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Readers!
My annual birthday-month fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now on-going. Not only do your donations help pay my bills, they give me the freedom to speak honestly about science and culture, instead of being forced to write it as others demand.
Please consider donating by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The coming dark age: A California school district has instituted a new grading scale that allows students to pass with a score of only 20 out of 100.
Some teachers have tried to hang on to the traditional grading system but have been tripped up by a blanket new policy that students, even if they do not hand in homework or take a test, get 50 percent. Under the new rule, it’s possible for a student who skips a test to receive a better grade than a student who takes the test and does poorly. “This is just incomprehensible. I don’t have words,” said Lanny Lowery, who has taught English at Rancho Cotate High since 1980
And then there’s this: NYC schools passing failing students, colleges accepting them.
In other words, you can now graduate having learned absolutely nothing. Should make for an interesting future for the student and the society that student helps shape.
My annual birthday-month fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now on-going. Not only do your donations help pay my bills, they give me the freedom to speak honestly about science and culture, instead of being forced to write it as others demand.
Please consider donating by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The coming dark age: A California school district has instituted a new grading scale that allows students to pass with a score of only 20 out of 100.
Some teachers have tried to hang on to the traditional grading system but have been tripped up by a blanket new policy that students, even if they do not hand in homework or take a test, get 50 percent. Under the new rule, it’s possible for a student who skips a test to receive a better grade than a student who takes the test and does poorly. “This is just incomprehensible. I don’t have words,” said Lanny Lowery, who has taught English at Rancho Cotate High since 1980
And then there’s this: NYC schools passing failing students, colleges accepting them.
In other words, you can now graduate having learned absolutely nothing. Should make for an interesting future for the student and the society that student helps shape.
My wife and I were interested in sponsoring a scholarship; at one point! We gave that up as the standards we graduated under are no longer anything but history.
Good grief. Why bother with grades at all?
Of course colleges take underperforming students, they charge kids for years of remedial or introductory coursework. And even if you were a good student in high school, you are forced to fill up several years of study in areas not related to your major.
Robert wrote: “In other words, you can now graduate having learned absolutely nothing.”
Of course the government wants the current students to learn nothing. If they learn too much, they will question authority. They will have the knowledge to be skeptical of Al Gore (et al.) when they tell us that the globe has a fever. If they know nothing, then they have to believe whatever the politicians tell them.
Ironically, “Question Authority” was the motto of the same generation that gets so offended when their own authority is questioned.