Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 16, 2023

Why even bother going to class?

Trump Uni before it existed?

Our boy finally found a totally painless way to waste 4 years!!!

Snowflake school.

I knew a kid in college who considered changing his major in his senior year so that he wouldn’t have enough credits, and he’d get to/have to stay another year. Because his grades were all good, he’d still keep his scholarship. My friend ended up deciding to face the outside world after all, but Zipper might need to consider that strategy.

Of course, the cute girl has nothing to do with anything.

Alas, the reality from this time is not so different. My mother went back to college in her 50s to get the maths… sorry… math degree she wanted to do at 18, but was deflected by her school Headteacher (Principle) who said ‘girls can’t do maths’ and pushed her into geography instead. She then taught maths and statistics at what was then a polytechnic (UK technical graduate level institution) now converted to a university. Just before she retired they were setting the pass mark for exams at the mark of the lowest scoring student. No one failed.

Why do you Yanks abbreviate Mathematics to ‘math’ but do not call statistics ‘stat’?

How can Cricket walk bare-headed in falling snow? At least Zipper has the sense to wear a hat!

As in Alice in Wonderland; “All shall have prizes !”

Question ? What feels better a ( B + or A – ) ?

Back in my day, there was a “Walden College”.

Google: Parsons College was a private liberal arts college located in Fairfield, Iowa.

Back in the 80’s I was a teaching aid for a class in russian history. I was proctoring the final exam. It was a three hour exam.

After 30 minutes some cute little brunette came up with the exam book, dropped it off, wished me a merry xmas and bounced out.

I just had to look, to see what she’d done.

it was a three page letter to the professor saying she enjoyed his class but didn’t feel she was ready for the exam but hoped he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

She was surprised she got an F and complained to the school. He went on to chair the history department .

Getting your diploma from a Crackerjack box is still possible, only it has moved online

Release Trump’s report cards.I want to see if he failed “Civics”.

You can’t fly with the eagles if you run with the turkeys. However, if the eagles don’t care, so what.

At a national military academy, I got an “A” in calculus. My grade on the final exam was 10%. The policy was that you could not “flunk out” unless that was the reason you wanted to put in record, so they used a “curve”. The excuse was that we were living on about 5 1/2 hours of sleep a night and doing training when not in classes. Still, didn’t impress the UC when I transferred. I had to repeat everything .

Let’s just agree we follow many different paths.

Headteacher is “Principal” – you can remember with “the principal is your pal.” “Principle” is a fundamental truth or proposition, in the context of an individual a principle is a rule, belief, or idea that guides you. Some principals have principles, some don’t. The same could be said of certain politicians.

I left academe because of grading. There was simply no way to give meaningful grades. Grade inflation was rampant, but completely unacknowledged. If you gave honest grades, you were giving grades at least a level and a half below the entire rest of the system and making your perfectly good student look terrible—which then affected their ability to get aid, to get placement at higher levels, and even to get jobs after graduation. If you gave inflated grades, you were perpetuating a lie that deluded students, faculty, and employers alike.

The whole idea of a grade is stupid anyway. What every student needs is a a frequent, good sit-down with faculty in which we carefully and thoroughly go over the student’s work, highlighting and exploring strengths and weaknesses and how to maintain what’s strong and strengthen what’s weak.

However, that’s not possible in a world where education has stopped being education and has morphed into industrialized mass vocational training. We don’t teach minds. We teach skills. There’s a huge difference.

Stat means do something immediately.

Am I the only one that thinks that Zonk is acting very un-Zonk-like in this story-line?

Interesting on the math/maths, but why do you say Principle rather than Principal?