The following are my hopes for my students’ future: - That they have means to ensure security of life (employment, entrepreneurship, etc.) - That they develop the ability to learn different things. Learning is a general technique that requires practice, reflection, and focus. - That the above two equip with them with enough autonomy to carve out the lifestyle that they desire.
The classroom has become a largely transactional place, where a market has developed around “grades”. The instructor provides a set of hoops and tricks the students must learn, and the students will learn to complete this with the minimal effort required to purchase the grade they hope for. The irony is that the grade that is being sold has almost no effect on the instructor’s life, which is where this economic model falls short. Usually a product is presented to a market because the purchase of the product provides a measurable “profit” to the seller. What’s stranger still is that this grade that the student worked so hard to produce is an ill defined commodity in a complex marketplace after leaving the classroom.
In the simplest model, I see four agents in play around the market of grades. 1. The student 2. The instructor 3. The academy 4. The employers
The employers are looking for students who were “good enough”. Oftentimes the question is whether or not a student has a degree from an accredited academy or not, which is why the colloquial phrase “C’s get degrees” seems to carry some weight. To ensure credibility from the employers, the academy would like to require some level of rigor that they would call a C level performance, and once defined, give the degrees to students who pass this benchmark. Now the academy takes inventory of field X and constructs a curriculum which they hope