"Greed will always hurt you more than it helps you."
Yes, but he's offering to commit fraud. There's nothing wrong with declining a fraudulent grade.
If I had any higher opinion of my people, I'd be disappointed by what this shows. Including about the teacher.
It's an unearned grade.
In the oldy days, grades were used as a measure of ability; of how much you learned in the class. Giving people a blanket A+ isn't measuring what they learned. These days, grades are probably like income, and a reflection of your privilege rather than your abilities or achievements. Obviously.
Forgive me. I'm old, and autistic. I have a problem with things meaning the opposite of what they're supposed to. I wasn't raised to doublespeak.
Like I said, I'm old. I see things differently.
I got a free grade in college once. A B+ in a class I stopped attending after bombing the midterm, and I still feel wrong about that. It's a principles thing. Try not to have any; they're crippling.
I'm just not a bullshit artist. I either genuinely know what I'm talking about, or admit my ignorance in the hope of correcting it. It's why I sit alone in a room. Your adaptation is better.
I feel like I'm failing to communicate.
What I find repellent about this thought experiment is that the prof offered to lie for every student in the class and they all went along with it. The only ones who didn't agree did so out of spite. Not integrity. The very concept of integrity has been lost. See my point?
That is a totally appropriate situation for these transactional times, but go back more than a couple generations and everybody would understand what I am saying. There used to be a difference between lies and truth, and universities were one of the institutions tasked with unwinding the two.
The prof offered to lie for the students and none of the 250 saw the slightest problem with that.
Welcome to trump's america.
I truly don't belong here.
In the /real/ oldy days, long before grades, Diogenes the Cynic thought a philosopher knew things he didn't. He pestered the man to teach him so badly that the philosopher beat the shit out of Diogenes with his staff. That didn't deter the dog. He insisted the man either kill him or teach him all he knew.
That's my way of thinking. I never gave a fuck about my grades even when I was young enough they still mattered. I wanted the education. Education is a lifelong, self-directed process that seeks to learn from anyone or anything with something to teach. The current structure of forced schooling->clownish university degree-> midlevel job as some apparatchik of a multinational corporation is an immense perversion. To my mind, at least.
College is not vocational training.
@Viss @Uair I think this is prop. On the 100% hitrate... The story alleges (an important word here) that all the dissenters dissent for the last reason. We're led to believe that that is true in all the classes for 10 years, because the professor allegedly alleges there's always someone. But the always someone isn't asserted to be everyone. So right away this is a weaker statement. It's probably true, because our experience backs it. But the professor's statement seems to transcend the grade
There is this argument, the prop, that this is somehow related to all things - material and immaterial, that one could have. Healthcare? Yachts? Acid trips? Love?
But the measurement is specifically limited to the grades, and only the grades. And any extrapolation is shaky at best.
Fwiw, I would have likely dissented, on the basis that I should not have a grade I did not deserve. I've failed many, many, many classes. "Failure" is so completely and utterly okay to me, because passing an exam is meaningless to me - learning, eventually, or enjoying the process of learning is what is important to me for myself & for others.
Edit: addendum, as a fable it's still plenty powerful and I agree with the premise and conclusion. But it's just a fable.
@Uair @Viss ooooh, I have some really bad information about how grades were actually earned in the 'olden days'
Having the grade reflect learning is the ideal, but my uncles, aunties and parents all have stories about how the exams they took were easier for some people than for others, and I'm not talking about the ones who studied.
So, nice, in theory, but exam grades are pretty rough when you drive into them.
Now if they had received that mark, it would have been an important lesson.
Viss
Poloniousmonk
catatonicprime
Mu