Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
At the school I went to, the introductory science classes were murderous because the science faculty did not want to have people who weren't going to major in the subjects taking upper level courses. And there were the pre-meds, a cutthroat bunch. The humanities faculty were happy to have people from other majors in their upper level courses, and saw no need to weed people out. Grades are an artifact of the system that produces them, not a measure of intrinsic merit.
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Ty - if the grading system requires the prof to limit the number of A's and if an objective standard is used to determine who gets an A and who doesn't (as is the case in science and math classes), that is just not so.
If a prof can give out an unlimited amount of A's and the grades are based on subjective standards (i.e., you get an A if the prof liked your paper), then I agree, grades are an artifact of the system. Typically, you get an A if the prof likes you. That is how humanties classes are graded.
But if there is a curve and an objective standard, then only 10% (or whatever the curve is) of the class can get an A and those who get the A's are those who get the highest number of correct answers when taking a test.
See you liberal arts majors may not realize this but in science and math classes there is a right answer and a wrong answer, and the correctness of the answer isn't determined by a prof's fancy. The grade you get in a science or math class isn't an artifact of the system. It is determined by whether you knew the right answer or not. See this is different from say an English lit class, where you literally just make shit up and if the prof likes the shit you made up, you get an A.
