It is indeed a problem, but it will be present any time you want to offer any type of incentive towards good academic performance. The proper solution is to tighten grading standards in humanities, not to take it as a given and drop the idea of merit-based incentives altogether. Or you could establish different subsidy rates for each department, but 1) it’s an inelegant hack and 2) it’s a political minefield.
(Somewhat related: a little over a year ago I was looking at applying for studying at the Université du Québec. It turned out that, for the purpose of converting the grades one gets during a bachelor’s degree from an Italian university, they actually had separate tables depending on your course of studies. Had I been a philosophy or literature student, only my straight 30/30s would have been turned into As; as a math student, 27⁄30 and above would have sufficed.)
It is indeed a problem, but it will be present any time you want to offer any type of incentive towards good academic performance. The proper solution is to tighten grading standards in humanities, not to take it as a given and drop the idea of merit-based incentives altogether. Or you could establish different subsidy rates for each department, but 1) it’s an inelegant hack and 2) it’s a political minefield.
Declare that across the board all subjects must rate student performance on a bell curve.
The downside would be that some subjects have students that are just all round better. This is solved in the Victorian (Australian state) high school grading system which scales subjects based on statistical inferences that can drawn systematically from relative student performances across their various subjects (if all students who get medium grades in Specialist Mathematics get top grades in English it is probably hard...)
Declare that across the board all subjects must rate student performance on a bell curve.
It’s not a bad system, but it runs into two problems inversely proportional to the size of the classroom. First, it’s very easy for students to start exercising social pressure against excellent performance, which “ruins” everybody else’s grades; I’ve witnessed this happening first-hand, when one teacher at my high school decided to try this method. Secondly, statistical anomalies will happen where almost all students are diligent (or negligent), and it would be scandalous to have to fail a previously-determined percentage of them.
If I had to choose a strategy in the few minutes I’m dedicating to writing this post, I’d go for setting objectively measurable standards, which by necessity will come down to memorising a ton of works and notions. It’s by no means an efficient educational supplement (and will be ready for a reform in a couple decades or so), but my anecdotal experience with humanities student suggests that what they are in most need of is some push towards competitiveness. Not all top-quality fiction writers, literary critics, and assorted essayists need be obsessed book-devourers, but a large majority of them will be. Plus, if they find this hypothetical academic neo-sciolism stifling, autodidacticism is a much more viable career option for them than for technical, business, and to some degree science students.
It’s not a bad system, but it runs into two problems inversely proportional to the size of the classroom. First, it’s very easy for students to start exercising social pressure against excellent performance, which “ruins” everybody else’s grades; I’ve witnessed this happening first-hand, when one teacher at my high school decided to try this method. Secondly, statistical anomalies will happen where almost all students are diligent (or negligent), and it would be scandalous to have to fail a previously-determined percentage of them.
This is definitely something that you should not do within one classroom. Within one course is the absolute minimum I would want to accept.
It is indeed a problem, but it will be present any time you want to offer any type of incentive towards good academic performance. The proper solution is to tighten grading standards in humanities, not to take it as a given and drop the idea of merit-based incentives altogether. Or you could establish different subsidy rates for each department, but 1) it’s an inelegant hack and 2) it’s a political minefield.
(Somewhat related: a little over a year ago I was looking at applying for studying at the Université du Québec. It turned out that, for the purpose of converting the grades one gets during a bachelor’s degree from an Italian university, they actually had separate tables depending on your course of studies. Had I been a philosophy or literature student, only my straight 30/30s would have been turned into As; as a math student, 27⁄30 and above would have sufficed.)
Declare that across the board all subjects must rate student performance on a bell curve.
The downside would be that some subjects have students that are just all round better. This is solved in the Victorian (Australian state) high school grading system which scales subjects based on statistical inferences that can drawn systematically from relative student performances across their various subjects (if all students who get medium grades in Specialist Mathematics get top grades in English it is probably hard...)
It’s not a bad system, but it runs into two problems inversely proportional to the size of the classroom. First, it’s very easy for students to start exercising social pressure against excellent performance, which “ruins” everybody else’s grades; I’ve witnessed this happening first-hand, when one teacher at my high school decided to try this method. Secondly, statistical anomalies will happen where almost all students are diligent (or negligent), and it would be scandalous to have to fail a previously-determined percentage of them.
If I had to choose a strategy in the few minutes I’m dedicating to writing this post, I’d go for setting objectively measurable standards, which by necessity will come down to memorising a ton of works and notions. It’s by no means an efficient educational supplement (and will be ready for a reform in a couple decades or so), but my anecdotal experience with humanities student suggests that what they are in most need of is some push towards competitiveness. Not all top-quality fiction writers, literary critics, and assorted essayists need be obsessed book-devourers, but a large majority of them will be. Plus, if they find this hypothetical academic neo-sciolism stifling, autodidacticism is a much more viable career option for them than for technical, business, and to some degree science students.
This is definitely something that you should not do within one classroom. Within one course is the absolute minimum I would want to accept.