Teacher Tells Graduating Seniors: You Are Not Special

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by BonosSaint

I do not type well drunk. I do drive better. Truly. Scary, huh?

What a truly fucking idiotic thing to say

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Liesje

In high school when I told my counselor what schools/programs I wanted to apply to, he gave some copies of the high school's grading scale since some of the schools were ones that no one from my HS had applied to in recent years. I'm not sure if this still happens but when I graduated there were schools giving out 4.1, 4.2, etc and ironically many of these schools had graduation rates below 70% and seniors that could barely read above a fifth grade level. At my school a 4.0 was perfect, meaning you got 100%. I think I graduated with a 3.9 and I was an A/A- (97-100%) student all four years. My parents slaved away so that we could go to a very good private school, but without any context my 3.9 was "meh" next to a 4.3.

this is where standardized testing has it's place. sure, it's flawed, and it really measures how you took the test, but at least everyone is taking the same test.

i went to a high school where A's were tough to achieve, particularly in the honors/AP classes -- but test scores were sky high, both on statewide achievement tests as well as SAT's. i could name at least a dozen of my classmates who had an 800 on either the math or the verbal, and there were a few perfect SATs. and college admissions officers, at least at highly competitive schools, should be equipped to know the difference.

while legacies do enjoy some preferential treatment in admissions, it's nowhere near what it was when, say, in the 1950s and 60s when surname Bush (or others) guaranteed you admission to any school of your choice in any field. it's vastly more meritocratic, and i'd imagine your median student today is churning out higher quality work than your median student was in 1965. back then, they didn't have women to compete with for admissions, just for starters.

agreed with the "everyone is awesome" mentality and how that needs to end. i think there's merit to giving people individualized feedback, good or bad, to show that a coach or a teacher is paying attention and is valuing students and is taking an active interest in how we are all unique. it drives me nuts when i hear parents exclaiming, "WOW! GOOD JOB BUDDY!" at everything their kid does. i think it's much more meaningful to say, "you did some careful work building that sandcastle" or "i like how you shared your toy" or "i thought your third flipturn looked really good and that's where you made up time in the race" to be much more meaningful, especially for the kid. hearing "WOW BUDDY GOOD JOB" all the time seems almost like disinterest. praise effort, not outcome, to show how outcome is dependent upon effort.

i dunno, rambling. i should go to bed.

[Axver]

This discussion of marks just reminds me of a couple of American exchange students I knew who had a really hard time adjusting to the fact that at Australian universities, 75-79% is considered a pretty good mark and ≥80% is excellent. When they got their first assessments back, they were disappointed to get an 80% - and then very confused to see Aussie students congratulating each other on getting 77%.

Now when I'm tutoring and have any exchange students, I take them aside to make sure they're aware of how we mark. Usually they're not, and are very grateful to know that 72%, rather than being a bad mark, is actually our average. I'm surprised they're not actually told this sort of thing ahead of time.

What has struck me, though, from all of these conversations is how normal ≥90% is taken to be by Americans and it makes me wonder 1. how inflated the marks are and 2. if most of the rating scale below 70% or even 80% is simply not used, because that's how it sounds. I know barely anybody here who has got over 90% for an item of assessment, and in my own marking I probably only give it to one in twenty or thirty essays.

[Diemen]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

What a truly fucking idiotic thing to say

What a truly unnecessary thing to say.

[Jive Turkey]

Originally Posted by Diemen

What a truly unnecessary thing to say.

You don't think someone bragging about drinking and driving deserves to be ridiculed?

[AnCatKatie]

This may be totally unrelated, because it's not about grades so much as positive/negative feedback—but as a college student, I feel like when teachers or other people in the critique position give only negative feedback, it's really difficult to be productive. If people say only, 'what you're doing is shit,' instead of being helpful, it just...stops all motivation.

But more ontopic—It's a well enough crafted speech, and I agree with most of it. But I'd be really irritated if I had to sit through this guy's speech, because just as many kids whose opinions of themselves and their work are inflated, there are probably kids who've just been receiving the negative feedback and don't need to sit through it, truthful or no. People aren't special? Yeah, been informed of that. I think kids are smart enough to figure it out.

It's probably difficult to think of graduation statements. Most of the ones I've heard that stick with people are the cynical ones like this, that acknowledge that the world isn't a fair place, you're gonna have to work hard for a mediocre life and harder to be perceived as talented, etc. I mean, how to be realistic about the world students are heading into?

[BonosSaint]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

You don't think someone bragging about drinking and driving deserves to be ridiculed?

I didn't respond to your first comment because you're entitled to your opinion. I meant it as a lighthearted comment, but could see how someone might bristle at it. Just wanted to respond here because I don't think bragging would be the correct description. I had/have a phobia about driving. A few drinks relaxed me and I at least perceived I drove better.

However, I also realized it was stupid and dangerous and I do not drink and drive, nor have I for many, many years (hence the comment in my original post that I stopped that and the angel icon)

I do promise however that next time I use a throw away comment, I will add commentary in long, tedious explanations and clarifications such as this one.

[digitize]

Originally Posted by Axver

This discussion of marks just reminds me of a couple of American exchange students I knew who had a really hard time adjusting to the fact that at Australian universities, 75-79% is considered a pretty good mark and ≥80% is excellent. When they got their first assessments back, they were disappointed to get an 80% - and then very confused to see Aussie students congratulating each other on getting 77%.

Now when I'm tutoring and have any exchange students, I take them aside to make sure they're aware of how we mark. Usually they're not, and are very grateful to know that 72%, rather than being a bad mark, is actually our average. I'm surprised they're not actually told this sort of thing ahead of time.

What has struck me, though, from all of these conversations is how normal ≥90% is taken to be by Americans and it makes me wonder 1. how inflated the marks are and 2. if most of the rating scale below 70% or even 80% is simply not used, because that's how it sounds. I know barely anybody here who has got over 90% for an item of assessment, and in my own marking I probably only give it to one in twenty or thirty essays.

This certainly isn't the case everywhere. At my university, at least in my majors (economics and electrical engineering), the "90 is an A, 80 is a B" scale gets thrown out the window. I've seen tests where the average score is well below fifty percent, and an A is roughly a 70% or so (probably the top fifth of test takers). And the Econ department at my school actively pressures professors to give around a certain percentage of people each letter grade in certain classes. In both cases, grading becomes mostly just relative to classmates, and the number of As is limited by that.

However, I don't think that's the case in most liberal arts departments at my school. One of many reasons why the average GPA for someone in liberal arts is much higher than the average GPA for someone in engineering, despite the fact that engineering is much harder to get into in the first place.

[iron yuppie]

I tend to see the "grade inflation" phenomenon as something of a myth. I have been around a lot of college and high school teachers in my day, and I would say that for every one who grades "leniently" there are two who explicitly fight against what they perceive to be grade inflation. I graded for a professor in the Humanities once who insisted that the class average needed to be 80%, regardless of the overall quality of the papers and projects. To me, artificially lowering grades is a much more egregious evaluation practice than allowing multiple A marks. For me, if every student were to earn an A based on the standards that I set, every student would receive that A.

[Diemen]

Originally Posted by Jive Turkey

You don't think someone bragging about drinking and driving deserves to be ridiculed?

I don't think publicly calling it out as a "fucking idiotic thing to say" does anything to help the discussion on this forum.

[ladyfreckles]

I went to a private high school and they had a program where as long as my town's public high school accepted the credits I could get a diploma from there. That's what I did. But at either school, a 4.0 would not get you anything. A 4.0 with active sports alone would not get you into a good private college because my town had a terrible reputation.

I graduated in 3 years (doubling up one year on classes) with a 3.7 GPA. The only reason I did not get a 4.0 was because my freshman year I messed up really badly and got straight Ds and Cs for half of the year (my mom died and I stopped putting effort into school). I cleaned up and maintained a straight A record after that. Even still, despite getting better SAT scores than 80% of students and better ACT scores than 70% of students I was rejected from a couple of my ideal colleges. I was even the captain of the chess team and had several volunteer job positions at my school backing me up.

Grades don't make you special. I know plenty of 4.0-5.0 people that weren't very smart.

As for the guy's speech regarding being special, while I agree with him on that, I disagree with his unrelated tangents and the tone he went about it with. Seemed very... condescending/arrogant/"I'm always right" to me.

Originally Posted by Liesje

The inflation problem and attitude that everyone has to feel awesome all the time permeates beyond school. In the world of German Shepherd dog trialing we have the same problem with Schutzhund (our sport of tracking, obedience, and protection). Scores are getting inflated and now getting a great score and a top TSB (fighting drive) rating no longer means anything because it doesn't set you apart. There was recently a good article in one of the Schutzhund magazines about how a few decades ago, a really good, strong dog got "G" (gut/good) and "SG" (sehr gut/very good) scores and the trainers/handlers were perfectly happy with that. Now everyone is obsessed with getting "V" (96-100) ratings and training dogs to be really flashy and precise. The training has certainly come a long way but the dogs themselves are weaker and dumber.

I agree with this and it's really sad. It permeates into the sports world, the writing world, and even the computer science/programming world. One of the least knowledgable people (regarding computers) I had ever met had a PhD in computers science and a 97-100% average all throughout college. Fantastic grades, absolutely horrible real life skills and intuition. It's reached a point where so much value has been put on grades that they have become meaningless.

The other problem is making success about conforming. The college I went to had some really hard courses. You were expected to get your work done, stand out from your classmates, learn and understand the material (tests were designed to prove understanding rather than memorization), etc. I transferred to a new college where the only way to get good grades was to do homework, show up in class, do a bunch of unnecessary projects that taught nothing, and do a simple multiple choice test at the end of the semester.

I was bored out of my mind and could not stand the lack of mental stimulation.

The education system in America is all kinds of messed up.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by ladyfreckles

The education system in America is all kinds of messed up.

bit of a generalization there?

[deep]

that's your take away?

you missed the point, > some people are special.

[PhilsFan]

The colleges I applied for asked for both my weighted and unweighted GPAs to assess some of the discrepancies when dealing with different high schools.

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

bit of a generalization there?

America has one education system with slight variances from state to state. This does not count/include private schools. The good schools are in the minority while there are a lot of really bad or mediocre schools in between. Grade inflation, focusing on memorization instead of critical thinking skills, and poor reading/mathematical abilities upon the completion of high school are all signs that something is amiss here. Yes, it could be worse, but in comparison to other first world countries the quality of our education is increasingly poor.

The area I live in has a comprehensive international program and three of the top 100 schools in the country. Even straight-A students at the best high schools in the area have difficulty competing against kids that come over for international programs elsewhere.

Originally Posted by deep

that's your take away?

you missed the point, > some people are special.

Naw, I agreed with the special point earlier on in my post. The latter half in response to Liesje was me derailing and just discussing our education system in general.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by ladyfreckles

America has one education system with slight variances from state to state. This does not count/include private schools. The good schools are in the minority while there are a lot of really bad or mediocre schools in between. Grade inflation, focusing on memorization instead of critical thinking skills, and poor reading/mathematical abilities upon the completion of high school are all signs that something is amiss here. Yes, it could be worse, but in comparison to other first world countries the quality of our education is increasingly poor.

The area I live in has a comprehensive international program and three of the top 100 schools in the country. Even straight-A students at the best high schools in the area have difficulty competing against kids that come over for international programs elsewhere.

so, you agree -- you're wildly generalizing and extrapolating from your own experience.

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

so, you agree -- you're wildly generalizing and extrapolating from your own experience.

Academic Failure - International Test Scores - Poor TIMSS Results
Fast Facts
State Profiles.net
35 Shocking Facts That Prove That College Education Has Become A Giant Money Making Scam



I have more, too. I spent my time in school believing that I was just dealt a bad school, that maybe change would help, etc. Eventually I learned of the school issues that many other people were experiencing and did research on it only to find that there are a ton of things wrong with the Education system as a whole. It is messed up. Now, never did I say that other education systems were not messed up. Nor did I say that the US is the worst. But it is definitely all kinds of messed up, from multiple angles, especially in regards to public schooling (private schooling I have not accumulated enough data on yet). Messed up = with flaw and problems. A "mess".

[Irvine511]

you do realize the inherent difficulty of comparing a nation of highly diverse 310m people living across a vast continent to, say, Singapore, right? because finding "facts" like the above is like shooting fish in a barrel, especially when you use a generality like "messed up," which could mean anything, and also when you choose pretty suspect websites to prove your point.

no one is arguing American education is perfect or couldn't stand improvement, that there isn't a lot to admire about, say, Finland, and i'm sorry you didn't have a good college experience. but the fact remains that many individual states -- like, say, Massachusetts, where they invest in education -- perform as well as nations of comparable size, and the American university system is perhaps one of the greatest success stories in the nation's history. there's a bewildering amount of choice, and the vast majority of the world's top universities are in the US.

i probably shouldn't make too big a deal out of this, since i'd imagine we probably agree on about 75% of this. but wild generalizations about a place like the US makes me quite prickly. it's not so much out of a right wing INDY-ish sense of red blooded American Exceptionalism (which makes me ill) but more of a sense of feeling like there's an enormous amount of misunderstanding out there and lazy thinking, and some of it committed by the very people who live here.

this is a very complicated place. and i will put the quality of my public school K-12 education and private university education (not my intelligence, but the quality of the education i received) up against anyone.

[ladyfreckles]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

you do realize the inherent difficulty of comparing a nation of highly diverse 310m people living across a vast continent to, say, Singapore, right? because finding "facts" like the above is like shooting fish in a barrel, especially when you use a generality like "messed up," which could mean anything, and also when you choose pretty suspect websites to prove your point.

I linked to two opinion sites and two .gov. I also do not subscribe to the belief that just because a country is larger it is impossible to competitively educate.

no one is arguing American education is perfect or couldn't stand improvement, that there isn't a lot to admire about, say, Finland, and i'm sorry you didn't have a good college experience.

I said in my post that the first college I went to I enjoyed, but then I went to another one that did not do things the same way. I used these as examples to contrast the difference in teaching methods and the result. In my first college I had a very good experience.

but the fact remains that many individual states -- like, say, Massachusetts, where they invest in education -- perform as well as nations of comparable size, and the American university system is perhaps one of the greatest success stories in the nation's history. there's a bewildering amount of choice, and the vast majority of the world's top universities are in the US.

My critique is a critique us US Mandated public education from K-12, not Universities. It appears we have had a misunderstanding in that regard. One of the links I listed regarding state profiles showed that these special states are in the minority.



As you can see these good states fall in the minority. 1/5 of the states in the US fall in the "above average" category for the united states. When we are a country ranked 25th across the world for mathematics and only 1/5 of that country is above average, that means that 1/5 of the country has a chance of possibly competing with the "average" students in a higher ranking country.

The other issue is that in high ranking states there are very low ranking schools. My public high school, despite being in one of the top 10 states, barely competed with the "average" states. Living in one of the above average states does not guarantee you above average education, and likewise, living in an average state does not guarantee you average education (some states have really good schools, but those schools are such a minority that they have no effect on the statistics for each state).

i probably shouldn't make too big a deal out of this, since i'd imagine we probably agree on about 75% of this. but wild generalizations about a place like the US makes me quite prickly. it's not so much out of a right wing INDY-ish sense of red blooded American Exceptionalism (which makes me ill) but more of a sense of feeling like there's an enormous amount of misunderstanding out there and lazy thinking, and some of it committed by the very people who live here.

this is a very complicated place. and i will put the quality of my public school K-12 education and private university education (not my intelligence, but the quality of the education i received) up against anyone.

I don't generalize, however it was an unrelated tangent to the thread so I did not want to drag on about it for too long. I could participate actively in through an entire US Education specific thread without running out of sources to cite or things to talk about, the trouble was that this thread is not one of them, so I closed my statement with what I thought. I can back up these thoughts. But that was a very short, one sentence long summary.

Messy as in badly managed, poorly organized (like a messy house). It does not mean the house itself is a bad house, but it does mean that it is not properly being managed. There are a lot of extremes in the US where there is that occasional school that does really well and organizes things really well and then there are those schools you hear about that you just want to stop existing. The issue is that we have such extremes.

EDIT:
totally just realized you probably got confused about the college thing because of my link to college statistics. That link was provided in order to support a more complicated thing that I can't summarize adequately but essentially: people going to college for the wrong reasons b/c of pressure in the schools growing up. You get good grades to get into a good college but then you get there and many kids have never been able to take enough elective classes in high school to know what they actually want to study so it's not fair organization. I think it's unfair and unwise to try to pressure an 18 year old to decide what he wants to study as his or her career for the rest of his or her life. Yet that's what we are supposed to do. I have the opposite issue... I know what I want to do with my life but I don't want a major, I just want to study whatever classes I want for fun (what I want to do has no major, either).

[Irvine511]

It's much harder to educate 310m Americans than 10m Swedes. It just is. Compare the US to the EU, sure, but compare New Zealand to Connecticut.

There are myriad other cultural issues, but yes, size does matter. Like, are you looking at populations of states or just number of states?