With endless quarantine time, you’d think college students would have no trouble completing their assigned work. But some university profs are now granting a ‘G’ grade for those who fail to pack a semester’s worth of work into nearly unlimited downtime. Meanwhile, other academics issue a trigger warning for literature classics to protect their tender young charges from the shock of plot twists and character flaws.
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35 replies on “Trigger Warning: Profs Issue ‘G’ Grade for Incomplete Courses During Endless Quarantine Time”
And “G” means … you managed to live through the pandemic while being enrolled in this course?
Hey, man, I enrolled my pet chicken in this course and he’s still alive, so …
On the “trigger warning” and labeling of works to warn about content, I’ve just re-watched Malcolm in the Middle on Channel 4’s streaming setvice. Most if not all episodes had a warning on them, some stromger than others warning about language, treatment of dissability etc.
I think the warnings are not to spare impressionable youth from harm, they’re to label works. “This is from the old days.” they say “Don’t think you can get away with treating your black friend in a wheelchair like an ordinary guy.”.
In one class at UNI I was the only person with a copy of the textbook. Even the lecturer did not have one and had to borrow mine to do the class plan. He and the class had tried to buy the book via the Marxist co-op bookshop on campus and the order got lost in red tape and was never sent. I had ordered online direct form the author. I still have that book. Needles to say I aced that human ecology class.
I clearly got university wrong. I did 4 subjects a semester with some on competently the other end of the ANU campus a mile apart. I mixed science, arts and economics. I either failed abjectly or got high distinctions. In one case I did both chemistry and a hard chemistry special. I failed the first and aced the hard bit. My lecturer’s head exploded. Inorganic chemistry and dyslexia do not work well together. I still remember having time for parties [mostly political], church, tutors and surfing the web for hours on the UNI computers. I got myself locked in science libraries twice after the librarians went home.
When they speak of “the Aha moment” and “the emotional punch in the gut,” I am reminded of a quote from Children of Dune:
“I speak the popular myth of prescience: to know the future absolutely! All of it! What fortunes could be made – and lost – on such absolute knowledge, eh? The rabble believes this. They believe that if a little bit is good, more must be better. How excellent! And if you handed one of them the complete scenario of his life, the unvarying dialogue up to his moment of death – what a hellish gift that’d be. What utter boredom! Every living instant he’d be replaying what he knew absolutely. No deviation. He could anticipate every response, every utterance – over and over and over and over and over and…”
The other thing that comes to mind is the wisdom of Esmerelda Weatherwax in Lords and Ladies:
“You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don’t die can’t live. What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You’re right. I’m older. You’ve lived longer than me but I’m older than you. And better’n you. And, madam, that ain’t hard.”
“…but that’s the idea…the plan…make them weaker…less capable…less adult” It’s the only way they can destroy them…and us. America requires brave, adult, and free people. . .not grown up babies.
Now I need to go read Of Mice And Men….
Grab a tissue.
Well, dang! I can’t say you didn’t warn me, though…
Our intro into the real world for our children is critical, from discipline to proper education in the written arts. If these concepts are not instilled early and consistantly, the world they enter later will be even more confusing and hard to deal with. My six children have had their times of veering off the path, but have all returned to a healthy lifestyle because of what they were taught, and what we as parents modeled for them.
There are quite a few studies, from well regarded people and institutions, that show trigger warnings are at best, useless, and at worst, harmful, to people who’ve experienced trauma. I’m not trying to be insensitive to someone’s pain (walk it off!) but if you have a trauma in your life, there are professionals who can help you emotionally and mentally get to a point where you can live normally again. There are many schools of thought about what therapy works best, but nearly all of them use a type of desensitization therapy. If there are triggers, you expose yourself to them in a gradual fashion with guided help, until they are not triggers anymore. All trigger warnings do is make sure you will continue to experience your trauma again and again. That being said, there are many people (mainly on the left) who believe these warnings are a “kindness” and those “kind” folks cannot be argued out of their opinion. They view not giving a warning as deliberately trying to hurt people. It’s yet another case of the left hurting people in the name of helping.
I’ve heard stories of a form of torture. This may or may not be true, but I’ve heard it ascribed to the Turks. Strap someone to a table, take off his shoes, and beat the soles of his feet.
Not hard, certainly not enough to hurt. Just hard enough to soften the calluses, to polish off a certain amount of calluses, and most importantly, to make the nerve endings hypersensitive.
Then unstrap the victim and make him walk.
I don’t accept their claims at face value, so I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve. But what they are achieving is the emotional and intellectual equivalent of beating the soles of the feet until they’re hypersensitive.
Bill, as a parent having to deal with sudden online learning, I believe you three (and a lot of commenters here) may have this story completely wrong. I strongly suspect that the introduction of the G grade is not so much to cover for students who suddenly are not getting work done on time as it is to cover for UNIVERSITIES and professors who suddenly had to cobble together an organization-wide reliable distance learning program complete with staff training and the universities weren’t able to complete their work on time. But saying ‘we need more time to figure out how to get this new software working and get the professors to use it correctly’ doesn’t sound as nice as ‘we invented this grade to be super-nice to the students.
My son is not in college yet, but the public school distance learning rollout is probably indicative of higher education’s. Two things he has learned are: 1. Screen capture everything before hitting the submit button just in case the software eats it, and 2. Don’t rely on the software to correctly report either what assignments are due when or that the correct grade you should have gotten is the one you received. None of his teachers use the software in a consistent way, either.
I suspect their is some accuracy that this is to benefit the professors as I can tell from Ronette’s on-line experience at University that many of her profs have had a difficult time with the technology.
However, I have seen first hand that the kids are putting no where near the number of hours I had to in getting assignments done on time. I recall one particular program we were assigned to model air flow over an airfoil. Two consecutive all-nighters and my partner and I figured it out.
We were two of four people who turned it in on time (of 24 total). The others whined about how hard it was and they needed more time. He gave them 2 extra days.
We were pissed and let him know about it after class (No Doz, in addition to keeping you awake is great for keeping the brain from stopping the mouth). His only relenting was in the best grade they could get was a B.
Time management is one of the most important things that gets learned in college. All of a sudden, one has to manage multiple responsibilities that mimic adult-hood. What to give up when an assignment is due (delaying a fun activity for something that must be done) is very important in the maturation process. The real world has deadlines.
I am not disputing that university level work standards have fallen. But that has been ongoing. The sudden invention of the ‘G’ grade right as many educational institutions rush into ‘online learning’ and turn it into a Charlie Foxtrot strongly suggests to me that now that it is the University faculty and staff that didn’t get their work done right and on time they want to be very loose with the deadlines. If there weren’t potential lawsuits involved they’d probably say “tough luck kid, take the class over next semester… and pay the tuition all over again.”
Uh guys, I think you missed the point of this one. They’re protecting their students from that which is “offensive”, not that which is surprising/educations/insightful. They are teaching their students to be offended and to avoid offense by silencing those with ideas that are offensive. It is just another step on the path to indoctrination…
Yep..!!
Finally there’s a glimmer of sanity pushing back on the madness of the teachers’ unions, who are pushing critical race theory on the children.
Examples of how bad the conniving teachers have gotten.
https://fightforschools.com/we-cant-wait
The Pursuit of Happiness – I’m an Adult Now
The Pursuit of Happiness is a Canadian power pop group led by Edmonton, Alberta singer and songwriter Moe Berg. “I’m An Adult Now” is the fourth single from their 1989 album “Love Junk”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0E4kweWyhs
scott: “i don’t know what this guy got his degree in”.
answer: women’s studies. the number one word of the day in women’s studies is equity. equal outcome over equal opportunity.
Bill states that the lack of the emotional impact by giving the students advance knowledge of the emotional impact makes the students lesser persons. Isn’t that the purpose of todays educational system? To make lesser persons of the students.
We are sparing our children the stress of hearing contrary opinions, of having to get the right answer in math, of having to complete assignments, of having to learn critical thinking, of being subject to the authorities and rules, of dealing with failure, of knowing the actual facts of our history.
Meanwhile, our adversaries on the world stage are making competent adults out of their children.
We have produced a full generation of children who are the age of adults but not competent to bear the responsibilities of adults. From this generation will come the next cohort of leadership.
This country is doomed. Sorry, but this can’t be undone. The best we can do is encyst the blue puss in its own abscess, while the rest of us separate into the United Red States of America.
…”the nexy cohort of leadership”. well stated. ocasio-cortez, tlaib, omar, pressely, mcain, chaney, chelsea, abrams, hirono, whitmer, harris……..tally ho.
We still have some conservatively oriented younger folks coming up.
For example, the newly formed American Moment: https://www.americanmoment.org/about/ ; and the various “fellows” at The Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute, National Review Institute; several of the younger and middle aged congress persons and some very promising governors (yes a mixed bag there but still). I see even Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (Congresswoman – R-GA) is gutsing it out to “impeach” Biden [maybe not the best example of rationality but she is speaking out forcefully]. It appears that Trump has provided some of them a model of how to do the required self and agenda promotion, and telling the Left and the MSM to just “go pound sand” (GPS). All mostly without his associated character or style negatives that give/ gave so many a bad case of TDS.
I keep getting email and land mail solicitations from these various conservative groups and also a slew of political “wanna be’s” of one level or another, all claiming they are running against the bad, evil liberals/ progressives/ etc. but not too much about the positives for which they are seeking office* or promoting. So the real question becomes how do I know when and where to actually send money or related support so it is not just money down a rat hole of grifters and band wagoner’s and hangers-on?
*Some of them say they are running for congress against existing or opposing candidate X, but they never even say what congressional district they are running in. How serious are they in that case?
Just going to leave this here for that “professor” as she would miss out on a couple good twists.
“What’s in the box?”
“After that, my guess is that you will never hear from him again. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that… he is gone.”
Freshman year, Calculus 152. My girlfriend was free during that time period . When I showed up for the mid term, I had to show ID to get in. The professor asked me where I had been most of the semester, and I told him that my girlfriend had free time during class time, so I was spending time with her. When he asked me to repeat myself, I told him I was getting laid.
Not my best grade, but not my worst, either.
G is for…Grade? “You get your grade? Yeah, got a grade.” Worse than a participation ribbon.
Why not just a simple pass/fail like many college classes that have certain issues like this? Well simple answer is, they would all likely be Fail….and we can’t have that….
What worries me is that according to trend Businesses will be forced to make special accommodations for “G” graduates. Think about a “G” level pilot the next time you fly.
I argue that professors like “Madame G” do not want to teach anyhting — they wish to indoctrinate students into the acolytes they desire. If they wanted to teach, they’d revel in the surprise not the fear on their students faces.
Steve, amen on how to handle classes. WHen I was in grad school, one semester had us taking two claasses, Business Communication and Research Methods. Our study group knew that for the BC class the prof wanted us dressed up with sharp visuals, which we did (even though classes were on Saturdays). We also knew that the RM prof didn’t care about the style, but only the substance. Some groups came in looking & sounding slick and got Cs for not focusing on the material. Our material was solid, and the team was horrified when our presenter rolled in at 7:55 for an 8:00 start wearing black kung fu pants, wrestling shoes, a 10 year old Maiden concert shirt and looking like he could have registered “legally dead” on a breathalizer six hours earlier (Spoken in Ron Howard’s Arrested Development voice:”Actually, did”), but the b*stard had prepared well enough in advance that he knocked the presentation out of the park, even handling the heaviest Q&A from the class than any other team had to – scored an A.
The fact that our presenter looked a lot like me is pure coincidence
Trigger Warning or Spoiler Alert. The quandary of our time.
When I was in elementary school we didn’t have A B & C grades. Our grades were E S & N. I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out what those mean.
We had the same letters: Ours stood for Excellent, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement. My parents made it clear that Satisfactory was not and that needing improvement meant you weren’t trying at all.
When did Harry Burns (When Harry Met Sally) become a professor at Rutgers?
Very good, sir. You get a gold star today for an outstanding reference.
Though, now that they are a Big 10 school, he might not want to teach there; he gets triggered by Big 10 schools.