I have respect for teachers that will fail a student who deserves to fail. It takes guts to fail a student. I always felt like my good grade meant more from a teacher who I knew was willing to give a failing grade when deserved. But those teachers are few and far between. We give trophies to 25th place, Bs to students who do nothing more than show up to class, and diplomas to seniors who can't add or read. Failure isn't an option for most people under the age of 30. We have grown up in a society that has protected us from the almightly F and now we don't know how to deal with a failing grade in life.
With that said, it has always really annoyed me when teachers curve the grading scale. (Can I get an amen from Matt Longbrake?) There are cases when tests are severely unfair, material that was not covered appears, questions that require a biased answer to get them correct, ridiculously minute details; I am not talking about those. I am talking about tests with fair questions from covered materials that require thoughtful answers.
In any American college classroom there are students with a range of abilities and motivations. There are always the students who study, read, take notes, and listened in class to prepare for a test. They do their work and more because they enjoy learning or want a good grade or just have to be perfect, their motivation doesn't really matter. Then you have the average students who show up to class sometimes or even the majority of the time, read what is required, do the work, but don't put in that extra effort, and take the same test. They all show up and the test is hard, but everything on it is things that should have been learned.
When tests are returned the groans are audible from the majority of the class as they see their Bs and Cs and *gasp* maybe lower. Then the grumbling and protests begin, well if everyone did so poorly the test must have been skewed. The begging and pleading starts from students. Pleas for a retest or to go back over their test with thier notes, or a curve of the test results. And if the teacher is not sympathetic to their please, they try to organize an email assault on the professor, or flooding his office during prep hours, or threatening to go to the department head with their complaints of unfairness. With every excuse in the world, they try to get the test thrown out or the scale changed. And in most cases, with enough badgering, a teacher will cave because it is just easier and they don't want the stigma of being an unfair professor. So what is the result? Those students who worked hard, took their studying seriously are rewarded with getting about the same grade as the students who did the bare minimum. To me, the injustice here is not a hard test but the rewarding of just average.
This senario is replayed in thousands of classrooms all over the country. It amazes me that if the kids who spent all that time begging for a grade change would spend that same time on their studies, they could have avoided the whole issue. I see a direct link between this sense of entitlement toward good grades and the bailout of every industry who has made poor decisions. They want bailed out of their mortgage they never should have gotten, and unemployment when they quit their jobs, and full benefits for working a part-time. And just as they did with their teachers, they organize protests against the unfair system, they elect someone who is sympathetic to their please and then ask for him to change the rules. And just like in the classroom, our government has given into their pleas. I truely believe these people don't know how to fail. From the time they were children, someone else has always fixed their mistakes, changed their grade, and rewarded their mediocrity. Their parents or teachers didn't want them to have to feel the pain of failure and now we are all paying for it.
And the rest of us feel like those kids who did their work in class. We play by the rules, pay our taxes, live within our means, and work hard for our money. Our payment? We are rewarded with higher taxes, devalued property, and the general burden of taking care of all the losers. This system that Barack Obama is proposing, the general bailout of society, rewards stupid decisions and people who cheat the system. Obama is like the teacher that changes the grading scale or curves the test results to favor those who didn't do the work. I know I am not the only who feels like she got cheated out of my good grade. Only in this case, it isn't just a grade on a report card. We are being cheated out of our money, our trust, and our freedom.
