If we have a very elite group who would ace standard calculus exams, then the professor should include some more analysis type questions on the test. It just isn’t going to be the case that a single calc class is going to have total mastery of all single variable calculus. If we’re assembled a class of just the brightest dozen minds in the country and sat them all in a single variable calc class and they’ve all truly mastered the class beyond what can be tested for then we’ve got a very unique case and we can’t use more standard grading techniques. But for any other group it just isn’t the case.
Once again, whether this is a good thing or not depends on the reason for the test (or course). I don’t see why this is a difficult concept.
We (or at least most of us) would like it, yes. Experience has shown us that it’s vanishingly unlikely to happen, however. (Which isn’t to say there aren’t some amazing sections that simply by chance have all wonderful students. But they are treasured memories, precisely because they’re so rare.)
I want my students to be able to apply concepts learned in my classes to novel situations. This messes with a number of students, who get annoyed that they can’t simply apply some sort of canned algorithm, plug in the data, and get an answer. The students who get it, though, and understand that the object isn’t simply to acquire formulae and terminology, but rather to acquire a method of thinking, they (mostly) do well.
(I’m in linguistics, FWIW—but this isn’t just limited to my discipline at all.)
Some Profs are inclined and certain courses(weed outs) are designed to serve gatekeeping roles to ensure only the most qualified(read strongest students) are passed onto the next higher level course/degree stage.
This attitude isn’t limited to just academia or STEM. I had a few HS teachers…notably one in 9th grade who viewed his role as the gatekeeper to keep the “riff raff” like yours truly from graduating to university or in some cases…continuing at our public magnet HS.
Fortunately, my personality type is such his actions…far from demoralizing me as it did most classmates ended up further motivating me to stay and go on to college just to stick it to him by proving him wrong about my “never lasting past my first semester in college”. Unfortunately, one HS classmate who is now a tenure-track Prof at an elite U(Think Notre Dame, Northwestern, UChicago) almost dropped out during our frosh year because of that 9th grade teacher before his parents found out and were able to exert some influence to get him moved to another teacher as he was already further along in the subject. Unfortunately, those of us taking the intro were stuck with him as he was the only teacher teaching the intro course.
Honestly, if you can’t do a fairly difficult Calc 1 problem, that involves a bit of out of the box thinking, you are not going to succeed in Physics 1, Calc 2, or many other engineering classes. Weeding people out early is better than giving them false hopes.
Now, if you are willing to work, you don’t have to leave, but combination of so-so high school and a bit of laziness, nope …
Having taught a few classes, it is obvious fairly early who the stars are (As) and who might not make it (D,F). Some of the B, C students you can’t quite tell. In respect for some of the effort expended or not expended, I used extra credit fairly liberally, figuring it would be easy for the A students and would give B-C students an opportunity to improve by showing their dedication to the class (And they would learn something as well).
Maybe that elite group should be in a more advanced class. But if it’s calculus one, what’s the big deal if everyone gets an A? It probably won’t happen, but it could. I do understand that advanced math classes can have more complicated or open-ended questions, and that many engineering exams want you to synthesize information in ways you haven’t quite seen before, but I do feel sometimes there is this notion that you need a curve just to have a curve. (And yes, I’ve watched my husband analyze histology exams after the fact to make sure that the smart kids were getting the hard questions wrong, and throwing out questions that were deemed not to be good questions after all. I was always amazed to hear how poorly some med students did on these exams.)
KUDOS to the OP!
So many things I disagree with from the posters. I do not find this TA out of line at all. S/he is telling it like it is. The moderator’s input some posts back was a good interjection. A few comments on comments.
TA’s are not in it to become teachers, unless they are in education as their field. TA’s are grad students whose monetary compensation is for being a TA- most want to move on to become RA’s. Not all grad students will ever go into academics.
This TA is not a jerk- some of your children might be. Most college students are not grad student caliber (even at the top schools). This TA is better than most of the students. Not condescending, just a more lofty viewpoint.
Grades should be for mastery. Nothing was said about merely memorizing facts. Yes, memorizing material can make it easier to use it in solving problems that show mastery.
All material does not need to be presented in the classroom- assigned reading counts as well. I’ll bet that everything needed to get a top score was presented in one way or another. Students needed to think and learn how to use that. I am reminded of my Honors Chemistry blue book exams. All of the hints for problem solving but we had to think to figure how to use the tools given us. I also remember partial credit- how the problems were solved counted more than getting the “correct” answer. Plus- there may have been one score 10 points higher than the next few so getting an A for a score in the low 70’s was the norm. The professor had a choice- challenge us to think and show us how much more there was to learn or make an exam we could show mastery of everything.
This TA had a good point- s/he wasn’t talking about most students, but rather the ones that finally get to you. No A’s for effort!
Also a lot of commentary that makes sense to me. Had to add my praise of this TA.
Is that the goal for an exam in “pre-med” Chem or Bio or whatever we think this course was? I’d think it would be to measure mastery of the material but perhaps I am in the minority.
OP - Here’s my perspective as someone who was a faculty member at a so-called “super-elite” school in a top-5 department and was a TA as a graduate student at another similar school. I can’t say for sure whether students have become more entitled over the last 20 years, but I suspect this is true. However, I’d also give you a few words of advice -
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You have to remember that probably 80% of the students aren’t demonstrating the behaviors you are complaining about. As a TA you’re now seeing all the “unusual cases”, i.e. the 10%-20% of the students who are complainers, whiners, cheaters, etc., who are coming to you to try to get a higher grade. I suppose it’s a bit like being a police officer who’s constantly dealing with criminals every day. You tend to start thinking everyone is a criminal. You have to be careful not to let these problem cases color your perception of everyone.
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I suspect almost every graduate student who TA’s goes through a similar experience – you find yourself shocked at how unprepared many of the students you are teaching are and how little of the course material they’ve absorbed. Also, you tend to romanticize the abilities of the students at your undergraduate institution. I think there are several reasons for this – first, as a graduate student you were probably among the top 5-15% of the undergraduates majoring in a given subject and you tend to calibrate everything to yourself. You also tend to forget how hard the material you’re teaching is for the average student since over the last few years you’ve been dealing with students and faculty who are exceptionally good at the subject. Lastly, as an undergraduate (or a parent) you’re mostly interacting with fellow students on a social basis, not an academic basis, so it’s really hard to gauge how unprepared the average student at your undergraduate school was.
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It’s also important to maintain a good attitude and to redouble your efforts to learn how to teach effectively. Of course, a TA is not the professor, so you aren’t responsible for the bulk of the teaching. But it’s still good to learn how to be a better teacher. Having said that, don’t be disappointed when you find out that most of a student’s performance is due to their own efforts and abilities, not to the quality of their TA.
Well, I guess what you wrote has to be true if you define “average” to be the average for the school where you’re TAing, but I think it’s also somewhat true if you define “average” relative to a broader universe too.
I always smile when I read posts on CC talking about how “brilliant” you have to be to be admitted to Harvard, etc. Anyone who’s attended these schools knows this simply isn’t true … I assure you, most of my classmates were not geniuses. At schools like Harvard, etc. I’d say that about 10-20% of the undergraduate students are “brilliant” in an academic sense. The rest are perfectly fine students and many will go on to have great careers, but they weren’t admitted for their academic accomplishments and/or they have other goals in life.
In theory, you are right. However, in real life it simply doesn’t happen. Generally, you’re much more worried that the students aren’t understanding the material very well than that they’ve all mastered the material.
I’ll share this story to illustrate. As a first-year assistant professor at a so-called “super-elite” college, I was assigned to teach the introductory class for potential majors. The class wasn’t a “gen-ed”, but probably about 25% of all students took the class at some point and maybe 1/2 the students went on to major in this field or in a related field. So these were students who had more the average aptitude for the subject.
I started writing the first midterm exam. I looked at previous midterms to get a feel for the level of questions that were asked. I thought to myself “These tests are way too simple. About half the questions are almost trivial for anyone who’s been doing the homework. Most of my students seem to be understanding the material pretty well, so I’ll make the exam a little harder, plus throw in one or two simple curveballs to challenge the top students. Nothing too hard though.”
Fortunately, I had the good sense to ask the department chair (who had taught the class previously) for his opinion on the exam I wrote before I gave it. He asked me what average grade I was shooting for. I said “With partial credit, an average of probably about 65%-70%; top students could be getting 90%+, and anyone who’s been paying attention should get a 35-40%”. He laughed and told me that his guess for what the average would be was about 25-30%, with many students getting less than 10% !!
He told me that young faculty members without experience often don’t appreciate how little the average student absorbs and often completely crush their students. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but fortunately I made the exam much easier - however, the average was still only about 50% !
I’m sure some of this was because I’d spent the last few years mainly working with world-class experts / Nobel prize winners in the field. But I’d say until someone actually teaches a real college level class, you just can’t appreciate how little the average undergraduate student understands, even at an “elite” school (however, one of the real benefits of teaching at an “elite” school is that the top students are a real joy to work with).
My daughter went to a very good LAC and was taught by professors. She worked really hard to get the grades she did and was happy with what she got. Now she attends a large university for a master program and it is the first time she has a class taught by a TA. It is a mid level Econ class and she left the class amazed on how poorly the TA handled the material. The TA jumped around trying to decide what to cover and what not to cover. My daughter left the class knowing she would need to do her own research if she was going to succeed in this class. Sometimes the problem may lie on both sides of the aisle.
I took a Calculus self paced in college because I’d taken it three years earlier in high school, but bombed the AP. I was amazed that I finished the exam before the midpoint checked my work three times and still the entire room was scribbling furiously. So yeah, I know Harvard isn’t full of geniuses. Well the math geniuses weren’t taking Calculus 1 anyway. 
I knew many students who were smart, only a handful who were genius and among those, very few who were actually polymaths.
I’m unclear on the circumstances though - is this TA a teacher for the course or merely a grader? It makes a difference.
Interesting discussion. I started reading it, because I have been contemplating lately, as my youngest applies to colleges, what it means to be average in a culture where being average is unacceptable. It would seem that no one wants to think of themselves or their offspring as average. It is the scarlet A of modern times. We all live in Lake Woebegone, and all of our children are above average. 
I am old now, but still don’t like thinking of myself as average, lol. I’m good at some things, bad at some, even average at some, but am I average? Okay, maybe I am old enough now to think that I just might be, and am okay with that. Sorta . . . But my kids? Never – hahahaha.
I agree with the T.A. – don’t change the grades just because the kids are disappointed. But I also agree with those who advocate showing some compassion.
I’m a crier. I cried when I got my first paper back in college. I was a mostly A student at a tiny high school in a small town, and not well prepared for college, and got a C+ on my first paper. I thought I had worked hard and done the assignment, and was in shock. But, had I got an A, I would have kept writing poor (um, I mean average) papers. The C+ had the effect, after the shock wore off somewhat, of making me work harder to try to figure out how to do better, and yes, it paid off with an A on the next one. (And then I transferred to UChicago, where it was deja vu all over again.)
I predict that the TA will be surprised – some of the disappointed/shocked/upset ones will settle down and up their game. And if he/she is encouraging, it will help. The TA is in a position to affect other people’s lives positively. My advice to the TA is the same as many others that have weighed in: Try not to judge, don’t discourage. You are the professional here. Don’t lower your standards, but do plant seeds of encouragement, and offer appropriate guidance and help.
131: Yeah, I had a couple students in my office hours today who utterly bombed the first exam in their class, and were beyond stressed out about it. It becomes my job at that point to let them know they've basically used up their wiggle room for the semester, but only 22% of the grade for the semester is in across all assignments, and so if they focus they have a decent shot at being successful.
(But change their grades? No.)
I’m no longer a professor and was fortunate (or unfortunate) to get a full fellowship as a grad student so didn’t teach or TA. I attended three of the top five schools in the country and taught at one of them.
I’m of two minds on this question:
I think too much of our educational system, starting in elementary school, is focused on grading and sorting and too little on teaching mastery. At earlier ages, kids should not advance in a subject if they are getting a C or maybe a B. To me, it can be as much a failure of the school as it is of the kid to promote someone with a D or C. And other kids should advance much more quickly. We partially homeschooled my son in HS. We hired a math grad student to work with my son and in 3 hours a week, my son did junior honors math in less than a semester. At one level, I’d like to see the same thing in the early part of college, but that would require a real revamping of the educational system. Maybe more Khan Academy-like modules and tests of mastery and fewer classes and discussion sections.
On the flip side, students who aren’t really mastering the subject do try to persuade or manipulate you to give them a higher grade because they need it. I don’t know that anyone asked me to raise their grade because they have been trying hard. This was a quantitative course that was required of students not all of whom had quantitative backgrounds and we had a forced curve. The males generally played on pity – and I guess they tried to show me that they were indeed trying hard. I did have a few female students tacitly offer to sleep with me (which surprised me greatly the first couple of times). I suggested that they study a lot harder. Given the size of my classes and the structure of the institution, I probably could have helped a very limited number of students by spending lots of time with them, but I had just barely enough time to teach and grade and do research. The institution wasn’t set up for mastery.
^Wow on the students offering their, ahem, services. In 20 years I’ve never had an offer like that!
^Thirty years ago, it was mostly the foreign TAs who had their dance cards filled in that manner and much less common among the Americans.
It used to be that a C grade meant that one was solidly passing with sufficient mastery to be able to continue on to the next course in the sequence. Now, it seems that people think of a C grade like they do a D grade, meaning barely passing, but not well prepared to continue on to the next course in the sequence. Meanwhile, a B grade used to mean doing better than solidly passing, but now is thought of as a C grade used to be.
The change in mindset about what each grade means is probably both a cause and effect of grade inflation.
I agree with pretty much everything @al2simon said in his post. I TA’ed and taught some of my own seminars at a top 5 university when I was in graduae school. The vast majority of my students were bright, friendly, positive students who put in at least an average amount of effort and didn’t complain. Obviously as the TA we were often approached by some of the complainers or students who had bizarre requests, but the majority of students who approached me had questions about the material or perfectly reasonable requests.
Plus, I put myself in my students’ shoes and cut them a break. I remember when I was 19 or 20. I was at the top of my class in high school and suddenly you’re in a place where you’re not the best anymore. YES, getting that worldview shaken is devastating sometimes! And a lot of times through their K-12 system they were rewarded for effort and not for quality of their work. It’s a shock to their system to realize that now, quality matters. I tried to be patient with them and explain that. Either that, or until now the material has come so easily to them that putting in minimal effort netted them an A. Now that the material is harder, they have no idea how they can work so hard and still be wrong. Again, I have sympathy, even if they are exasperating with their reaction to that.
I just think more TAs and professors need to take a moment and put themselves in their students’ shoes. Sometimes, some of what they do is outrageous or silly, but most of it is just the normal reaction of a person barely out of their parents’ house who’s learning about the world for the first time. Some of my students also had some pretty heinous stuff going on in their personal lives as well, which explained some issues. (Having experience in res life also gave me a lot more sympathy for some of the students, because I got to see firsthad the kind of mess that college students often experience particularly at hypercompetitive schools).
You can maintain high standards and teach the material well while also being cognizant that these are young human beings in front of you.
I also take issue with this:
If this grad student is in a PhD program (which most TAs are) then their goal is likely to become a professor - and professors teach. Yes, their primary goal at some universities might be research, but I wish that doctoral students and programs would take learning how to teach more seriously - because then we wouldn’t have awful professors. (or rather, we wouldn’t have so many of them…maybe.)
@sylvan8798 My husband was a T.A. back in the day, when in music grad school, and married (to me), and he got at least one offer that I remember him talking about-- sort of in amazement, as I recall. He offered same advice as shawbridge. Music classes don’t seem particularly high stakes, maybe, but people want those As, and always have.
In some STEM or other popular departments, the goal of the harsh exam/course curve is also to test the commitment of aspiring pre-meds and majors to ensure only the academically strongest and those with the greatest commitment to pre-med/major continue on to higher level courses to ensure faculty and departmental resources aren’t “wasted” on the academically underprepared and/or inadequately motivated students.
It’s a mentality similar to what I read about Army aviation cadet training during WWII when I read an account of how in the very early stages of training some aviation cadets in Southern/Southwestern training centers were made to do pushups on sunheated runway asphalt to test the depth of commitment to continue with aviation cadet training or whether they’d say “screw it” and drop out before they started to expend much taxpayer resources and aviation assets on training them.
- It was hot enough to cause burns on their hands.