Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!wayback!atux01!gal
From: gal@atux01.UUCP (G. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Summary: grades!  grades!  grades!
Message-ID: <914@atux01.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 89 19:37:58 GMT
References: <52767@pyramid.pyramid.com> <5053@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <56@rpi.edu> <9343@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Organization: AT&T CSEd/CET, Piscataway, N.J.
Lines: 26

In article <9343@ihlpb.ATT.COM>, nevin1@ihlpb.ATT.COM (Liber) writes:
> In article <9252@ut-emx.UUCP> nather@ut-emx.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
> most of the world only looks at the grades and not
> the person (not all grad schools bother to interview, for instance), why
> should they believe anything else?  The measure of education is the
> GPA; the rest is considered a side-effect.
> 
> Note:  I don't believe that a GPA should be the measure of an education,
> but I've seen how grad schools accept students and how companies hire,
> and the truth of the matter is that grades are too important.  Too many
> students would rather get a good grade than a good education, since it
> is easier to use the grade to get a "foot in the door".

Boy are you ever right!  I recently attended a lecture by an educator
bemoaning this very fact!  He said, as an example, that if someone
is studying to be a surgeon, let's let him fool around with
an erector set, see how good he is taking things apart and putting
them together; check out his bedside manner, too!  There are many
different forms of learning and knowledge, but all we seem to care
about today is book-learning (i.e., what were your grades?).

					gary

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Juanita?  Barn.
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