“That is all a waste of time. People will ignore most of it, because it has no relevance in the real world.”

People are ignorant and asinine, for the most part. They are trapped in a dispassionate and boring rat race of epic proportions. Surely, we should aim to fix this problem in as many ways as possible? However, I can understand that it’s very difficult to come up with solutions when few people listen. Nonetheless, just because something won’t happen due to misguided social forces doesn’t make the alternative wrong. It makes the situation regrettably hopeless, instead. So I agree, until a large shift happens, this ‘bullshit’ the author talks about won’t stop, but this isn’t because he’s wrong. He’s right. Society and it’s blind power struggles are wrong.

“In the end, writing is a craft and a lot more objective than peope who are struggling with their writing realize.”

I think this is a load of crap. From my point of view, I’ve seen my grades vary immensely from professor to professor. Papers others have wrote that have seemed like utter trash to me have many times scored higher than what I have wrote because they appeal more to the ‘conventional’ or exactly what the professor likes. I have much more experience with writing than most individuals my age as well. Writing isn’t as objective as you think, nor are others who supposedly ’struggle’ (if defined by grades) in the dark about this. There are many different styles and elements of writing which can convey the same message in different ways that appeal to many people. Unless you lack basic sentence structure and connections between ideas are completely invisible, writing is at least 90% subjective.

“Fairness - if there was ever a word that should be ripped from the dictionary. It does not exist. Grow up and stop whining.”

Another ‘quityerbitchin’ argument. These really piss me off. Life isn’t fair? Well, then try to make it fair. Not going to happen? Well, that sucks. Wait for things to change but try not to drive yourself down a deep hole. However, life still morally SHOULD be fair, and we should strive as much as possible for it, not tell people to ’stfu and stop whining’. Of course, nothing can happen 100%, but just abandoning the issue like this seems to be no more than a cop out.

The mindless, ignorant, hierarchical rat race isn’t ‘right’. It’s pathetic. It discourages meaning, relational knowledge, creativity, innovation, maturity, personal development, and so much more. It strikes me as arrogant that someone would just tell people to ‘get over it’ and portray the current system as ‘right’ essentially. I’m sure many people you say ‘are not ready to assimilate’ could assimilate if they truly want to, or aren’t dulled enough to the bullshit in society.

This comes in late, but I just felt like posting.

Fairness - if there was ever a word that should be ripped from the dictionary. It does not exist. Grow up and stop whining.

You will be graded throughout your entire life by your boss, your clients, your spouse, your family, nearly everyone you meet will have an informal or formal scale they will weigh you on. Nearly all work you do will be graded in some manner. Often it will be an illogical scale based on internal and many times totally subconscious scale.

People have biases. They should and might even try to suppress those biases when they become prejudices. But stop expecting fairness.

It’s not gonna happen. And your silly attempts at creating a Utopian socialistic academic wonderland is counterproductive to actually improving real academic grading systems.

If grades are supposed to measure a students assimilation and comprehension of course materials then guessing on assignments and exams makes the process inherently flawed.

Can we allow decisions involving hiring and millions of dollars in scholarship money to be based upon results obtained through random chance?