I knew it. I just knew it.
I could never prove it and of course, as with most things that bug me, the subject matter wasn't important enough to pursue with hours of research. But now I have facts.
Marks in the field of higher education today are inflated compared with those of a few decades ago.
Mind you, subject matter was a little easier when I went to school. We only had three things to study and remember back then. How to start fire, why the sky is blue (hey, I grew up in the '60s, the sky was important to us) and who won the Pepsi challenge? I'll give you a hint ... Coca Cola didn't.
All the rest hadn't been invented yet, except for flying. They had figured out why heavier than air machinery could stay up there. The details concerning that escaped most of us.
Now mind you, the research I am quoting pertains to university and college researchers in the United States, but hey, it's valid if it comes from North America and I need it for a stupid column.
Grade inflations at 200 universities where letter grading is used showed that students achieving A grades were now at 43 per cent overall, which was an increase of 28 per cent since 1960 and even up 12 per cent from 1988.
Those achieving the B grades were about the same, but those getting C, D or F were practically non-existent at about 10 per cent.
So that tells me that today's educators are just handing out superior grades unencumbered by the need to check to see if the student knew the subject material or not. As long as they can communicate, that's good for a B. If they can communicate using complete sentences without the F word ... A plus.
I mean I kinda wondered about today's marking and grading standards. Is the new method of grading that we've just been introduced to just a smokescreen to hide incomplete assignments and lazy teachers?
Probably not.
But come on folks. OK, I realize I came from the backwoods of east central Saskatchewan, but in my high school (yes we had one ... it was a pilot project) the only students who received 90 or 92 per cent were Sandra and Judy. Christine and Michael could pull one off in math and biology once in awhile. The rest of us were aligned in the also-ran category, the non-scholarship, no award, no reward 63 to 78 per cent team. We were competent, not illustrious. Out of 48 or 50 try-to-be scholars, four actually made it to the 90 per cent range and six went on to university. OK, seven in my graduating year, we were an exceptionally bright crew!
But now, it seems 80 per cent of the high schoolers get 80 per cent or more, or is that an M now or a Q or a T-squared by four? Now they either complete something or are progressing as planned (theirs or ours, I'm not sure), or some other vague indication that the little darling is totally succeeding in everything they touch.
Bitter?
Of course not. I love it that today's children are so much smarter than we were. After all, it's called progress. Someone has to know how to program cellphones and repair wormed computers, and it ain't moi.
But I think they just had to give up on handing out marks in the high 90s to everyone who could write their name legibly because the next generation was going to have to get 110 per cent and that's just silly.
And in case you're wondering, all you critics of former educational institutions, my highest mark ever was an 88 per cent in a course that I took by correspondence which they now call distance education.
Let me tell you, I was distance deprived then too.
Next week: Why long division doesn't matter in today's new society.
