Students Inflated Sense of Entitlement

1. Is professor Grossman off the mark when he says “I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.” why?

I do not believe that professor Grossman is off the mark when he says “I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.” This is what the standard is and it is put out to his classes so it should come as no surprise first off. Secondly this should be the standard for all classes the amount of time or how “hard you work” should not have a direct effect on your grade. Earning a C in a class is passing it means that you have the basic understanding of the topic where as an A should represent mastery of a subject. Just because a student does the required work and comes to class does not mean that they necessarily have mastery of a subject. If a student were to work 3 hrs on an assignment and receive an A and a second student were to only work for 30 minutes and they got an A should the seconds students A be worth less than the fist students or did the second student not deserve the A because they did not work as “hard” as the first did? Of course not the students both receive an A because they both showed mastery of a subject.

2. What do you think is causing students to feel entitled to receive a good grade? Is it because a grade of A is now the expected default for "average" work where in reality a grade of A denotes "above average"? Are the students prior experiences in high school or earlier the cause? Are parents to cause "my child is perfect so it must be the instructors fault"?

I personally think that students have come to expect an A as a default grade partly because that is more or less how high schools seem to grade and there is just an overall lowering of standards in schools so “no student is left behind”. Many students fail to understand that just doing the minimum or putting extra time into their work does not directly affect their grade. A byproduct of working hard can have the benefit of learning mastery of a subject so that mastery will be reflected in work which will intern earn them an A. So just because a student spends extra time or just does the required work does not mean that they have mastery of a subject and are not entitled to an A that they think there are. An A is an earned grade not just the standard. Ultimately a student’s grades are their own responsibility and their class outcome is not dictated by parents friends or professors.

3. Give your honest opinion of the article. Do you feel you deserve grades based on your effort or is it that you earned the grade you receive because of your effort? Anything else you would like to add?

Not only do I think this is how things should be graded but this it is how I like to be graded. I feel that I have a better sense of accomplishment getting an A grade from a teacher who grades me on my performance and not on my effort. I want to know how well I have learned a subject not on my ability to spend massive amounts of time on a particular subject.