Well... I just spoke to a high school teacher friend and the endless rewrites/chances issue here (in British Columbia) is PROVINCIALLY LEGISLATED. WFT?!
Bring on the mediocrity
This type of self-entitlement appears to be endemic in other areas of life such as education. The students seem to think they are entitled to good grades for showing up to class and handing in their assignments on time. http://www.nytimes.c.../18college.html?_r=1
-herneith
In my experience, that totally "wouldn't" be because every single one of my high school teachers thus far has said "If you show up in class and turn in [most of] your work, you will pass" or "As long as you show up and turn in your work, you're almost sure to pass" or "As long as you don't sleep, and you turn in your homework and pass the tests with Cs or better, you will pass"...
That isn't an assumption at my high school - it is told to us as fact. Naturally you're going to carry that with you to college/university because you have been told by a certified person, with a degree (!), that you can pass by sitting in your chair and doing the majority of your work.-wreckedcarzz
Brandon, I think what you're teachers are saying is that if you show up for class, pay attention, and complete the assignments and exams you'll pass, correct? I don't see how this causes a sense of academic/intellectual entitlement. It's a very obvious statement - pay attention and do the work. Simple. Your teachers are merely telling you what they require for you to pass the course. Or is it that your peers filter out the work angle and focus on the warm body in a chair aspect? At any rate, and regardless of the answer to that question, what seems to be being missed - at least up here on the wet coast (and it is VERY wet this week) - is the deadline/responsibility part of the equation: tradiationally, one of the requirements for passing a course/graduating from high school in general has been that young adults learn to work under pressure and to complete tasks to a deadline. Failure to
learn teach this lesson is going to cost us all. Big time.
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Anyway, my experience in school was similar to yours, Jim (minus the nuns and corporal punishment - they banned the strap here while I was in kindergarten): we weren't allowed to use calculators until grade 9. We had to master finding square and cube roots on paper first. I find it scary that kids today are ENCOURAGED to use a graphing calculator in calculus and physics classes in high school. Granted, they're not allowed to use them on exams, but why encourage them in the first place? If you don't understand what you are doing and why, what value is there in arriving at the correct answer quickly? I'm getting old...
