The high school in Mount Olive, New Jersey has declared itself a D-free zone. On the logic that a D is really a failure, the school will only give A’s, B’s C’s and F’s. To this logic I quote from Matthew B. Crawford’s book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft.”
Pedagogically, you might want to impress on a student the miserable state of his mind. You might want to improve the students by first crushing him, as then you can recruit his pride to the love of learning. You might want to reveal to him the chasm separating his level of understanding from the thinkers of the ages. You do this not out of malice, but because you sense rare possibilities in him, and take your task to be that of cultivating in the young man or woman a taste for the most difficult studies. Such studies are likely to embolden him against timid conventionality, and humble him against the self-satisfaction of the age, which he wears on his face. These are the pedagogical uses of the “D.”
What’s a dedicated slacker to do? Well, if figuring out if it is worth going to class taxes your brain a new website -- The Should I Skip Class Today? Calculator offers the solution. Of course if you need a website to figure out if you should go to class, you should probably just go.
Of course if you have been skipping class pretty often, Ultrinsic is the new off campus betting parlor for academia. Students can bet on their grades in individual courses or the semester GPA. They can even buy grade insurance against receiving a lower grade than they bet on. Apparently, education is not it’s own reward, and it takes too long to reap the benefit. Today’s students need the nearer-term payback of a cash payday for grades. Of course if you get the insurance maybe you don’t need the grades.
I wonder how not having a D option would effect Ultrinsic's business model.
T.S. Hall
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