Grades Vs Comprehension, Debate Options

[*Programmer*]

When it comes to Academic "Comprehension". Students tend to worry more about getting an "A" in there classes by remembering the work temporoary with no intension after taking a test or quiz to apply it to there everyday lives. rather then learning the work and applying it into there everyday use so they won't be caught off guard by it again. they forget about it and are just happy with the grade they recieve afterward.

i do admit some work may seem pretty irrelivant. but why does the grade matter more then the work that you should be comprehending and applying to your everyday life. as long as you comprehend it correctly you should be ok. You are at school to learn or that is what i was lead to believe.

NOW...... The "grade" is a alphebetic rating system which a school uses to categorize your strenghs and weaknesses...YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THE GRADE AS THE ONLY REASON YOU ARE DOING ALL THIS WORK. and as such...you should only use it as a TOOL to learn more in the area's you and your teacher feel you need work on. . The Work is what you should be comprehending. NOT THE GRADE. I feel learning is it's own reward.

(i did not have time to SpellCheck this...ill edit with corrections later)

How do you feel about this..? please don't hesitate to disagree with me

[*RiC3xBoy*]

Just to disagree, I'll say that your grade in school reflects how hard one works. For example, when colleges compare an A to a C, they would naturally assume that the A student worked harder than the C.

[sadolakced acid]

on the contrary, i know C students who have much more knoledge than A students.

but the reality in real life is skills, not knowledge.

so what if you had to google for the answer, as long as you could get the answer.

[ComradeRed]

Or the A student is from a grade-inflationary school.

[Levy2k6]

well it also depends on the level of the class..

or you can be extremely lucky and good like me..for ex: i made a 100 on my last 6 weeks and 100 on final for Algebra II last year and i basically sleep all last 6 weeks.. i always slept in there.. doesnt mean im a 100% smart cuz now in precal im getting 80s..

[*RiC3xBoy*]

on the contrary, i know C students who have much more knoledge than A students..

Me too, but there are more A students who are smarter than C.

[ComradeRed]

And there are even more A-students who go to crappy schools that inflate their grades.

It's impossible to judge all high schools on an even field because of different standards.

[sadolakced acid]

and so, alas, the standardized test.

[ComradeRed]

Which itself has a lot of problems.

Enter, the near-random admissions process of today. =)

[dancerellie714]

Me too, but there are more A students who are smarter than C.

not necessarily. if you have a student in a college level class of a subject making a C and a student in an extremely lower level class making an A....the person making a C is probably smarter than the student making an A.

grades are relative to the class you're taking. it's just like with GPAs and how some classes count for more points on the scale because they're harder. the B in the hard class is worth as much as the A in the lower class.

anyways back to the 'comprehension' thing. in a perfect world everyone would remember everything that they ever learned in school, but the fact is, we're human. we cant possibly remember all of it...plus the actual knowledge isnt the part that is being taught in some classes. let's take math for example, i personally will never need to know the sin/cos/tan rules and what the graphs look like after i'm finished with school, and no one else will either, but the point of math class (and the sin/cos/tan rules) is to learn to think logically. Logic is what you're gaining from math and you dont just forget logic. you learn things from school that they arent spoon feeding you from a textbook.

[sadolakced acid]

i thought the purpose of math was to be able to calculate things, like the ammount of wood you need for a bridge, or how long it will take for something to fall.

[dancerellie714]

i thought the purpose of math was to be able to calculate things, like the ammount of wood you need for a bridge, or how long it will take for something to fall.

yeah maybe in the lower level classes. once you get to a higher level in math the things you learn seem very pointless.

if you only need math for simple things like that we would stop taking math after 7th grade.

[sadolakced acid]

well, i dunno, i'm using quite a bit of calculus and trig in physics right now...

[dancerellie714]

^lol yeah physics...physics happends to be another class used to teach people to think logically

[sadolakced acid]

i thought it was so we could calculate how far things like cannonballs would go and stuff, and how much rocket fuel you need to put a man into space, and stuff like that...

[dancerellie714]

yes but you cant possibly think that everyone who takes physics is going to need to know that.

plus if they needed to know about rocket fuel because they're rocket scientists or something i'd hope that they learn that in college or in training when they're becoming a rocket scientist...

[sadolakced acid]

but... why would you take physics if you're not going to be an engineer, or need to calculate the optimum release angle for your pumpkin chunking machine?

i think everyone should know how to calculate how to hit your neighbor with a catapult.

and, physics can also tell you how long you have to wait between a set of two snowballs (at complementary angles) in order to have them both hit the target at the same time.

also works nicely when doing an arrow assault on troops with shields.

shoot up at about 70 degrees...

wait the correct ammount of seconds and fire the second arrow at 20 degrees...

when they raise thier shileds to avoid the arrows comming from above the arrows from the side will take them out...

[dancerellie714]

yes but how often do you have time between snowballs or arrows to calculate things like that?

plus i have to take physics next year whether i'm going to be an engineer or not.

you already take physics?...how old are you..? (off topic i know..sorry)

[sadolakced acid]

ahh well physics isn't required at my school

but i think the skills learned in physics are valuable regardless of future occupations...

it'd be useful in figuring out the forces associated with various things, like a picture on a stand, or something.

and i stand by my pumpkin chunking example. because who doesn't want to be able to hit thier neighbor's dog with a tomato in the first firing, before the neighbors suspect something?

it's not only to teach reasoning, even for non-engineers

i'm 16

[*RiC3xBoy*]

not necessarily. if you have a student in a college level class of a subject making a C and a student in an extremely lower level class making an A....the person making a C is probably smarter than the student making an A.

Well yea... that is what I was implying, two of the same students in the same class, just different grades.

yeah maybe in the lower level classes. once you get to a higher level in math the things you learn seem very pointless.

if you only need math for simple things like that we would stop taking math after 7th grade.

I highly doubt that anything from Algebra - Calculus is "useless". Even building a basic robot takes some mechanics of conceptual physics and algebra/geometry.

[*RiC3xBoy*]

i thought it was so we could calculate how far things like cannonballs would go and stuff, and how much rocket fuel you need to put a man into space, and stuff like that...

It is, but that is just one of the many parts of physics.

[*disco infiltrator*]

Er, she said 7th grade. Algebra 1 is a freshman course. So..she said nothing close to "algebra-calculus is pointless".

[mai_z]

well, i dunno, i'm using quite a bit of calculus and trig in physics right now...

I would actually find that I use math from my discreet math class in physics more than calculus.

I highly doubt that anything from Algebra - Calculus is "useless". Even building a basic robot takes some mechanics of conceptual physics and algebra/geometry.

She hardly said algebra or calculus was "useless", and i'll point out that in all my 12th grade math courses (i'm in Canada btw), it's far different than gr 9 or 10. In earlier grades you learn tools that will help you manipulate math formulas and ideas later on, but as you move up it becomes more of trying to grasp more abstract concepts.




Back to grades vs. comprehension. No system is perfect, and I would agree with anyone who said the system has many many flaws. However, if you took twenty A students, and twenty C students. I would be willing to bet that there would be more 'A' students with better comprehension of the subject. Also, even if some of the "A" students only understood or retained the information for a short period of time (eg. for the time of the test) chances are they would have learned at least a small amount of knowledge which they could use in the future.

[*RiC3xBoy*]

She hardly said algebra or calculus was "useless"

Well she said...

if you only need math for simple things like that we would stop taking math after 7th grade.

.....and in my school, the normal(whatever that means...) students would take algebra in the 9th grade.

[Kahj]

Hmmm I think the origonal poster is grasping something that eludes the other posts. The importance of knowledge and education is beyond "how usefull is this information to me". That's not the point. The world is something of an anigma to most people and it costs them because in an increasingly small world ignorance is NOT bliss. You may not have use for advance calculous or discrete mathmatics but there is no disputing the importance of such things in the world.

Learning is a way to see the world for what it really is, to see the importance of everything. A clear view not only lets us appreciate the complexity of the world but it lets us better navigate our lives through it.