Ok, fair warning, this is going to be a rant post.
This should be Johnny
I’ve just read an article by Joanne Laucius on a new education policy called the “Johnny can’t fail policies”. Very simply, the policy gives high school students the opportunity to redo tests and assignments and receive ‘incompletes’ for missed work and plagiarism instead of a zero. These policies as stated by the Ministry of Education have been implemented to increase student’s success, quoting studies that failing students or giving them zeros does not cause them to learn their lesson and succeed in the long run. This is ridiculous.
Why this is Ridiculous
First off, without viewing the evidence of student achievement vs harsh marking for plagiarized and missed assignments I cannot specifically comment from a quantitative standpoint. However, from a qualitative standpoint I can tell you that this ‘policy’ is absolute bullshit and will only produce low quality, academically unaccountable students.
The western education system has made a choice in terms of how we teach students. We have decided to use standardized testing in order to categorize and stratify students. This is a very good way to let people who are good at crossword puzzles and rote memorization to float to the top. I personally think our system is bullshit but unfortunately I’m not a university dean or in charge of the board of education… yet.
Hello all, today I’m going to explain why studying too much is actually turning you into a dumbass and an all round boring person. I use to study quite a bit (about three hours a day) and this produced a solid B- average and a stressed out university student. What’s more, I was amazed when some of my fellow students didn’t study much at all and were getting much higher marks then me. I initially just thought they were smarter than me. When I later realized that success in University had nothing to do with intelligence, I then started studying how they were doing so well and I was doing so badly.