Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 06, 2024

Caulfield gets a D minus for not getting the REAL world!

An athlete only needs the metrics until he understand what the specific metrics feel like.

Caulfield missed the point. The world doesn’t rotate around him.

The classmates need the grades for their future employment prospects?

Dr Spaetzle is a genius?

He gives a grade in the midst of his campaign to abolish grades.

And we will grade, promote/retain, and place you by feel. In the meantime the lawyers will grow rich.

Public education is a free (pre-paid; but not by you) smorgasbord of information and skills. Young people don’t all regard that as worthy as food.

If all were left unaccountable for their progress, the relatively low level of completion would be a detriment to society. Grading is an attempt to raise the outcome. Alternative suggestions are welcome.

Caulfield is simply stating that once one ‘gets the tune and the beat,’ one can devise a ‘dance’ that suits his/her own style.

Kids!

I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today!

Kids!

Who can understand anything they say?

Kids!

They a disobedient, disrespectful oafs!Noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy, loafers!

It was Caulfield who missed the point. Because Frazz measures his pace, he knew he had to change something to improve.

Great toon. They both have good points. If you are always focused on improving, it can get in the way of your passion for the subject/activity. Improvement comes with practice and some people are more prone to practice when they don’t constantly feel pressured to improve. Or not.

Or perhaps he didn’t get faster, but he felt like he got faster…

I want my kid to be like Caulfield. When he challenges, he is thinking beyond what he is told. That got me kicked out of catechism, which was the intended result.

I remember reading when Donald Peterson was CEO of Ford—he was a great fan of W. Edwards Deming, and introduced Japanese-style team orientation and QA systems to the American automobile industry—he was talking to some Boy Scouts in a Detroit suburb. At one point he said something like, “Running a business with your eye on the bottom line [i.e., financial measurements] is like playing tennis with your eye on the scoreboard. Concentrate on doing the best job you can, and the bottom line will take care of itself.”

There are things you need to know and things you should know. With the common current system you are told , “okay, you know 75% of what you need to know so you can move on to the next grade.” It can be difficult and expensive but each child should be helped until he understands all that he needs to know. It’s what Montessori gets right.

I am forever grateful to the Organic Chemistry teacher who gave me a C even though I pretty much failed all the tests. I did very well in lab and my lab reports showed that I understood the concepts. I guess I don’t understand the tests?

It’s the kid that doesn’t get the point.

Grabbing his head and being a brat to a teacher. Yeah, he’s smart.

The difference between needing a metronome and not

… people cheat or measure their worth by a letter grade, and cheat to get a good one.

As a student of mine once said about my marks on his paper, “I don’t need your criticism!”