Capital Furs

Many of us, if not all of us, have been through some sort of schooling system. In highschool, you take exams, and usually a ministry is watching over the school as they administer grades, making sure students are graded fairly, independantly from one another. This of course is debatable, but it's not where this post is going anyways.

When leaving highschool, there are many paths to takes; Getting training in a feild in a college or institution that's going to teach you how to actually do your job, learn your skills directly in the workplace by working with people who already know what they're doing, etc. Another option is to continue your studies in a place like university, where academics are everything (Or mostly). School in a university is vastly different than anywhere else; kids, likely under the age of 20, are thrown into gigantic classrooms with some old fart in front speaking unintelligeably about the founding principles of business development or how to find the area underneath some random curve in a graph; This person will more than likely be speaking with some weird accent. The teacher is completely inapprochable, his assistants unavailable and you don't have a single friend in the entire classroom. So what happens when you don't understand something? You study.

As time goes on, this becomes an everyday situation. Go to class, sleep through it, and read a book to understand what actually went on during those 2 hours in dream land. You become good at this if you manage to make your way through years 1 and 2. You have friends who do the same.

Alright. The scene is set. So here's where the post actually starts: In university, you're not graded on how well you do in the class (Not exactly at least. In science for example, you'll get a grade on how many good answers you had, no doupt. But please read on), but rather on how well you did compared to everyone else in the classroom. In a class, you need to have people who fail, people with A+ marks, and a LOT of people in between, with few at the extremes. It's called a normal distribution, generated with a certain function when the exam results of a class don't match this normal distribution. That's right; your 90% grade can match to a B if almost everyone in the class got 89%.

This really isn't a big problem at times, especially since it actually helps a lot of people who almost fail get over that D+ mark.

Here's a bigger problem: Some universities have begun concidering giving students a urine test after exams. They want to test university kids for "cognitive enhancers". These drugs are usually used for people with cognitive problems

BMJ-British Medical Journal wrote:The non-medical use of methylphenidate and amphetamine is as high as 25% on some US college campuses, particularly in colleges with more competitive admission criteria, says Mr Cakic.

For boosting memory retention, there's brahmi, piracetam (Nootropil), donepezil (Aricept) and galantamine (Reminyl). And for a bit more get up and go, there's selegiline (Deprenyl).

-- Emma Dickinson

Let's leave the problem of the actual impact of these drugs on healthy people. This leaves us with an ethical issue. Should academics be taken like sports, in which competition is the essence of how well you do? In this case these drugs should be banned. Or should academics be taken as a personal thing, after which other people will compare you to your peers. In this case the use of cognitive enhancers might be a bit more justified. But really, this shouldn't be taken on a case by case situation, it's up to how the school gauges their students.

So what do you guys think of these little pills? I'm personally a big advocate of competition. And if these pills mean I have more competition, then bring them on, I'll whipe the floor with the snotty rich kids who can afford them.

I'd write a long response to this... but frankly, I hate competitive grading systems. Any system that doesn't judge you based solely on the merits of your work is a bad system.

Pooshie wrote: In university, you're not graded on how well you do in the class (Not exactly at least. In science for example, you'll get a grade on how many good answers you had, no doupt. But please read on), but rather on how well you did compared to everyone else in the classroom. In a class, you need to have people who fail, people with A+ marks, and a LOT of people in between, with few at the extremes. It's called a normal distribution, generated with a certain function when the exam results of a class don't match this normal distribution. That's right; your 90% grade can match to a B if almost everyone in the class got 89%.

WAHT THE FUCK FUCK FUCK WHAT

Well, on the flip side Indy, say you have a bad teacher, and everyone's got a 60% on their final. Getting a 65 would get you an A.

Pooshie wrote:Well, on the flip side Indy, say you have a bad teacher, and everyone's got a 60% on their final. Getting a 65 would get you an A.

How is that fair to other classes though? Two teachers give the same test- one's good, one's bad. In one group, the top student gets a 93%, which is a real, genuine, A+. The second class, the top students gets an 84%, which is a B. Why should he be given an A+ because he knows the material less well than the individual who legitimately earned his A+?

After graduation, you get both students applying to the same job- both put down an A+ on their resume...but one knows his subject much better than the other, unbeknown to the employer.

Sid wrote:

Pooshie wrote:Well, on the flip side Indy, say you have a bad teacher, and everyone's got a 60% on their final. Getting a 65 would get you an A.

How is that fair to other classes though? Two teachers give the same test- one's good, one's bad. In one group, the top student gets a 93%, which is a real, genuine, A+. The second class, the top students gets an 84%, which is a B. Why should he be given an A+ because he knows the material less well than the individual who legitimately earned his A+?

After graduation, you get both students applying to the same job- both put down an A+ on their resume...but one knows his subject much better than the other, unbeknown to the employer.

Fair? Since when the world is fair? Even without the normal distribution element in the schooling system, you still have the management of the school forcing the teachers' hands. How well a school is doing is often seen on how many graduate they produce. It's a long established practice to 'tweak' the grade so that the school looks good. That's still without counting those who bribe teachers with money or sexual favor, or even those that blackmail them into giving them better grades. That last one is a rapidly increasing practice by students and parents alike, it's been observed as early as in elementary schools.

If you knew the amount of drooling moron I had to work with so far that completed University level education, you'd be staggered. I even yet have to meet a software security specialist that know what a format string attack is.

Sid wrote:How is that fair to other classes though? Two teachers give the same test- one's good, one's bad. In one group, the top student gets a 93%, which is a real, genuine, A+. The second class, the top students gets an 84%, which is a B. Why should he be given an A+ because he knows the material less well than the individual who legitimately earned his A+?

After graduation, you get both students applying to the same job- both put down an A+ on their resume...but one knows his subject much better than the other, unbeknown to the employer.

Surprisingly, you don't usually go to a university to learn how to do your job on the feild. So what you actually learn is of little relevance. I got a pretty shitty grade in WWW structures, yet at the job I have right now, it's all I do all day. The thing is that I went through class after class of hard assignments, shitty projects, incompetant partners and teachers; And what did I get out of it? Something a lot more valuable than what I actually learned; I got the ability to work hard. And when a company hires someone from university, that's what they look for. That 'A' on your grade report means you worked.

technical education is an attempt to fast-track experience. to bring people up to a certain skill level much faster than if doing it on their own.

there are plenty of speedbumps and stupid ideas in the education process, yes, and lots of bullshit and double standards.

pooshie is totally right. what you really learn to do on the spot in the job is SOOOOO much more important than anything you learned in a classroom. they build on eachother yeah yeah yeah but you're paid to do your job, not know things from school.

empire would agree with me, as one of the older guys here. but its not just trade work. the company lawyer and accountant are both bitching to the boss and i that the new generation coming out of school have no intrest in learning the real field, making them less than worthless.

its across the board right now. probably always has been. you care and work and try, or don't.

Man, what crap-ass university did you go to? The profs I've had in the past four years of my undergraduate degree have been amazing. They don't just sit at the front of the class and 'ramble' in a bad accent. Almost all of my profs were interesting and engaging, and would open themselves up to us. Some of my lectures were SO fun and hilarious that we'd leave the class with aching ribs from laughing so hard at whatever the prof was saying to us that day (some of them are quite comical).

Also, we're not graded competitively, at least not at Trent U. Your mark is your mark, and it does not have a bearing on anyone else's success in the course. If you score 90% then it'll be recognized as just that. From my understanding, I think competitive grading is reserved for particular courses, and isn't universal to all university systems.

The difficulty and enjoyment of university probably varies with your major, and where you go. I've never heard of the drug testing thing either... I think that would be too expensive and time consuming. Since you pulled that from a British journal, I'm assuming this is something going on overseas.

I do not advocate competition. You cannot compare one student's success with another, because there's just too many different variables that make it difficult to compare them (different majors, different ages, learning disabilities, etc). Students seem to be doing just swell being marked individually.

Funny you'd mention funny accents. My Cross-Cultural Psych professor this semester is from Bolivia and I can barely understand a word he says.

I also fully concur with Ottawa U. being a crap-ass university. I had the director of undergraduate studies in the Psych. School all but tell me today that teachers are expected to create arbitrary marking schemes, and doing what they expect you to do is a 'C grade at best'. As students we're supposed to be able to guess what they want from us and provide it to get anything better than a C.

It's a load of shit of course, I've never had any other teacher approach papers like that (At least until this Cross-Cultural Prof.) and I've been agitated about it most of the day. The fact he explained it like I was a 2 year old didn't help... he used 'The ABC's of Hockey' to explain it to me. I was ready to walk out on him when he pulled that shit out.

"A C hockey player gets the puck and scores."

"A B hockey player goes to the puck and scores"

"An A hockey player makes the puck come to him and scores"

All written out in massive "See Spot Run" type, each on their own individual page. He actually looked at me and was like "So what does the A hockey player do?" like a kindergarten teacher asks the class what Spot did. "Then what did Spot do?" "He ran!" "Good Billy!"

So yeah, Ottawa U. is staffed by pricks. I go to this guy to complain because I had points deducted (sorry, not deducted, they don't deduct marks there... they just don't give them in the first place! He made sure I understood the 'difference') for not using a specific resource that we were never told we had to use, and instead I get condescension and some old prick all but laughing at me.

Unimpressed.

And yes. Totally off topic, but I've been looking for a way to rant about this all day >.>

Um. Drug testing bad btw. Very bad.