Monthly Archive for February, 2008

grade inflation: safer than a punch in the neck

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 29, 2008
in Academia and Paedagogy
. 6 Comments

One of the topics that’s always debated in academics is grade inflation. You know: the process whereby students get more points for less work; the system whereby grades lose value as a C becomes the new F and a B the new C; the hideous realm where brown is the new black and orange is the new pink (and whoever said that was seriously disturbed). Professors give fewer Ds and Fs; most of the grades range from A to C. While C used to signify “average” or “adequate,” it now signifies a serious shortcoming about which the student must bitch, moan, and cry during her professor’s office hours. C is a tragedy; everyone expects an A.

Why is this happening? Why are we rewarding slack and disinterested work with a B, and completely incompetent sludge with a C? A passing, “average,” “adequate” C?

In an effort to track how much this happens, most academic departments monitor the grade statistics for all their courses. When I taught writing at Zembla University, all of us in the English department would receive a printout at the end of every term with the grade statistics. All the names would be erased except our own, so we could see where we fit in, statistically, with the rest of the department, but without seeing which classes were whose. As far as I know, the department never used this information, it was purely “informational” for the instructors — a subtle way of nudging us into line, I suppose. I was never sure which line to get in, though, as my classes were like the majority of them — a handful of As, a majority of Bs and Cs, and a couple of Fs for whoever had been caught plagiarizing or simply hadn’t turned in any assignments. If students did all of the assignments in those writing classes, they were all but guaranteed to pass. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the way things are meant to be, but it seems to be the way they are.

On that sheet there were always a few mysterious holdouts whose grades represented a real bell curve — mostly Cs, several Ds and Bs, only a few As and Fs. Did they plan it that way? Were they constantly inundated by requests from the tearful D students, begging them for a C? There were also always a few mega-inflaters (should we call them fluffers?) whose students mostly earned As with only a handful of Bs, and no, those were not the honors sections.? Surely the work of those classes couldn’t all have been at A level, right? But I’ll bet those softies got some great fucking course evaluations at the end of the term!

And there, you see, is the crux of it all. The fucking course evaluations. When I taught in Zembla, I rarely received any negative evaluations. Every now and then there would be one student who, for reasons completely inscrutable to me (for I am practically perfect in every way) hated my guts, and would write something ridiculous on the evaluation like “this course made me contemplate suicide,” or “teacher has messy handwriting” (patently untrue; I have impeccable penmanship), or simply “I hated all this reading.” As those evaluations were the exception rather than the rule, I never worried much about them.

Here at Wordsmith, though, the general trend of evaluations is much different. For one thing, while the Zemblan students have the option of signing their comment sheets (and most do), the Wordsmith kids are not asked to sign them. In Zembla, only signed evaluations are “official” and thus part of your file; here there is no such distinction. All are anonymous; all go into the file. Students have all of the power and none of the accountability. Which is awesome.

I read those stacks of comment sheets with great trepidation, especially after having heard that one dear colleague received almost nothing but negative ones, and another had received some kind of complaint that her (short, unpolished, unremarkable) fingernails distracted her students from learning. WTF, right? I was not looking forward to seeing what the chowderheads decided to say about me.

For two of my classes (one writing class and one lit class), the evaluations were mostly positive, with a couple of complaints about the readings and a few calls for more lecture and less discussion. This was, I thought, to be expected.? Students here mostly study technical subjects (medicine, aerospace engineering, etc) and are used to being taught via powerpoint presentation. Class discussions of literary texts are not their cup of tea, usually, but I am “committed” to “fostering” an “intellectual” “discourse” “community,” and all that stuff, so the discussions will have to stay. This is all fine.

Then, though, I had this one other class — my other lit class. They had been the weird class all semester. The room was a stadium-seating-style lecture room (ruling out the possibility of my West-Coast Hippy-Style circle discussions), which never really felt comfortable. The students in this section were largely detached and unmotivated, and, of all three courses I taught, they had the lowest grades by far. On the essays and exams, my other lit class had an average 12-15 points higher than this class. That’s more than one letter grade higher — it’s very unusual. As I tallied up the final grades at the end of the semester, I saw that not a single student in this class had gotten an A — they were all Bs and Cs, and, I think, a couple of Ds. It was the most bizarre looking final grade list I had ever seen. Not a single A: no one was even close. The highest grade was around an 85.

And, of course, this was the class that screwed me on the evaluations. For example, under the question “What about the course distracted you from learning,” one student wrote “the way the instructor dresses.” Oh no he didn’t? Oh yes, he did. One colleague told me that this is probably “code” for my tits; another one told me “dude, that’s not even code.” Regardless of my breasts and their distracting presence in the classroom, the kids had a lot of other shit to say. One of them even claimed that he “obviously” knew a lot more about “the subject” than I did, which, I guess, explains why he got a C in a sophomore-level survey class — a level of greatness that I in all my inadequacy have never achieved.

My instinct in this matter is to respond with a fist to the sky, a resounding “FUCK YOU,” and a few too many whiskey sodas. Unfortunately, I will have to address the student evaluations in a more professional manner, as I have my annual review coming up on Monday. In preparation for the review, I have had to submit copies of my syllabi, assignment sheets, and exams for all my courses as well as a self-assessment wherein I explain my teaching philosophy and how it relates to my experiences so far at Wordsmith. In writing that statement I had to seriously resist the temptation to use the phrase “dickless illiterate retards.” I feel that would not have been received well.

In spite of the fact that I have prepared and submitted all of this stuff to the person who will be reviewing me, I already know (via people who have had their reviews already) that the entire process is focused on the evaluations. They discuss them with you and offer suggestions for improvement (”The department recommends you stop having tits”). They also give you some kind of rating, which I believe is on a scale of “shitty” to “excellent,” and then decide whether to keep you around for another year and whether to give you a raise based on that rating. The rating? Based solely on your course evaluations.

Yep, that’s it. Nothing else but the evaluations determines whether you will have a job next year, and, if you do manage to stay, what your salary will be. And this is why I plan to practice more grade inflation from here on out: in the classes where grades were higher, students were happier and evaluations were nicer. In the class whose grades sucked a big hairy one, so did the evaluations. Higher grades = nicer evaluations = more money in teachers’ pockets. And there you have it, professors of the academe.

Unless we change the way we evaluate non-tenure-track faculty (who can’t earn promotions based on research, service, or outreach; only on teaching; only on evaluations), the process of grade inflation is never going to stop.

While I’d like to respond to this by punching several people in the neck, starting with the student who thinks my tits distract him from learning, I think I will take a few deep breaths and then start making up a really, really easy final exam.

this is actual: the things they wrote

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 27, 2008
in Grammar and Paedagogy
. 6 Comments

I have been holed up in my office for the past week and a half, coffee and red pen in hand, grading approximately 120 student essays. They were completely brilliant, as you can imagine. Because I care about you, readers, and because caring means sharing, I share just a smidge of their brilliance with you:

Almost every one of their words has meaning and almost every line inhales a visual descriptor.

[Poet] was most notably known for his poem “Ode to a [Thing],” which introduced his new informal poetic language and bizarre form by using numerical numbers in between stanzas. [The stanzas were numbered, is all. How bizarre. -- AV]

In the fifth stanza, [Poet] concludes what he learns from the urn in his attempts to identify with its never changing, discretionary form.

[Lady Poet] starts the stanza with a, this is it, it’s now or never feel.

Not once in [Poets] writings does he speak of a higher power or of God. I believe that because of [Poets] lack of spirituality this is the reason he has the negative and accepting of unhappiness attitude. ["Not once," the student writes, of course, after having read the complete works of the poet in question cover to cover. -- AV]

I almost want to say he uses personification but I feel his techniques in describing the soul are just talent and much deeper then a word.

The line that uses the “:-” paints a brighter picture. [Oh no she didn't. Please do not tell me this girl thinks the poet is using an emoticon! -- AV]

He uses words like these to create the feeling of what he feels.

This poem as I have described is really about death and other depressing ideas and is therefore not a romanticism poem at all.

Dear Dog, teaching is so fucking rewarding! Send help.

romanticism cage match: wordsworth and shelley

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 19, 2008
in Academia, Books, Cagematch and Depressertation
. 8 Comments

I have always thought there was an interesting overlap in the Romanticist and Modernist aesthetics, which may be why I nearly ruined a perfectly good pair of pants when I first read these two (already familiar) works in one sitting. The same kind of Modernist fantastic phenomenological ethos is right there, all ripe and delicious, see. First there is this:

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:–feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:–that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,–
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

(W. Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey…“)

And then there is this:

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpretation of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide?abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.

[...]

It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry“)

See also my Modernism Cage Match. Don’t you feel all sweaty now?

dulce et decorum est / pro cortina mori

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 19, 2008
in Books and Paedagogy
. 3 Comments

Today I am lucky enough to shirk the duty of teaching my first two classes. Instead of listening to me yak on about the pleasures of enthymemic logic, they will get to listen to some “instructional” librarian tell them all about the different databases that could help them with their current research project. I, for one, am actually pretty excited about this, as I hope I’ll be learning about some new databases that I don’t already use, but I can bet that the kids will be a little less “amped” about the whole thing. I do hear that the librarian brings candy, usually, so that could be good. Too bad I can’t just have my friend Sho come do the talk; the kids would totally dig him, because he is cool and stuff.

In other news, I am doing The Death of Ivan Ilyich this week, which I love even more than I remembered I did (in contrast, for example, to last week’s The Cherry Orchard, which, it turns out, I love significantly less than I remembered I did). Parts of that thing were simply perfect. Lately I have been finding myself more completely absorbed by the reading for my class than I usually am by things outside my field of expertise.  A couple of weeks ago, for example, I practically had to go find a new pair of pants after I read Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” in one sitting.

This is all excellent for me, but my spirits admittedly dampen when faced with a room full of undergrads who “just don’t know what to do with poetry,” because, I assume, they only know how to talk about plots and characters and heroes. (Nevermind that poetry often has all of those things; they are convinced that it’s nothing more than a complex web of “symbols” out to snare them at every turn.) I still say the simple act of opening a fucking dictionary would put them miles ahead of where they currently are. Today, for example, I plan on asking them why it was so important to Ivan Ilyich that his life be “decorous.” How much you want to bet that they launch some argument about his obsession with interior decorating, and oh! the irony of the curtains for which he sacrificed that decorous life.

keep your nougat away from me, perv!

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on February 14, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich and Paedagogy
. 6 Comments

I suppose it’s Valentine’s Day yet again, and I think you know how I usually feel about that.  This year it’s more of the same: Valentine’s Day generally sucks, being mostly about fake romance manufactured via roses (creepy), boxed chocolate (gross), and heart-shaped jewelry (gauche).

I must admit, though, I do feel approximately four percent more susceptible to the cruelties of love than usual: usually I am an ice-cold, steely-eyed, iron-hearted machine, going through life just waiting for my chance to punch a knucklehead in the neck.

Lately, however, I seem to be all a-twitter, engaged in wishful hygiene and beautification activities like nail-lacquering, leg-shaving, and lip-glossing.  I should probably attempt to snap out of this weakened crush state before I give absolutely all my money to the pretty people at Sephora.  On the other hand, it is kind of fun — it would really only be more so if boys weren’t such clueless fucking idiots.

In other, more scholarly news, I have read my course evaluations and I have a few things to say about them.  That will have to wait for another post, though.  In the meanwhile, I hope that you are all surviving this awful joke of a holiday and that no one has made you any creepy, nougat-filled demonstrations of love.