Assigning grades is a complicated matter; every professor has a system.
One of the most popular is the bell curve. This deals with the distribution of grades based on the A-F scale. Simply put, there will be a low number of F’s, a few more D’s, an incredibly high number of C’s, a lower number of B’s and even fewer A’s.
When put in a chart as columns, it makes the shape of the Liberty Bell. Keep in mind the delineation between the bell curve (where the majority of the class is at a C average) and grade curving (where the teacher adjusts the grades based on the performance of students). The problem with this is that teachers are setting students up to do poorly.
My opinion is that if most of the students are averaging 60 percent to 70 percent then the tests are either too hard or the teacher is not doing his or her job of properly educating students.
Sometimes one is the result of the other. It boggles my mind that professors want the majority of their students to be just “average.”
The standards shouldn’t be lowered, but the bar for excellence should be set much higher.
Grades should look more like an uphill slope with the lowest point being F’s, then gradually elevating to the highest point with B’s and finally a downturn for A’s.
Many administrators would see such a scale as “grade inflation.” This negative perspective reduces the majority of students to mediocrity.
A book about the dangers of the bell curve titled “Poisoned Apple: The Bell Curve Crisis and How Our Schools Create Mediocrity and Failure” by Betty Wallace, offers a solution to teachers to actually teach.
At this point, I’m not looking at factors such as grades based on attendance, extra credit or the work that is being done. This is based purely on grades reflecting the knowledge that students gain from a class.
Logically speaking, if students are averaging 70 percent, then they leave the classroom with 30 percent of the material unlearned. It is preposterous.
Even worse is how the bell curve system pits you against your peers. You aren’t receiving a grade based on what you earn.
Rather, you’re receiving a grade based on the projected performance of other students because the material is set so that most of the class receives a C. Inequality such as this has no place in higher education.
As Earnest Ernest remarked on the bell curve system in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Perhaps, like the Liberty Bell, it should be enshrined somewhere as a memorial to more heroic days.”
Hopefully the bell curve shrine will be the trash can.
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