December 6. 7. 8: Vogon Guard, Grading, Alphabet Soup

"There you are, Arthur," said Ford with the air of someone reaching the conclusion of his argument, "you think you've go problems."

Arthur rather thought he had.  Apart from the unpleasant business with his home planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him already, and he didn't like the sound of being thrown into space very much.

"Try to understand his problem," insisted Ford.  "Here he is, poor lad, his entire life's work is stamping around throwing people off spaceships . . ."

Arthur is trying to convince the Vogon guard not to throw him and Arthur into outer space.  He's doing this by appealing to the Vogon's sense of worth.  It's not working all that well.  The Vogon guard likes stamping around and throwing people off spaceships. 

Sometimes, as a professor, I feel like I'm trying to reason with whole classrooms of Vogon guards.  And I mean that in the nicest way possible.  Teaching requires a whole lot of skills--performance, psychology, mastery of subject, and lots of tedious grading.  But more about that in a little bit.

Greetings loyal disciples from a not-so-loyal blogger saint.

Yes, I have been absent for several days.  If you have been concerned about me, I apologize.  If you have been relieved that you haven't had to read my daily rants/complaints/dark musings for over three days, then you're welcome.  I have reached that point in the school year and holiday season where every day and night brings work and grading and writing and shopping and cooking and various school/church programs.  My record for posting in the next week or so will be spotty at best, at least until after the university semester is over.

This time of year can be quite overwhelming.  It can also be soul-filling, as well.  At the moment, I fall more toward the overwhelming side of that scale.  As soon as I'm done typing this blog post, I will be returning to grading.  A LOT of grading.  While this grading avalanche is of my own making--and I know there are some of you reading this who are thinking "Tough shit, Mr. English Professor"--I have to say that I find the system of awarding letters to work submitted in a classroom not really conducive to real learning.  Let me explain.

The students whom I encounter in a classroom usually fall into three separate categories:

1. The high achievers who've always gotten A's in every class they've ever taking.  Getting anything less than a perfect score is anathema to these students, so their classwork is geared not toward learning the material fully.  Instead, their work is all about figuring out how to get that big, fat A at the end of the semester.  Once the semester is over, they will do a memory dump of the class material in order to make room for the next semester's classes.
2. The strugglers who've always tried hard to be high achievers but have continually fallen short.  These students have never really learned the system the way the high achievers have.  The strugglers have a different set of skills that don't always translate into A's in the classroom setting.  Don't get me wrong.  Strugglers are hard workers.  They put forth just as much effort as the high achievers do, but their efforts generally don't translate into high grades.  Because the educational system doesn't make room for their talents, which may be more physical or tactile or visual or oral.  Strugglers are happy with B's and C's.
3. The unmotivated who've gone through their whole educational careers just not giving a shit about subjects in which they're not interested.  These students will put forth effort, but only in the subjects that really engage their interests.  And the subjects that engage them are sometimes not taught in the classroom.  Therefore, knowing how to fix a comma splice or to apply the Pythagorean theorem is usually not very high on their priority lists.  The unmotivated can come across as lazy or downright disrespectful in the classes that do not hold their interests.  They're not lazy or disrespectful.  Well, most of them aren't.  The unmotivated suffer from a variety of problems.  Learning disabilities.  Mental illness.  Family issues.  Sometimes addictions.  They are the products of a society that has failed them on many levels.  The unmotivated are unphased when they receive D's and F's.

Now, I teach mostly general education courses, supposedly designed to meet the needs of all these groups of students.  It's a struggle sometimes, because I have to teach at a level that will challenge the overachievers, foster the strugglers, and engage the unmotivated.  I think that the alphabet soup of grading places too much focus on the product and not enough on the process.  In my classes, students know that they have to get at least a C in order to pass and receive credit.  That's the goal for most--not real learning, but learning just enough.

That is my semester rant about grading.  It's an artificial system that doesn't really generate genuine knowledge.  It's a system that tells all students--Vogons, overachievers, strugglers, and unmotivated--that they're only as good as the first few letters of the alphabet.  Period.

Now, Saint Marty has to get back to that alphabet soup.