Reality check. Car gets stolen. You tell the cops the exact location of car. They tell you to fill out paperwork. You pick up said paper work two weeks later. Insurance does ( or doesn't ) do it's thing.
I would have a totally different feeling - if I believed that the cops would 'do' anything. They have impressed me, and my five decades on this planet, at the lengths they will go to not do their job ( or flat out do the opposite if it fits their wants. )
Really?... Isn't the 'underlying' skill ( and it was hard for me to write that last word )... being able to communicate? Are we really going to call this anything but the ability to write one's thoughts intelligently?
I just hope it isn't another ( there's been more than one ) NASA level "announcement" on astrobiology that's going to rewrite the "book". These sorts of headline grabs do nothing to help in the end. This is feeling like another one of these, and I'm hoping to be proven wrong - as who wouldn't love a mr. fusion in their future.
My 'fav' class as an undergrad was also the hardest. I was 'lucky' to have received a 'C'. There was one 'A', one 'B', my grade ... in a class of perhaps 30. When a grad student asked about the curve on the first exam - the prof calmly explained that he wasn't going to be that prof...
That prof being one that curved everyone up to make their life easier by keeping everyone happy. Rather, we needed to learn the material and figure it out asap.
I learned from that class, I didn't know how to learn - and was totally confused, as I was a great student with great grades, etc. But that talk hit me hard, I realized that he was correct - and I needed to change.
That wake up call, nearly three decades ago, has since allowed me to learn novel tools, technologies, etc - where others struggle. I have benefited personally incredibly from knowing how to learn - many won't understand what I'm saying nor will they realize why it is important. Too often, my peers - other prof's will make an easy class/test/etc to make everyone happy and pass that buck forward (after all, admin is happiest when the customers are happiest). Are we really helping these students though?
I've been lucky to work with teams from Brazil, India, China, etc - these folks have been pushed in ways that would seem inhumane by the standards I'm reading in the comments. These folks are the ones that industry (and the individual for that matter) wants and will want, as they know what they are doing and are able to learn novel technologies as they emerge.
I tell my students the importance of learning how to learn, that their competition isn't in the room with them - it's thousands of miles away...They just want an 'A' for that six figure job that they have been promised. Indeed, whenever I hear that "six figure paycheck" my heart aches and I'm saddened that someone in advising/online/etc keeps pumping this idea out. In my opinion, a bit of discomfort in a synthetic environment like academia - for the possibility of a lifetime of ease now being taboo is beyond saddening.
I don't see how in a class of 30 students, having only 1 A and 1 B is a indicator of a good teacher. By definition the grades should reflect how well the students learn the material. Making your class artificially hard doesn't do anything to offset artificially easy courses. A class where 93% of students didn't properly master more than 80% of the material demonstrate a failure of the teacher not students. I am glad you gained something positive from that class, but I would say that is despite the professor, not because of them. Having good or bad grades is currently a poor reflection of how well a student will pickup new technologies exactly because of skewed grading methods like that of your professor. I am glad you gained something positive, but I wonder how many promising students were discouraged and pursued other interests over the years due to opaque testing standards. Tests are supposed to gauge how much information students are retaining from a teacher. In a high level class cross-listed for graduate students, the concern of lazy students shouldn't be an issue.
Reading through all the responses...My personal take on what I've been reading.
The amount of cheating that I ( and my fellow professors ) have seen during these past few years has absolutely exploded (in a way that is beyond belief, and I've been doing this for a while).
The techniques others have outlined/alluded to ( camera off, a big life event just happened, looking off camera, noise, etc ) are all things that I've been seeing. And whilst this is nothing to be lauded, after all how many vectors are there, I do think that perhaps a solution is looking towards academics. (just saying...)
