Grading Tests

Arrggghhhh!!!!! I hate grading papers!

Every Summer my course load drops. So this year I decided to pick up some extra income by grading papers at the University where I'm pursuing my Master's degree in Math. What was I thinking?

It's the first test of the second semester calculus class, so many of the questions are review from Calc I. Not just some, but most of the students have no idea what they're doing. On the simple, point-for-the-taking questions, they have no clue. Why are they even in this class? They don't seem to care about learning the material. They don't seem to care about developing good work or study habits. They just want their degrees and their good paying jobs.

I see this same attitude in some of my students at the community college where I teach. But the math department at the CC has a strict grading scale; if students want to pass they have to learn the material. The same is not the case at the U. Students know that all they have to do is get higher scores than half the class and they'll get a C. It's common knowledge that any professor who flunks more than half of their class will draw the ire of parents desperate to protect their children from the consequences of their inactions. So the kids aren't stupid. It's socially acceptable, even cool, to hate math. They'd rather do something besides study. So they slack off and cross their fingers that half the class is more clueless than they are.

I talk to the old-timers and see that this trend has been going on for a while (I'll post the paper with the hard data as soon as I find it). The schools lower their standards to avoid parental complaints, and the students respond by lowering their standards even further. This should have been predictable when you've got a large percentage of students who are only interested in squeaking by with a C. How bad will it get before anything is done about it? If we take the public school system for an example, pretty bad.