Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Grades
Today we received the last result of the mid-term exam in writing. When a week ago Scott said that some people had not passed this exam, it made me really nervous. I dont like writing exams because writing is not my strong point. During my previous pedagogicla experience at the Moscow Medical Academy I always wondered how my colleagues managed to put marks to their students. For me it was like a torture because I was young and treated my students as friends. They always asked me to let them go earlier ( especially girls) or to miss the session, and I really could not refuse. (Now I understand that I had problems with boundaries.) It is a very hard job to evaluate the knowledge of a student. Usually they themselves know which mark each of them deserves. In Russia we did not use percentage in grades, but only "excellent", "good", "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory". When you speak about a future doctor you cannot avoid considering his or her personality, because for common Russian people the personality of a doctor means more that his or her professionalism (though it is wrong). But life is a chalenge, and education is a part of life and you have to compete with the other students. Marks could not be always absolutely fair, but the system of marks must be reasonable, clear and not formal, if only it could be achieved in the real life.
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7 comments:
You are so right. If I had my way, I would have students grade themselves. Unfortunately, that doesn't work all the time, but I agree, in our hearts, we probably do know the mark that we do deserve. Actually, I hate percentages. I would like to grade students as poor, marginally unsatisfactory, satisfactory, excellent. However, it is me against the system . . .
The grading system in Canada is very strange to me. In Lithuania, students are graded in the scale of 10. I think this system is much better and clearer (at least to me) than A, B, C, D or F. It provides more opportunities - if a student does not deserve A, but B is too low, then you can write him/her a "golden middle" 9 :D
I like the Canadian grading system more than Russian
You are right. Sometimes is difficult to understand what marks means, specially when you know that you deserve a better mark, but it is the system. Sometimes I feel that my life is just a transcript of my marks and my personality and feeling are nothing.
Is it possible to change? I don't thing so, the better thing to do is just accept it, unfortunatelly.
Yulia!~ ur writing is great~~Why are u nervious?
By the way.... I hope I can have a teacher like u...
You know, sometimes I find that the grades are not the reflection of someone's abilities or skills. For example, professionally speaking, the best coalegue I had ever met (one of my University classmates) did not perform well during his undergraduate studies. In fact, he was an average one, but besides the way he approaches the problems and the real life activities makes him unique. In the end, he uses a combination of his knowledge and personal skills.
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