| That's fine for a well establish course and curriculum, where its pretty well known where the students are at (or should be) and the material is presented in a consistent manner that has successfully filtered the deserving and undeserving. Which is something that all teachers and schools should strive for, but probably not where many are at. New topics are added, new teachers, new academic plans defining which courses are required and when. New initiatives, programs, and policies are created all the time that change how people move through the education system. Even someone teaching the same course for 30 years is going to experience their own ups and downs that they may, inadvertently, project onto their students in different ways at different times. I'm not saying you should hand out undeserved grades. I agree with your perspective that grades have to mean something and high grades need to be earned. My personal take is that as a society we just need to get comfortable with C's, because that's where the average should be. (Sure, who wants to hire a Writer who's only average at writing? But by letting them know they are only average in writing you can now give them opportunities to _measurably_ improve, or highlight that they are above average in math and might be more successful there.) But if 3/4 of the class failed then _something went wrong_, and I would hope that our educators are able to reflect on that a little more then, "because they deserved to." The only thing those students got out of that class was an F. And the one thing the school administration has got right is that giving out F's is a failure of the institution. The problem is that right now their incentives are to reduce the number of F's rather than improve the teaching and learning. If those students had learned something or got your wake up-call, they would have done better. I'm not blaming you. There's a whole institution behind you, and several more over a student's education, with all sorts of problems and not enough of them having anything to do with actually educating people. But solutions have to start somewhere, so I would still look to you to talk to your fellow faculty and leadership; tell them that 3/4 of your class couldn't even hit average marks compared to every other time you've taught the course, and that we have got to do better to prepare incoming students for the material they are about to learn. Education isn't about regurgitating the same things over and over and keeping up the same bell curve until you retire. It's about teaching and learning and creating new opportunities for people to grow. That won't always work for everyone. You'll have to give out a an F here and there. But just like high grades should mean something, low grades should too. A student putting in low effort but grokking the material should be getting a C. An F is an indicator that something is wrong and the student isn't where they need to be. |