Thread: Fair and equal distribution of grades

If grades represent knowledge, then how is such a distribution fair... It's like saying a 4kg bag weighs 1kg, because all others do. It's like some retarded way to sabotage human progress.

I'm seriously confused. Are you pro or anti-socialism, UM?
Also, I am anti-socialism, and I support what stonedape said. The reason the Japanese are so far ahead of us technology wise is that they support the questioning of teaching, the best schools in Japan apparently focus on the teachings of Edward de Bono.
What we do, is we learn things by rote. We leave school, all that shit we learned is gone forever. What the fuck is the point of learning off the four processes of river erosion for six bloody years, if i intend to become a mathematician?

Originally Posted by Sandform

I just told you that your comparison is invalid.

Sandform, I don't want to talk to you about this a bit more until you tell me why you are against any level of grade point distribution. That is the topic of this thread. We can go from there. Why are you against any extent of grade point distribution? You are becoming a dodgeball star when it comes to that key question.

Originally Posted by Bonsay

If grades represent knowledge, then how is such a distribution fair... It's like saying a 4kg bag weighs 1kg, because all others do. It's like some retarded way to sabotage human progress.

Grades are more than just a representation of knowledge. They are also a key to financial success.

Originally Posted by Apopholis

I'm seriously confused. Are you pro or anti-socialism, UM?

Are you seriously wondering that? Well, never mind that for now. What would be the problem(s) with grade distribution?

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Sandform, I don't want to talk to you about this a bit more until you tell me why you are against any level of grade point distribution. That is the topic of this thread. We can go from there. Why are you against any extent of grade point distribution? You are becoming a dodgeball star when it comes to that key question.

Because it is unnecessary to do that, and that wouldn't help them to succeed. The true way of helping them succeed would be to spend time helping them. Which I've said about three times already. Why should we try to help them with your failed analogy?


Like I said in response to your statement that helping people doesn't help them, "there are plenty of people who can't afford college but are granted money for it and I'm positive that they are not "in the same position" because people helped them."

Originally Posted by Sandform

Because it is unnecessary to do that, and that wouldn't help them to succeed. The true way of helping them succeed would be to spend time helping them. Which I've said about three times already. Why should we try to help them with your failed analogy?

Because it helps them. It brings their grade levels from F to whatever. Other than not helping them, supposedly, what is your problem with it? Would it actually cause any problems?

Originally Posted by Sandform

Like I said in response to your statement that helping people doesn't help them, "there are plenty of people who can't afford college but are granted money for it and I'm positive that they are not "in the same position" because people helped them."

You ask why we should help and then say we should help. Where do you really stand?

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

You ask why we should help and then say we should help. Where do you really stand?

What? I said why should we help them in a capacity that doesn't help them. In other words, why should we try to help them in a way that wont help them when we can help them in a way that does help.

Originally Posted by Sandform

What? I said why should we help them in a capacity that doesn't help them. In other words, why should we try to help them in a way that wont help them when we can help them in a way that does help.

It would help them. It would raise their GPA's.

What would be the problems with equal distribution of grades?

Raising there GPAs would not help them. Maybe they would be able to get a job, or get into a better college, but that's really not going to help in the long run. If your dumb as hell and get into a good school your not going to be able to comprehend anything that's taught(unless we push our standards lower than the absurd levels they are already at). Similarly if you get a good job and don't have the skills or intelligence to perform, you get fired. Get fired enough times and no ones gonna hire you even if you had a 4.0.

Saying that raising your GPA(in this manner) is going to help you is like exactly like saying that inflation is good.

I think that grades in general are fucking ignorant. But if we were to do this equal distribution thing, there would be absolutely no point to grading at all. The only thing I could see happening is that in predominantly poor neighborhoods people would lose even more interest in school. If they don't have to work to pass they just wouldn't show up. At least thats how things are where I live. This would increase crime that's already increasing.

UM, do you actually support this or is this satire? I have a cold/allergies right now and can't remember.

Academic s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-m. the watering down of all great philosophic thought up to this present time for the sake of homogenizing everyone as "equals".
Not everyone is -academically- equal or -intellectually- equal. If they cannot even regurgitate the b.s. passed to them from the institutions and achieve a nice gold star or big red check mark then they can still be a productive member of the machine and exchange their life energy in labour for that almighty capital.

I'm a little bit buzzed right now so I cannot tell if this post is serious or not. But as a graduating mechanical engineer with a good GPA, I could never, ever agree with something like this. Call me "greedy" all you want, but last year I practically lived in a cave, and EARNED my right to begin my path toward financial success.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Why is the United States so much more economically (and therefore technologically, etc.) successful than Europe?

Somehow I think you were serious... I can't believe you said that.

Nevermind the value of the Euro... Or the fact that Europe is way ahead with the application of stem cell research.

This is what I think in regards to your original post:
Equal distribution of grades is not equality. Some would not be working for their grades, and others meanwhile would be working hard to pick up the slack of the bad students. It would be understandable for the students with potential to stop working altogether. Schools would be divided into 'good grade average schools' and 'bad grade average schools', in which case the better students would attempt to get into the 'good' schools and bad students would remain in an academically failing scenario. Other students with potential who couldn't make it into the good schools would also find themselves in a situation they couldn't dig themselves out of. No equality, no fairness. Even socialism is supposed to pay appropriately for the type of work being done, since it advocates a 'fair' distribution of wealth, and for a school system a fair distribution of grades would be in order if it were run under a fully socialist system (good grades to good students and bad grades to bad students). Employees that work for the police department, fire department, public school system, federal mail system, etc, all get paid varying amounts of money for the kind of work they do, and those are all socialist institutions.

Fairness does not imply equal distribution of wealth/resources/grades/what-have-you.

Equal distribution does not imply equality.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Grades would still exist. They would just be really, really low. The former achievers would think, "I won't get much of a reward for effort now, so why try?" The former underachievers would think, "Everybody else is responsible for my grade, so why try?" That right there is the failure of socialism. .

You have a chronic habit of setting up rules that guarantee the failure of whatever you don't believe will work. If everyone is getting the same grades, then why have grades at all? Just have a system to teach children without grading them on their academic performance.

In this situation, the former achievers who did it only for grades will think "I won't get much of a reward for effort now, so why try?" while the achievers who did it to gain knowledge will think "Now I can learn without worrying about grades". The former under achievers who don't care to learn will continue doing what they were doing before, and the former under achievers who were driven to apathy through failure will think "Now I can learn without worrying about grades".

Teacher's can write letters of recommendation for their students who are trying to get a job in an area that they excelled at, and employers can give aptitude tests to make sure people are right for the job.

This is just what the Labour government has been doing in the UK for the last decade; grade inflation.

Every year the exams get easier, and more people get better grades. It's ridiculous, exams are becoming worthless. I can't help thinking of 1984. :l

Now the country's going to go to hell because there are no people left in Britain with any actual skills.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Did you see what I said about the relationship between grades and economic futures?

Even if you see that as a difference, there are parallels. What problems do you think would exist in a system of equal grade distribution?


It is not possible for you to become one of them?

The problem is no one would be recognized for their work, and it wouldn't allow the right people getting the right jobs. Equal grade distribution is nonsense and would never be implemented by anyone. Now if you want to see how we think of helping people in terms of grades, students struggling should be afforded more time and more teaching if need be. If a child is not intelligent, work must be done by specific teachers to help that student along so they can function in our work world.

Sure you can become one of them, but it's especially easy if you are born with a silver spoon. Imagine for a minute being born to a crackheaded mother with no father. Do you think that person really has the equal opportunity to make money or get along in the world.

I don't suggest we buy every broke person a mansion, but everyone should be fed and able to get healthcare.

Welfare needs to be re-tooled to not allow people to live on it forever, people should be forced to work but their are reasons for it. We need people to crackdown on the simply lazy.

Being in support of helping those less fortunate, or those with less opportunity doesn't mean we believe in Communism.

Grades are a (crude) measure of intelligence/education. If everyone got the same grades, it would cease to be even a slightly accurate measure of education. Then they would just be numbers with no relation to anything whatsoever, and employers (and universities) would just use some other selection criteria. So without even referencing left/right blahblahblah, I've shown this example to be self-contradicting and pointless. But you already knew all that...

But seriously, I think the best alternative would be a mixture of "helping people" and "libertarianism". I don't think people should be equalised at all, that would be stupid, like you say. Basically I think the government should only exist to provide some things - defence, basic human rights, anything which would be a natural monopoly anyway (eg phone lines if that's the case), and of course the law. Apart from these, capitalism sounds good.

I would like someone to fund all our scientific research as well, but I'm not really sure where this fits into everything.

Grades are a (crude) measure of intelligence/education. If everyone got the same grades, it would cease to be even a slightly accurate measure of education. Then they would just be numbers with no relation to anything whatsoever, and employers (and universities) would just use some other selection criteria

This is already happening in the UK.

Of course, I personally think the way grades are awarded are flawed anyway, but that doesn't mean that the notion of grading people is flawed.

Part of the problem with the UK system (aside from it being based on rote learning instead of understanding) is that the grade system is based on the delta between scores, instead of an absolute standard. The top X% of people get grade Y, and so on. Theoretically, everyone could achieve a very high level of knowledge, and some would still get a terrible grade for it. It's a relative performance instead of absolute, and flawed for that reason.


Grades though (supposedly) represent a level of knowledge. There is no point in inflating this figure artificially because it then ceases to be useful. People are not "greedy" for achieving a certain level of knowledge that they worked for.

Did you see what I said about the relationship between grades and economic futures?

Except the point is that the underlying KNOWLEDGE is what gives you a better economical future. More knowledgeable people tend to be more successful. Grades measure knowledge.

Just because the playing field in obtaining knowledge is not level, it doesn't mean you should perform "academic communism". you need to tackle the underlying issue and give people an equal opportunity to learn. Pretending that a level of knowledge is not important is stupid.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Grades are more than just a representation of knowledge. They are also a key to financial success.

But how "smart" is it to isolate a part of the system and then criticize it for not working, especially after changing one part and not the other etc. It's just a strange hypothetical experiment, which doesn't really prove anything, or does it?

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

If everyone is getting the same grades, then why have grades at all?

If everyone is getting the same money, why have money at all?

Originally Posted by Invader

Nevermind the value of the Euro... Or the fact that Europe is way ahead with the application of stem cell research.

Well kick me in the ass. That changes everything.

Please be more specific about which European countries are wealthier than the United States. I want names.

Considering most European countries have less landmass and population by a factor of at least ten? :l

Originally Posted by Xei

Considering most European countries have less landmass and population by a factor of at least ten? :l

That adds to why it's strange that Invader acted shocked and appalled.

However, the second richest nation in the world is Japan, which is the size of Montana, and the third is Germany. Those just happen to be countries that had their government systems rearranged by the United States. What a coincidence. If only Cuba or North Korea had gotten a hold of them...

Yeah, I heard the US's economy is doing great at the moment? :l

Originally Posted by Xei

Yeah, I heard the US's economy is doing great at the moment? :l

Did you hear this?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_t...s_in_the_world

You're not gonna take credit for China too then?

I thought we were much lower than 5th. Cool. Makes me feel empowered.

Edit: Hmm, actually, if you do it properly (per capita), the US is third to Luxembourg and Norway...

Originally Posted by Xei

You're not gonna take credit for China too then?

They are becoming increasingly capitalistic. If they keep it up, they might become the richest country in the world. They have my support.

Originally Posted by Xei

Edit: Hmm, actually, if you do it properly (per capita), the US is third to Luxembourg and Norway...

Luxembourg is a tiny resort country where really rich people move. I don't know jack about Norway, so I am not sure what the secret of their success is. I don't think they have our trash element holding them back.