”
The unstated assumptions are that students in this schooling system mostly have external loci of control.
The second thing is that courses are designed in an adding-epicycles manner based on the least reasonable member of the previous class. That is, it is a cost function that aims to minimize the failure of the greatest idiot which implicitly leads to it adding cost for the smart guy.
So you have built a schooling system optimized for the greatest idiot who believes someone else is responsible for all of his failures. This actually explains why so many college students here are like they are.
> I don’t think it ever struck any of us that if we failed to study for an exam that it was anyone’s fault but our own.
This is interesting to me. If you’re noting working through problems how do you get the feedback to even know if you really understand the material? Generally assigned homework was nice because a professor will know the key ideas and can efficiently assign work covering those parts.
Right now I’m self studying real analysis and I wish I had someone to pick problems for me because otherwise I’m just trying to do them all to ensure that if I don’t know something critical it will come out when I can solve some particular problem.
On the other side of the same coin. How does a teacher know if their teaching is effective without frequency feedback until he form of students grades? I feel like waiting several weeks to determine if you need to change course is doing a great disservice to the students.
Oh we worked through problems all the time. But if you didn’t then the next class would be impossible to understand and you’d just sit there like a fool. So the incentives were already aligned there.
And you get feedback from your peers as you work through stuff and also from the lecturer at the end of the next class.
There were 4 exams: two quarterlies, a half, and the final.
I don’t think it ever struck any of us that if we failed to study for an exam that it was anyone’s fault but our own.
I actually really like articles like this because they have so many unnecessary assumptions:
“Things are this way because students will complain if they suck at things”
The unstated assumptions are that students in this schooling system mostly have external loci of control.
The second thing is that courses are designed in an adding-epicycles manner based on the least reasonable member of the previous class. That is, it is a cost function that aims to minimize the failure of the greatest idiot which implicitly leads to it adding cost for the smart guy.
So you have built a schooling system optimized for the greatest idiot who believes someone else is responsible for all of his failures. This actually explains why so many college students here are like they are.