cool yet disturbing article

[permetaform]

via tochira

A Nation of Wimps

By: Hara Estroff Marano
Summary: Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers.


...Causes me to both bless and curse my parents on the same breath. They're not as bad as some of those mentioned, but, god. (ask lierdumoa sometime for the story sometime when my mother called her to hunt me down. she found her number via my phone bill. ::headdesk::)

On the one hand, I wonder how I survived. On the other, I take an honest look at myself, and wonder if I truly did.

Also:
"In an era of rampant grade inflation, some college students find it shocking to discover there are 26 letters in the alphabet"

le sigh.

Comments

[linzeestyle.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about the grade inflation thing. On the one hand, yes, I'm the student that sits at 2am refreshing, waiting for my grades to be online so I can find out if I got an A or A-. I've benefited multiple times - just this semester, actually - from the fact that if a professor knows and likes you, they are very very likely to give you that bump up from an A- to a solid A. I'm the anal-retentive honors student that panicks and asks questions about everything because hey, I'll admit it: I like being able to tell people I'm going into my junior year of college with a 4.0 GPA.

At the same time, in high school I was a teacher's assistant a few times, once during the teacher's break hour, and I cannot tell you the number of calls I overheard where some angry parent would call to ask "how dare you flunk my son/daughter?!" And the "you" is the problem there. We no longer drop the blame on the shoulders of the students who refuse to show up, or study, or actually do the damn work - grades are "given" and "Assigned" rather than earned. And this buisness of "if you try your hardest you should get an A!" drives me insane. Grade scales are not subjective and sometimes "your best" is not the same as a "90% or higher." Period. It's unfair, woe, but then...so is life.

Linzee