A perfect educational system would have every student getting 100% on every test, right? That's the ideal. Unless, of course, that the purpose of the educational system isn't actually to educate people but instead to weed out certain classes of people.
"We want the best" is what every employer will always say but the truth is that they really only need someone who can do the job. We as a society put way too much importance and faith in credentials.
Then perhaps there should have been more available to be learned. If most people are above 90%, then you're holding the best back. (If you're saying that more should be taught, but not be on the test... Why?)
The only way for everyone to reach full understanding at the same time is for everyone to be the same or for some people to have been held back. I view the latter as being far more achievable than the former. I would also say that holding the best back... is probably not what we want the #1 ranked University in the world to be doing.
> A perfect educational system would have every student getting 100% on every test, right? That's the ideal. Unless, of course, that the purpose of the educational system isn't actually to educate people but instead to weed out certain classes of people.
No, a perfect educational system would not have every student getting 100% on every test because not every student is the same and also such a test fundamentally provides no information to the tester.
A perfect system would probably have every student on an individual (or near-individual) learning schedule, and even there I would expect perfectly calibrated tests to average around 50% with adjustments as required for psychological impact or to improve recall. From that, you can identify what elements need to be covered again, and what can be skipped when moving forward because they are already known.
> "We want the best" is what every employer will always say but the truth is that they really only need someone who can do the job. We as a society put way too much importance and faith in credentials.
This is probably correct for your average community college. It might be correct for a average state school.
When you get to 'literally the number one Univeristy on the planet', perhaps employers are also actually looking for the best people on the planet.
There is, and you can go get a masters or PhD if you want that.
> If most people are above 90%, then you're holding the best back.
The Feynmans of the world are perhaps not too concerned with their GPA.
> perhaps employers are also actually looking for the best people on the planet
In that case, they probably shouldn't be looking at grades at all.
This is a ridiculous statement. Let's assume you have a room full of perfect students. You spent the week teaching them about subject X and came up with a test to determine if they got the gist of what you taught.
On Friday you give them that test and every student gets 100%. By your reasoning, because they all got 100% this test was a waste of time and would "provide no information to the tester."
My argument is that the test served its purpose: It demonstrated that everyone understood the subject and you can move on to the next. Could some students have absorbed far more information in that same amount of time? Probably. Is that the teacher's job though? No. Their job is to teach a certain subset of a subject and do their best to make sure every student understands it well enough that they can move on to the next.
The problem with this method is that smarter students get bored out of the minds and end up feeling like they're in prison for their academic career. However, the system itself wasn't made for them. It was designed for the average.
If you feel that grades should be used to separate or weed out students who don't perform as well you're trying to twist "education" into something that it's not: A caste system.
I would say I am trying to return education to its original purpose, instead of the world's worst but also most common form of daycare.
My AP Physics class had 20 kids in it, 10 of us got 5s and 10 got 4s on the AP Physics exam. Should some of us had our scores lowered for a better bell curve? No; he was just a really great, engaging teacher who pushed us to achieve.
There is no problem if a subset of the total population does very well (or very badly). But if half of all AP takers got 5s and the other half got 4s, then it would be time to reexamine the test.
Similarly, if there was a study group in a class that did very well, that's no problem. But if nearly the entire class gets As, that signals that the class could be more rigorous, cover more material, etc.
I get why they don't do this — they don't want to disadvantage students as they go looking for jobs. But some schools are happy to have a reputation for for tough grading. My college had freshman courses where only 10% could get an A or A- (this amounted to 3 students, since the classes were capped at 30). And the incoming average SAT was 1520, so pretty much all of the kids were "A students" coming in. Among graduate schools and top employers, it's known to be a school that is very academically challenging.
Maybe, maybe not. If you spot check and a statistically significant sample shows kids are indeed learning first year college physics effectively in AP courses, perhaps you do a little happy dance and be glad something's working.
Employers don't seem to be hiring Harvard grads and going "holy shit this person doesn't know anything they're supposed to know" to half of them. Employers seem to be generally happy what an A student from Harvard comes to them with.
> But if nearly the entire class gets As, that signals that the class could be more rigorous, cover more material, etc.
Or that you've got a self-selecting population of high-achievers.
> My college had freshman courses where only 10% could get an A or A- (this amounted to 3 students, since the classes were capped at 30).
That's depressing. "You're an A student, but I'm required to give you a B for organizational reasons" is an absoutely nasty thing to do to a college kid.
That's because they (1) know there's rampant grade inflation and (2) use other indicators to assess candidates. And I've definitely heard people grouse about Ivy League grads, and how they'd rather hire from other places.
> That's depressing. "You're an A student, but I'm required to give you a B for organizational reasons" is an absoutely nasty thing to do to a college kid.
"Organizational reasons"? No. It's because they view grades as a tool to let kids know how they are doing compared with their peers. If you don't want to go to a school like that, there are plenty of grade-inflationary schools out there for you to go to.