People like me are probably part of why the ‘no grades’ push. Right now diplomas aren’t worth much of anything. It that push sweeps, they’ll be worth less than the now extinct corn cob bin.

What makes you think she’s asking for sympathy? I think she tried to fight a system she knew was corrupt. Perhaps she naively thought she would be more successful than she was. But at any rate, she tried, and is at least pointing out the very serious problems. She also is pointing out that black people do not march in lockstep, politically. That is what that website at the end is about.

I absolutely agree in the scenario you present. Courses shouldn’t be dumbed down to meet an incompetent or lazy median. But I’ve seen plenty of courses where 80% or more of the students were smart and hard working and would go on to long careers in STEM fields, and yet 90% or more of the class score below a 50% on the exams.

What’s the point of an exam that tests less than half of what competent, hard-working students have learned? Either the teacher did a poor job teaching it, or the material wasn’t taught.

Someone with common sense and truly seeking to help minorities would not take a position as a DEI political enforcer.

Can’t speak for all the STEM course but for the intro calculus-based physics courses it’s not that at all. It’s that the intro physics courses are required by many other majors besides physics. (When I taught it I always had 100 – 200 students, and only 1 or 2 physics majors per semester.) No one at a real university will allow it to be dumbed down to the point that the 198 non-physics majors can get a B without that kind of curve.

In addition, math is also a hurdle. I had many students who were taking my course as seniors instead of sophomores because they’d failed calculus 3 or 4 times, and then mysteriously got an A taking it online over the summer. I would pretest my students in algebra and calculus and they were usually totally unprepared. (Many could not read their textbooks.) And if I failed them I was going to be the one who kept them from graduating and what was Grandma going to say?

It’s not because the math teachers can’t teach either. It’s that no one will relax the requirement, or allow it to be dumbed down.

I have though seen it dumbed down unofficially, where instead of setting up and solving circuits the exam was to color and label the parts of a circuit. Those people got Bs, but they didn’t know any physics. I don’t think they were well served either, but they were pretty happy of course.

I disagree. We need people like Tabia Lee who have common sense, intelligence and values and the immutable characteristics (minority, female*) to land these jobs to work for change. I hope she sues them for more money than the Oberlin bakery won.

*Well, female used to be immutable.

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve always found it absurd that in so many STEM classes the “curve” sets a “B” at less than half correct on an exam, or less. To me that’s not a sign of a challenging course, or a tough teacher. It’s a sign of a poor teacher and/or a teacher who doesn’t know how to write exams.

Especially, as you write, when the student body are competent and capable.

Yes, Simon is an advanced undergrad book with some very advanced grad level material and problems. Sounds like he was teaching it really at a grad level, especially if it was advertised as such. EE’s really had no business being in that course in that case, and some of the physics majors also unless they were very good and wanted a jump on the grad courses.