This is the introductory talk Shelly Kagan gives to his Death class. He starts by explaining the course, which is probably of interest only to those with a penchant for that kind of thing (if you are one of them, the whole lecture series seems to be available on-line so "Enjoy!"). But 21 mins in he starts to talk about grading, and to defend himself against the complaint of being one of Yale's harsher graders. It reminded me of some of the things TLR has written, so I thought it was well worth sharing.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
I'm assuming he's taking a stand against grade inflation.
I understand the desire to counteract grade inflation, however, a response to it would be best done as a university-wide policy, not by an individual professor. You don't want to just give out an average grade of C because you simply want the average to be C while other people want the average to be a B, but you also want other people to know that a C is an average grade. That is, presumably he's not just giving out lower grades because he wants to be harsh. But if you're one of only professors doing that, then other people will read the transcript and think that the student did poor work to earn a C, rather than average work.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
You are correct, because I didn't want to wait for 21 minutes of video to load to simply hear a discussion of grade inflation that would probably be similar to ones I've heard before. Am I wrong in my assumption?
That's generally the reason given for comparatively harsh grading.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
I didn't want to wait for 21 minutes of video to load ...
LOL Then it would have been wiser not to offer a deliberately uninformed opinion, I think. You look as if you are taking issue with me for the sake of it.
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Last edited by mickthinks; 10-26-2009 at 02:57 PM.
Reason: typo
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
For some people, the actual lectures might be more intresting than Mick's starting this thread for the sole purpose of troll baiting and launching another discussion about himself. The philosophy of death lectures are all available in both video and in transcripts, as are a whole bunch of other Yale courses. I've read most of them, including the philosophy of death lectures; it's very intresting stuff. They also have online courses in the American Civil War, 20th century and classical literature, physics, cosmology, the Old Testament, etc. Quite good. Yale lectures for free! Beats Mickthinks lectures!
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
FWIW mick doesn't seem to have started this thread as troll-bait, and erimir's assumption about grade inflation was sorta wrong, although mick's somewhat condescending responses and the chick'n'muck roadshow don't exactly do any favours for discussion.
Anyway, I thought the grading stuff was a bit interesting.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
I thought it was interesting too. In the one Philo class I took in college, I definitely found paper-writing a very different discipline from writing the English and History essays I was accustomed to. I'm sure I would have got a C or two had my prof insisted on an excellent-good-satisfactory standard.
Thankfully it was a small class (maybe a half dozen students) with lots of direct interaction with the professor. No army of TAs cranking out grades for masses of papers.
I also found it interesting that the whole spiel was addressed to overachiever students accustomed to getting great grades with minimal effort, as opposed to TLR's experience, for instance, of underachieving students accustomed to getting passing grades with no effort.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
For some people, the actual lectures might be more intresting than Mick's starting this thread for the sole purpose of troll baiting and launching another discussion about himself. The philosophy of death lectures are all available in both video and in transcripts, as are a whole bunch of other Yale courses. I've read most of them, including the philosophy of death lectures; it's very intresting stuff. They also have online courses in the American Civil War, 20th century and classical literature, physics, cosmology, the Old Testament, etc. Quite good. Yale lectures for free! Beats Mickthinks lectures!
LOL Your petty hatred is seeping through your wadded panties again, daveyboy.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
Quote:
Originally Posted by mickthinks
I didn't want to wait for 21 minutes of video to load ...
LOL Then it would have been wiser not to offer a deliberately uninformed opinion, I think. You look as if you are taking issue with me for the sake of it.
Why's that? I never claimed to have watched the video, and that is my opinion about grade inflation - it's better tackled at an institutional level than by individual professors. I was hoping that if I was wrong, it might be explained as to what was wrong with my assumption, and what he actually said without necessitating me watching 21 minutes of a lecture.
Furthermore, your OP doesn't really offer much in the way of your opinion:
Quote:
Originally Posted by mickthinks
But 21 mins in he starts to talk about grading, and to defend himself against the complaint of being one of Yale's harsher graders. It reminded me of some of the things TLR has written, so I thought it was well worth sharing.
...so I don't see why you would get the impression I was trying to contradict an opinion you never offered.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fragment
erimir's assumption about grade inflation was sorta wrong
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
To bounce off the university-wide policy thing you mentioned, he was saying that there is in fact a school-wide policy on what grades mean, he was marking to that, and people should interpret the grades on that basis - A is excellent, B is good, C is satisfactory. He only mentioned grade inflation when he was talking about how he'd tried to find out whether he did in fact grade harder than others and was told that information wasn't given out because it might encourage grade inflation. He also said a bunch of stuff about how writing philosophy papers is hard but you get better with practice, if you put the effort in your grades will get better, and if you show improvement they'll weight the later papers more in your final grade.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. In fact, if those stats are right about overall grade distributions in his class, it's hard to see how he's a tough grader in the final analysis. My own intro phil courses have often seen lower grades than that, and I am not persuaded that the first-year Yale student intake is much better than my university's.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
Are most grade policies not based on some kind of system? Either a curve or points or percentages or something? I understand there is some level of subjectivity, but I fail to see why a "tough" grader would have to justify his system....unless it's not a system at all, but completely arbitrary.
Perhaps my not understanding is due to my not having attended University, but I don't get the controversy.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
This professor uses a basic A = excellent, B = good, C = satisfactory, D = passing, F = failing system, which is the general Yale standard. Of course there's some subjectivity involved in the assessment, but I don't think a points or percentages system would be effective grading philosophy essays and discussions, because it's not so easily quantifiable.
I suspect the controversy lies in the fact that a bunch of high school valedictorians might encounter their first C, D, F grades ever in his class, ergo they see the professor as a tough grader instead of the discipline as a whole new kind of challenge that takes some practice to excel at.
Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
If the Yalies would stop worrying about getting straight "A"s, nobody would care. If the "gentleman C" was good enough for the parents, it should be good enough for the legacies.
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Re: A philosophy professor justifies tough grade policy
Quote:
Originally Posted by erimir
I don't see why you would get the impression I was trying to contradict an opinion you never offered.
Really? Consider:
Quote:
Originally Posted by mickthinks
... so I thought it was well worth sharing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by erimir
... I didn't want to wait for 21 minutes of video to load to simply hear a discussion of grade inflation that would probably be similar to ones I've heard before.