Exactly. In France it used to be that finals counted for 100% of the grade (everything else for zero).
That's the thinking behind the "bac" that marks the end of high school: you either have it (weighted average >= 10/20) or you don't, but what your teachers thought about you is irrelevant (except in special cases where your average is 9.8 for example).
Everything else used to work the same as the "bac": you study, or you don't, during the year, and at the end of the year a big exam tested whether you know anything or not.
Before my time it was even stronger; my mother (who's 80 and studied in the 1950s) was able to get her law degree without ever going to law school (she was a full-time secretary and studied law at night). She was a very fine lawyer and won most her cases (including a few for me ;-)
This is an incredibly fair system. What matters is, can you answer the questions on the test (and BTW, questions used to be real questions that you had to answer using full sentences and actual reasoning, never MCQs).
But things are changing. Things have always been changing, but now they're changing faster. People complain that setting up exams is costly whereas the marginal cost of tracking in-class participation is nil (since the teacher is already there anyway).
This is very silly and very unfair. What in-class participation measures is conformity/ability to repeat what the teacher wants to hear, NOT competence or knowledge.
Rating - or paying any attention to - in-class participation is confusing the means with the end. The end is knowledge/personal development. Listening to the teacher while sitting still, or "partipating" (?) is but one of the means to achieve this goal.
In this month's "Who's hiring?" thread I came upon an ad from "ClassDojo", the stated mission of which is to "manage behavior in the classroom" by "easily award[ing] feedback points for behavior in class in real-time, with just one click of your smartphone or laptop".
This upset me in more ways than I can describe.
Teachers should seek to ENGAGE students, not "manage their behavior".
Modern schooling seems to aim at training donkeys for a circus show, using treats provided by the likes of ClassDojo.
This is as far removed from "education" as possible; education is about autonomy of the mind.
That's the thinking behind the "bac" that marks the end of high school: you either have it (weighted average >= 10/20) or you don't, but what your teachers thought about you is irrelevant (except in special cases where your average is 9.8 for example).
Everything else used to work the same as the "bac": you study, or you don't, during the year, and at the end of the year a big exam tested whether you know anything or not.
Before my time it was even stronger; my mother (who's 80 and studied in the 1950s) was able to get her law degree without ever going to law school (she was a full-time secretary and studied law at night). She was a very fine lawyer and won most her cases (including a few for me ;-)
This is an incredibly fair system. What matters is, can you answer the questions on the test (and BTW, questions used to be real questions that you had to answer using full sentences and actual reasoning, never MCQs).
But things are changing. Things have always been changing, but now they're changing faster. People complain that setting up exams is costly whereas the marginal cost of tracking in-class participation is nil (since the teacher is already there anyway).
This is very silly and very unfair. What in-class participation measures is conformity/ability to repeat what the teacher wants to hear, NOT competence or knowledge.
Rating - or paying any attention to - in-class participation is confusing the means with the end. The end is knowledge/personal development. Listening to the teacher while sitting still, or "partipating" (?) is but one of the means to achieve this goal.
In this month's "Who's hiring?" thread I came upon an ad from "ClassDojo", the stated mission of which is to "manage behavior in the classroom" by "easily award[ing] feedback points for behavior in class in real-time, with just one click of your smartphone or laptop".
This upset me in more ways than I can describe.
Teachers should seek to ENGAGE students, not "manage their behavior".
Modern schooling seems to aim at training donkeys for a circus show, using treats provided by the likes of ClassDojo.
This is as far removed from "education" as possible; education is about autonomy of the mind.