What Are We Teaching Our Kids?

[crokett]

Kids can buy better grades:

http://www.newsobserver.com/home/story/185460.html

[cabinetman]

I don't agree with the principle, but as the article stated it doesn't really affect the grades. I think the students understand the principle.
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[cgallery]

Increasing the score on a test by 10 points may be enough to move someone from a B- to a solid B, no?

[alpha]

The Principal said she "rejected the suggestion that the school is selling grades. Extra points on two tests won't make a difference in a student's final grade, she said.

It's wrong to think that "one particular grade could change the entire focus of nine weeks."

So I guess it is entirely "subjective" how you go from a "fail" to a "pass". Maybe this way of grading means that everybody just "passes" and the "points" are not relevent. Yep. That's what is happening in public schools.

[LinuxRandal]

I don't agree with the principle, but as the article stated it doesn't really affect the grades. I think the students understand the principle.
.

Wouldn't this depend on how much money a kid brought in? Say they brought in $500, and a test that is coming up, is 1/3 their grade. That WOULD change things.

[Uncle Cracker]

If, as they say, it won't affect the grades, then why would anybody want to do it? If anything, this exercise will teach the kids the questionable ethic of "What's in it for me?".

[LCHIEN]

"[Principal] Shepherd rejected the suggestion that the school is selling grades. Extra points on two tests won't make a difference in a student's final grade, she said."

She must have failed math, herself. Or maybe she bought her math grades up to passing when she was in school... otherwise how would she get to be principal?

[Kristofor]

Q: What are we teaching them?
A: Exactly how the real world works...

Pay to play, it's not what you know it's who you know, marketing trumps engineering, etc...

There will always be jobs, and decent rewards for folks who either have a strong work ethic or excellent skills/aptitude, or both in a best case scenario. For the rest, learning the way the system works is probably more valuable, or at least it avoids a sense of disappointment every time they open the newspaper...

[scmhogg]

I wish they had that sort of system when I was in school. I'm sure I would have done much better.

Steve

[cgallery]

Teachers have been looking for a new way to screw kids ever since they were told that literally screwing them was off-limits.

[Al R.]

If, as they say, it won't affect the grades, then why would anybody want to do it? If anything, this exercise will teach the kids the questionable ethic of "What's in it for me?".

You are very right.
I used to be a teacher in the public system (linguistics) and that kind of things exist. It will teach them that you always need a reward just to be a human.
No counting the general indoctrination been a fact on things like history, social sciences, etc, which are taught not from a critical point of view but from the stand point where you have to believe just the official given version.

The last thing I saw at the end of the last school year (my ever last one teaching!) was every morning kids had to watch the current president of the Unites States giving a short pre-recorded speech with a saint-type-of music in the background.

[tkarlmann]

I lost it when I learned ...

that kids nowadays "don't have the time" to learn cursive handwriting! I guess the're too busy buying & selling drugs and such.