The Dispossessed Summary

In Alfie Kohn’s essay, the argument of grade expectations being too overvalued rests on a chain of assumptions, but can be argued. Alfie Kohn’s essay portrays that he wants students to find a variety of different purposes in school, and questions the idea of grades being too centralized. In detail, Alfie Kohn explains how students go to school not for the right reasons, but for the wrong reasons instead. For example, the author writes, “They’d scan the catalogue for college courses that promised easy A’s, sign up for new extracurricular-activities to round out their resumes, and react with gratitude when a professor told them exactly what they would have to know for the exam so they could ignore everything else” (para. 8).

Students that get advanced scores on tests are able to move ahead and have better opportunities in their schools, but students that don’t score well are left behind, sometimes barely moving from grade to grade. When making changes to the schooling system, Thomas Jefferson said “twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually” (Congressional Research Service, 269). The president of the United States of America, when setting up a part of the education system, said that only some of the extra-intelligent students would be taken and given amazing opportunities. He himself said that they would be taken from the rubbish,

In Kurt Wiesenfeld’s article “Making the Grade”, he address the issue that students want a higher grade than they deserve. He goes on to prove this be by giving examples of previous students that he has had and what can happen when students get the grades that they want and not what they deserve. In Wiesenfeld’s article he states that about ten percent of students that take his class do not care about their grades until final grades are over. “You might groan and moan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack thereof,” Wiesenfeld stated.

Elona Kalaja Professor Eleni Saltourides ENG 101 Critical Analysis Paper February 21, 2018 Flunking vs Students In the article, “In Praise of the F Word” Mary Sherry argues that flunking students is a method that has been effective in the past and is still effective todays day, and anyone needs to see is as a positive teaching tool. Sherry indicates that flunking students is a method that motivates students to study more and to be more responsible for what is their responsibility. Students challenge is not to get an A or B, but to succeed or to fail.

The main argument is that perceived throughout the reading is that the schools itself is failing students. They see a student who may not have the greatest test scores or the best grades, and degrade them from the idea of being intellectual. Graff states, “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic” (Graff 244). Schools need to channel the minds of street smart students and turn their work into something academic.

In his article “I Just Wanna Be Average”, Rose makes the statement: “students will float to the mark you set” (Rose, 1989, p. 3). This remark is one of the truest I have ever read. When teachers have high expectations, students tend to rise up and meet those expectations. Students want to please their teachers and be praised by them. Rose describes: “I loved getting good grades from MacFarland…

Because of this students will do try for good grades in order to satisfy their parents instead of doing it for themselves to be more

The professor Louis Menand explains in his essay the different theories that exist in different college students and how society always tries to sort people based on their intelligence. Menand explains Theory 1 as students who only want to pursue the career paths that promise greatest personal or financial rewards. All they care about is ace their classes so they can warrantee to get their dreamed job. It doesn’t matter if they don’t understand the course or even if they to learn more. They completed all their classes and they learned what it supposed to learn and basically they don’t want to learn more.

Starting to really care for a good grade at a young age matters. But what some school boards don 't notice it that individual grades are going down. Sure many schools have the smart honor roll kids, but behind that are a bunch of D’s and F’s students. “The importance of physical fitness in the development of cognitive and memory skills have long been extolled by scientists. Cardiorespiratory capacity, muscular strength, and motor ability are components of physical fitness that have been known to improve mental health” (Iyer 1).

“What I Learned and What I Said at Princeton” by David Saderis and “Against School: How Public Education Cripple Our Kids, And Why” by John Taylor Gatto both relate to school using the experience that they encounter in the system. Both writers give example of how the education can affect the student reflection. In “What I Learned and What I Said at Princeton,” Saderis mention how his dad was in character of his school, “He had the whole outfit: Princeton breastplate, Princeton nightcap; he even got the velvet cape with the tiger hanging like a rucksack from between the should blades (Saderis 197).” Failing was not an option for Saderis; his dad is constantly bloated about him as a Princeton student. In the second essay, “Against School:

In Carl Singleton’s article, “What Our Education System Needs is More F’s,” he argues that students aren’t receiving the failing grades they deserve. School systems are to blame for the lack of quality in America’s education. No other recommendation for improvement will succeed. The only way to fix the American education system is to fail more students. According to Singleton, the real root of the issue is with the parents.

Higher education is important to most people, but there are times where it does not take priority. One major issue talked about by Magdalena Kay in “A New Course” is that teachers are teaching to the state test, and not to teach students knowledge. There are two perspectives in this article: one is from Magdalena Kay, an associate professor of English at the University of Victoria, and the other is Christopher Lasch. Christopher Lasch is a historian and a social critic, who does not have an inside sight into the educational system. Lasch is only able to express the perspective of an outsider, unlike Kay who has an insight because she is in the educational system.

The Grading System: Completely Necessary Grades are an important part of the school system. Grades set the extraordinary students apart from the ordinary ones. In Jerry Farber’s essay, “A Young Person’s Guide to the Grading System,” he argues that grades are the only motivation students have in school. Farber even calls it “phony motivation.” He argues that students do not actually learn anything.

Standardized testing has become one of the most popular types of testing in U.S. public schools to date. Students take numerous standardized tests throughout their childhood schooling. (Studies show that a typical student takes an average of 112 mandated standardized tests between Pre-K and 12th grade.) While standardized testing is one of the main procedures that Universities use to judge incoming students, it is not proven to be the most effective way to convey a student’s actual intelligence level. The U.S. should not focus so heavily on standardized testing because it is not a complete accurate measurement of a student’s intelligence.

Teachers like these make high school difficult. This paper discusses traits of bad teachers, and the study habits they fail to create, in their students. Firstly, a bad teacher is someone who comes into class, and reads from his/her notes, and gives one a problem to work on for an hour with no input from the teacher at all. Bad teachers don’t have class management making it easy to clown around and not pay attention.