Thoughts on grading midterms

[brigdh]

1. How do you not know the name of your own species?! We said again and again and again that only modern humans ever lived in the Americas, so if I have to read one more essay about the migration of Homo erectus into Canada, I will hunt these people down and kill them in their sleep. Yes.

2. Mexico is not in South America. No, really. I don't care how many people write this down, it is still not true.

3. Similarly, New Zealand is not and has never been part of Australia.

4. Jesus Christ, people, mammoths have nothing to do with the beginnings of farming. Where did you even get this theory from?

5. No, Australia was not first inhabited "just before WWII".

6. WTF.

ETA: 7. The end of the Ice Age != end of the world.

Comments

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

How old are your students? Please tell me they're under the age of 12.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

No! College students! And with a very small proportion of freshmen, even! I weep.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's ... special. The owrst I remember from my TA days was a lovely young woman who attended only the first hour of every two-hour lecture class, and then had the gall to complain about her well-earned C on the midterm.

She was using the second hour to do homework for other classes. Why? Because she was apparently working three jobs to afford school and therefore deserved an A. Note that this was a private university that did not have a reputation like that of Harvard, where just the name on the diploma would be worth the money. And that a decent state university was in the same city. She said that it was OK to not attend the second hour ebcause the broad outlines were given in the first hour and the second hour was only detail. I pointed out she got her C because she didn't know the details.

She told me she was a business major and had only taken intro to anthro because she heard it was an easy A and she therefore deserved an A. (It was, provided you, say, attended class.)

She also told me, when challenging one of the questions I'd marked wrong, that women had equal status to men in agricultural societies because she grew up on a farm and the women had equal status. *twitch*

Her C stood.

[threewalls]

It wasn't even first inhabited by 'white people' just before WWII. But, yes, grading papers. I feel your pain. What year are they?

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

WTF indeed. Your poor brain!

Thanks to number 4, though, I now have a wonderful mental image of some poor man trying to hitch a mammoth to a plow.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the sympathy.

All years of undergrad, though a greater proportion of upper years (which surprised me, given that it's an intro class).

[rm.livejournal.com]

HitchAMammothToAPlow.com would be a hillarious domain name for tales of horror from TA'ing.

[threewalls]

...that's...

Are they all nuclear physics and IT majors being forced to study anthropology for one semester?

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. Gawd. *hands tissues*

...

*hands bullwhip*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I think I had that same woman on the last midterm! She too got a C, and argued with me about it for 45 minutes, then went to the professor and argued for a similar amount of time, and then came back to me and argued for some more. This despite the fact that she began her essay with an incorrect statement and continued in a similar vein.

Thankfully I am not grading her test this time.

The sense of entitlement of some people is really impressive.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

1. Good God.

2. I was under the impression that this was a fairly selective school. I'd be willing to listen respectfully to an argument that the world is not coming to an end merely because your students don't know these specific facts, that perhaps they know other things that compensate in the general-knowledge arena. But sadly, that wouldn't excuse the fact that they evidently don't know how to look things up, which ought to be basic whatever set of common-knowledge stuff you grew up with.

3. Also, the location of Mexico, at least, ought to be common knowledge. If it were in South America, why would Those Idiots be spending our money on building a big fence?

4. Mammoths? Mammoths???

5. I guess Kipling called it. 'Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/is one with Ninevah and Tyre!'

6. WTF. WTF??

7. It doesn't? You mean, we're not all ghosts, haunting a ruined Earth? Coulda totally fooled me!

8. Because you can't say it often enough for this situation: WTF??

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, awesome.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Mine burst into tears at one point, too, probably about the time she pulled out the "I work 3 jobs to attend this school!" which mostly made me wonder why anyone would want to attend it that badly.

I just couldn't believe the "I deserve an A!" logic about her being an business major.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I totally third this.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

There's a few Fine Arts or biology majors scattered throughout, but the majority are Anthropology majors who really should know better.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Heh. These will be useful.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

That...that's a whole new level of stupid. How can college students possibly be so stupid? How can one graduate from an American high school without knowing that Mexico is not part of South America?

I've heard that a significant portion of high school graduates couldn't pass the GED exam. I believe it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I'm grateful that no one has cried at me yet, because I would have a hard time refusing to change a grade. I am weak in the presence of tears.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I never had a problem with news articles decrying the lack of geography classes today, since it's a subject I've always found incredibly boring. And yet, if this the typical understanding of basic geography, maybe we need to make people sit through a couple of years and memorizing capitals and locations.

I think, in fact, Those Idiots are part of what's contributing to all the "Mexico is in South America" comments. Because, you see, those Mexicans are foreigners! They're not like us! They couldn't be North Americans!

I just can't comprehend the end of the world comment. The handwriting on that test is particularly bad, so I'm hoping I misread it, but I couldn't come up with anything else that would make grammatical sense with the rest of the sentence (logical sense, of course, having already being given up).

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I know! It seems impossible.

But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if a great deal of these people wouldn't pass the GED.

[graene.livejournal.com]

And I whine about what I'm given? Please tell me you feel free to splash the red ink around? I feel inhibited because of the 'tender age and ego' of my students, but then they don't deserve it nearly as much.

Home schooling continues to strike me as a more appealing option every day.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

My professor has vowed to back me and the other TA up on any grades we give, and has ranted about students who think they're entitled to an A just because they studied, so I am happily allowed to take off all kinds of points.

Home schooling certainly would improve educational standards, but- at least in my experience- often seems to result in weird socialization.

WTF

[beemerbike.livejournal.com]

The moron who gave them money to go to college needs to ask for a refund. The problem is most only think about being with people who are erect or are the people who are erect.

I bet every one of them passed those stupid 'no child left behind' exams, too.

GRRR!

[miep.livejournal.com]

maybe they read this page and were confused:

http://www.newser.com/tag/12577-1.html

[beemerbike.livejournal.com]

I have this imagine in my head and keep laughing so hard I am nearly in tears.