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        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> Debate on Grades
        
(Message started by: Padfoot on Apr 24^th, 2007, 3:55pm)

Title: Debate on Grades
Post by Padfoot on Apr 24^th, 2007, 3:55pm

I am in a debate class and we are going to have a debate on "Do grades accuratly reflect the the knowlage and abilities of a student?" I am on the affrrmative team and we have found out that there is not much material on the internet to help us, so any comments about this topic are appreciated. :)

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Icarus on Apr 24^th, 2007, 6:57pm

Is it too late to change sides? ::)

If you are stuck with "a student", then I would say you are doomed. Grades regularly fail to reflect abilities of individuals. Instead, if you can, consider the question "Do grades accurately reflect the knowledge and abilities of students?" The difference: the latter question deals with a group, not its individual members. With the group, you can talk about statistical correlations. When dealing with a group, the fact that some individuals don't align with the rest does not disprove that a strong relationship exists.

What I suggest you do is contact the education departments of universities in your area and ask if they can tell you where to find studies on the statistical correlation between high school and college GPA and other measures of talent - in particular, salaries later in life. I can just about guarantee that such studies have been performed, and that they will show significant (though not complete) positive correlation.

Your opponents will mostly be relying on examples of people who were more successful than their GPA predicted - and possibly on some who where less successful. Your response should be to point out that no system is ever going to be able to completely predict future outcomes, but grading is a strong overall predictor of success - even if it misses badly on some people.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by tiber13 on Apr 24^th, 2007, 6:59pm

No, not grades, learning is soaking up info , like a sponge, larger sponges soak up more info, and the ability to dump as much of that as possible out at minimal notice.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by amichail on Apr 24^th, 2007, 7:03pm

The problem with grades is that they result in students focusing on the wrong thing -- namely maximizing their grades.

Sure, some learning will occur on the side, but probably not as much as what would happen when students are focused on learning about a subject that they really care about.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by amichail on Apr 24^th, 2007, 7:08pm

Success in life is probably mostly determined by a combination of high IQ and effort. So it would not be surprising that there's a positive correlation between higher grades and subsequent career success since there's a positive correlation between higher grades and high IQ & effort.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Icarus on Apr 24^th, 2007, 7:47pm

But amichail - He has no choice to but argue the PRO side of this question. Giving him arguments for the opposition isn't much help.

Actually, there is some help to it. Padfoot, you should be prepared to answer arguments such as amichail's. One approach is to note that both arguments actually do not contradict your assertion. The question does not ask if grading is the best idea for education. It merely asks whether they truly measure student knowledge and abilities. The problem with this approach is that some judges will feel that it is sidestepping the issue rather avoiding a tangent.

This can make a nasty little trap. Amichail's arguments really are tangent to the issue you are debating. Following that tangent both takes you away from showing what you actually need to show, and also puts you where the opposition is strongest. But simply dismissing it as being tangent makes you look weak and unwilling to address important issues. My suggestion: admit his points. Because they don't contradict your position, you lose nothing by this admission. But turn it around. You cannot locate and correct weaknesses in education without some form of measurement to identify those weaknesses. Any measurement system is going to be subject to the same problems amichail brings up. But this has long been recognized this as the fundamental law of quality control: what you cannot measure in real time (as opposed to long after it is too late to make changes), you cannot improve. Without a means of measuring educational achievement of students, you cannot address the weaknesses in that education and correct them.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by amichail on Apr 24^th, 2007, 7:56pm

I would say that high grades indicate that a student has a high IQ, puts in lots of effort, or both.

But I would not say that high grades are indicative of a command of the material.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by towr on Apr 25^th, 2007, 12:22am

It also depends in a large part what sort of tests are used. There is always limited time for a test, so an examiner can't ask everything. So if you have a test on which you need to answer all the questions, there can be a big luck factor: from all the things you learned, does he ask more about the ones you do know or those you don't? One way to lessen that problem is to give a student a number of choices of questions, i.e. you could ask 12 instead of 10 questions and he can choose which 2 not to answer.

Another factor is what's examined. Are you testing for factual knowledge or procedural knowledge.
If you have math, or logic, there generally aren't that many facts you need to pick up from a course, what you need to learn is how you use it; it's about reasoning. Consequently the specific questions are less of an issue; the luck factor is much smaller.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Three Hands on Apr 25^th, 2007, 2:49pm

Just as a small additional comment as something which you may need to prepare to deal with as a point from the opposition (although I'm not sure whether it applies in the US) is that the grading is quite often scaled to show how well the student has done compared with his peers, rather than exactly how many questions they answered correctly on the test. The theory behind this is to ensure that if one year finds the exam particularly difficult for whatever reason, the examiners can assume they made the test too hard, and so still hand out the top grades to those who have achieved comparatively good scores, but as far as I'm aware does not prevent a year of idiots managing to be misrepresented by the grades compared with a year of geniuses...

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Icarus on Apr 25^th, 2007, 6:23pm

So how do you suggest that Padfoot deal with these arguments?

While a discussion on the value of grading systems is fine, Padfoot has specifically asked for help with presenting a pro argument. It is not his choice which side to take. So who can play devil's advocate here and come up with convincing arguments for a position you don't really believe?

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by JiNbOtAk on Apr 25^th, 2007, 11:31pm

Again, back to how Padfoot defines the topic of debate. My suggestion to Padfoot is to have the first speaker of the team to hammer on your definition of the debate. Grades do reflect the knowledge and abilities of students, collectively, to a certain extent. Of course, if we are talking about absolute measurement of each student, the idea becomes ridiculous, since each student have his / her own forte.

The problem that Three Hands pointed out should not be blamed on the grading system, rather, the structure of the exam could be made the culprit. You could argue that with the right examination methods ( more projects, reports, etc, as compared to just a written exam ) grades could actually be a good measure of the knowledge of the student.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Sir Col on Apr 26^th, 2007, 12:40pm

on 04/24/07 at 15:55:56, Padfoot wrote:

"Do grades accuratly reflect the the knowlage and abilities of a student?"

The Devil's Advocate speaks...

I assumed initially that this was a metaphorical question. Then the realisation struck home that some people actually believe that there is no correlation between grades and knowledge. Surely no one could devote all the time and effort they have to becoming properly educated and earning the highest possible grades and then say they have been wasting their time. Such a person would be a contradiction in terms. Consider this very debate for which ultimately there are two grades: winner and loser. The winner is judged to be the team with the greatest knowledge and ability. Or are we saying the contrary, that being deemed the winner does not reflect such celebrated attributes? That would be a dreadful insult to the intelligence of the esteemed judges and the floor.

Based on these points I have just made, I suspect that the opposition will attempt to demonstrate that the debate is not arguing the case that grades do not reflect ability and knowledge at all, rather they fail to accurately represent them. In one sense I understand their confusion. They have superimposed the principle of bivalence on a fundamentally scaled system. In other words, they have assumed that individuals either have ability and knowledge or they do not and assume that the range of grades blurs this boundary. To put it another way, they are under the impression that if you line-up every person in order of ability and knowledge you would start at one end of the line with people lacking such virtues and somewhere along the line you would, from there onwards, encounter people with ability and knowledge. Based on this fundamentally flawed picture of reality we can see how the opposition would argue that placing a scale against this line is meaningless. I would agree. However, it is clear to each and everyone here that individuals range in both ability and knowledge, and it is precisely this range that the grade system measures.

I am not suggesting for one moment that our system, or any system, is perfect, but it is accurate in the sense that it is both useful and meaningful. No one could possibly argue that bathroom scales in good working order are perfect in what they measure, but they are accurate. That is, along with the oppositions confused ideas about the black and white of ability and knowledge I suspect that they have equally misunderstood the difference between the words "perfect" and "accurate" in the motion of this debate.

Of course any good opposition might point out at this stage that my bathroom scale analogy mentioned "good working order". However, I would stop them quickly before they embarrass themselves further. To then go on to argue that the flaw in the proposition is that the whole educational system is not in good working order, hence it does not accurately reflect knowledge and ability, is tantamount to a profound slander on the merits of our society, our good judgement, and sensibilities. In other words, they would be undermining the academic achievements and notoriety of all those in our society whom we have come to admire.

In these dark and challenging times we need not find yet another virtue to throw away, and opposing this motion is guilty of precisely that. Is our grading system perfect? No. Is it accurate? Of course! The alternative is to undervalue the very things we have come to celebrate and live for.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Padfoot on Apr 26^th, 2007, 2:31pm

Dang, I knew that this topic would be complex but not to this exstent :o. I also see that someones view of "accurate" could be very different from another person's view.

Actualy, Icarus, I think that giving tactics that could be used by the other team is somewhat helpful because it gives our team a good idea on what to expect. Mabye if I think on this for a while I can get some nice couter-points.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Padfoot on Apr 26^th, 2007, 2:37pm

Mostly, what the class has been focusing on are different variables (like cheating) that could change the accuracy of the grades to an extent that they would no longer be usefull. The team that I am on has come up with counter-points for nearly every one of these.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by JiNbOtAk on Apr 26^th, 2007, 5:42pm

Sir Col, impressive argument !! I could just imagine the audience and judges nodding their head in agreement to that argument.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Sir Col on Apr 27^th, 2007, 12:47am

Thank you, JiNbOtAk. The art of rhetoric is less to do with being right or even constructive - often this is near impossible with motions such as this one - rather it involves undermining opposing ideas by blurring the beginning and end of their arguments so that they "appear" less credible, or using a subtle fallacy to equate holding their view with being both minority and ludicrous. Politicians and the media do it every day.

I think the key elements in proposing this motion are: (i) show that grading does exactly what it say by providing a scale that measures ability and knowledge; (ii) to challenge the meaning of the word "accurate" by muddying the links between accurate (perfect) and accurate (meaningful); (iii) lead the listeners to believe that opposing the motion is to undermine the entire educational system - the reality is that it is only one facet that the grading system undermines, and then only in part.

By successfully implementing these elements the floor, and judges, will be less open to any of the oppositions arguments surrounding the key word "accurate" and will develop a sense of allegiance to the educational system, seeing anyone criticising it as a disaffected cynic.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by towr on Apr 27^th, 2007, 1:56am

And if you can somehow work in that the opposition are nazis, you're golden ;)

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Sir Col on Apr 27^th, 2007, 3:27am

I like it! ;D I think we could structure a non sequitur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29) argument to that end...

Nazis are people that are only willing to embrace a perfect system and reject everything else that fails to meet their idealised utopian standards.
The opposition wish to reject our grade system on the grounds that it is not perfect.
Ergo the opposition are Nazis!

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by tiber13 on Apr 27^th, 2007, 4:26am

on the good side, a grade is a way to tell the average of his/her ability to take in information/participation/ amount learnt/ ability to use the information at a short notice. it saves time.

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by Three Hands on Apr 29^th, 2007, 11:28am

on 04/27/07 at 01:56:17, towr wrote:

And if you can somehow work in that the opposition are nazis, you're golden ;)

But then surely one of them would invoke a corrolary of Godwin's Law to imply that they have automatically won the debate :P

Title: Re: Debate on Grades
Post by rmsgrey on Apr 30^th, 2007, 7:06am

I think a key point to hit is that the question isn't about the current grading system, but about the very concept of grades. Of course current systems have failures, but the underlying goal - of summarising a student's knowledge and ability with a simple letter or number is so simple and obvious that it's hard to believe there could be any debate on whether it's possible. The examples the opposition come up with typically aren't based on "this student can't be graded" but on "this student receives the wrong grade under the current system". "The wrong grade." Surely that implies that there is a right grade? That there is a grade that accurately represents that student's knowledge and ability?

In a typical class, if you asked each student to write down what grade they thought each of their classmates would get in that class, I'd expect to see a general consensus that broadly matched their actual grades. That suggests that there is an existing hierarchy of knowledge and ability, which grades can and do represent.