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miscellaneous musings
Barmymoo:
That's ridiculous. What if different students are aiming towards different goals? Or starting from different points? What's far more important is knowing where you are compared to where you want to be, and how to get there.
Akima:
I'm not quite sure what my "goals" were as a five year old, or at eight, beyond "make my parents and teachers proud of me." In Australian junior-school there was also "beat the little shits who make fun of me" and "do well in the State Selective Schools Test to prove to my arsehole teachers that I'm not stupid"*. There is a whole slab of education that everyone should master regardless of their life goals, and the notion that a young child is in a position to decide what they should or should not learn strikes me as silly. We have a saying: "Eat bitter; taste sweet!"
--- Quote from: Papersatan on 21 Aug 2014, 11:07 ---That's so weird to me. I know I come from a very different academic background (my school didn't actually have grades) but it just seems like that is asking for students to view each other as competition and to overvalue grades over actual learning.
--- End quote ---
The implicit assumption here is that somehow good grades are divorced from actual learning. It is certainly possible for "grade focus" to be harmful if it leads to rote learning in high-school and beyond, but that has a great deal to do with poor teaching, bad test design, and poor incentive/assessment schemes for teachers. How much creativity is involved in learning functional literacy in your native language, or the sort of mathematics needed for 99% of later life?
--- Quote from: Grognard on 20 Aug 2014, 20:29 ---MY children, however, are required to be in the top 5% of their class.
--- End quote ---
My parents would not have given you any argument. Except they'd have regarded your 5% as ridiculously over-liberal. :laugh:
*I'm embarrassed to admit it, but resentment was a powerful spur. Behind a polite facade, I was one angry little girl.
Grognard:
personally, I'm with NEKO in the HS math department: I barely passed Algebra II and Geometry.
and college level 'intro to Statistics"... I'd have better luck learning Greek from a Mandarin teacher.
the local schools only break down the top 25% of class ratings by 5% blocks. And they only report the top 25%. :(
--- Quote ---*I'm embarrassed to admit it, but resentment was a powerful spur. Behind a polite facade, I was one angry little girl.
--- End quote ---
....oh. sorry if that is a trigger. (hides behind large internet shield)
hedgie:
--- Quote from: Barmymoo on 21 Aug 2014, 14:17 ---That's ridiculous. What if different students are aiming towards different goals? Or starting from different points? What's far more important is knowing where you are compared to where you want to be, and how to get there.
--- End quote ---
Taking different courses may have something to do with it, as well. I know I didn't rank as "highly" in terms of grades as many of my peers, but I was also taking far more challenging courses, including earning a bunch of university credit by the time I finished school. Had I stuck with the "easy" courses, I probably wouldn't have been fighting with my parents so much about what the reports said because I chose to challenge myself.
cesium133:
About your signature:
--- Quote ---"I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or god persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time" -- Neil Gaiman
--- End quote ---
Have you tried opening a can of cat food?
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