Venting

[treeskin]

I graded lab ID quizzes for Donna today, and just have to bitch about some of the consistently missed answers. This'll mean much more to my plant geek friends. The rest of you, well, just google for pics of the varieties, you'll get the idea.

Anyway...venting.....

Because so many of the class have been mixing up the same flowers through the entire semester, Donna put most of the troublesome ones on the last quiz at the same time. They were: french marigold, calendula, garden mum, zinnia.

Now, would those who are even remotely familiar with these flowers tell me if I'm nuts? Because I just can't see how people can NOT distinguish between them. They look different, have very different odors, wildly different foliage and stems.....I'm just confused as to how half the damn class got all four mixed up. Not only that, but some of the brighter pennies in class gotthose four mixed up with things not on the quiz, like goldenrod and asters. In what universe does calendula even remotely resemble the common native goldenrod??? Grrrr.

They never want me to teach herbaceous, that's all I can say. These kids think Donna's being soooo horrible to them, they don't want to see what it'd be like if I taught it. Because I'd teach it the way I was taught, and no being nice about it, no dumbing it down, no cutting out the difficult or rare things (so, 200 plants instead of 140).

I say again, grrrr.

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Welcome to teaching.

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

You're so helpful.

[cammie018.livejournal.com]

"no dumbing it down"


This has been one of the things that has really surprised me my second time around in college. I remember it being much harder the first time. We covered things in Comp 1 that I remember from elementary english, and the kids who were fresh out of high school did not know it. Same with history, Pretty basic stuff and these kids have no clue. I have pretty much sailed through most of my classes this time around without much effort, it's time consuming, but nothing I have done so far is anything I would call difficult. Except for math, which is just plain evil.

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

Granted, this is a community college, but...when the stated ideal here is, so often, that we provide as good an education as any of the 4-yr school, why do they dumb it down to the comfort level of your average JoCo brat?

Another thing, with this class in particular, is that when I took it at KSU, it was a major's only class with several pre-requ's. Here, anyone can take it, which means that the first month of class hsa to be hort science for dummies. Donna's trying to talk the dept head into making it major's only, and coming up with a dumbed-down version for the 1-yr certificate students, but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

And that brings up the whole business of the one-yr hort certificate, which is about useless in my opinion. Most of the people hiring are looking for experience, not education, and those looking for education want a heck of a lot more than a souped-up master gardener's certificate. Because that's what the 1-yr cert is, really, and no more useful.

Sorry, got myself wound up. It's a bit early to be up on the soapbox. Blame lack of caffeine yesterday.

Dumbing Down

[iarraidh.livejournal.com]

I know I went to school in the Olden Days...

But what I got as an education in 12 years of parochial school, college preparatory curriculum would EASILY pass for a 4 year college in today's standards.

Too bad I can't shit a piece of paper authenticating same.
Might increase the odds of getting a better job.

[tnrkitect.livejournal.com]

Architecture, Med school / Vet school and Pharmacy are some of the last hold outs on the "dumbing down" syndrome. This is because these fields are ones in which lives are at stake. Yet even they are slowly succumbing to the creep of mediocrity, at least in the ancilliary courses.