Get rid of grades, college professor suggests
A professor is suggesting colleges get rid of grades because he feels they are not a good enough measurement of how a student is learning.
"They are a cheap shortcut to actually evaluating what a person can do," New School professor Richard Wolff on Tuesday told FOX Business' Stuart Varney on "Varney & Co." "If you want to find out what the genius is inside every person, the uniqueness of us as individuals, you've got to spend the time, the effort to find that."
[Grades] are a cheap shortcut to actually evaluating what a person can do.
Wolff made an example out of Albert Einstein whom he said failed in math and physics while in school. A preliminary check, however, shows Einstein did not fail at those classes, but he did fail an entrance exam to a prestigious university in Zurich, Switzerland. More specifically, historical documents verify that Einstein failed other aspects of that exam, not the mathematical portions.
"All I want is to be able to say to people, 'Look, don't rely on A, B, C -- the way we grade potatoes -- give human beings the respect of finding a way to engage them and find what they can do in a general way,'" Wolff said. "It would cost more money, but either we care about that or we don't as a society."
Give human beings the respect of finding a way to engage them and find what they can do.
Wolff argues giving a letter grade is already a rather subjective measurement of a student's comprehension.
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As another example, he noted that a medical student who received good grades in school might not be good at practicing medicine.