Judgments

Teaching is always difficult You never really know how much students are taking in until you read their papers and get back exam scores. I saw an article in Science magazine (March 14, 2008) about archaeological studies on how people learn. Although they are looking at primitive cultures, I wonder what it means for more complex cultures and what it means for students and teachers in a formal (school) setting. Maybe we're going about it wrong. And with the focus on assessment and learning outcomes right now in the universities, we are very conscious of the fact that learning doesn't always happen, or at least how we expected it to. I just finished grading another batch of papers for my first-year writing course. What students don't always realize is how hard it is to grade and how it is the most unpleasant part of teaching. No one is happy about it so why do we do it? It's the same idea of what's going on with the assessment of courses, schools, etc.---everything has to be quantified for some reason or other. I suppose value judgements are all around us in so many ways; it seems to be part of our lives. Judge not that ye be not judged! Yes, try doing that as a teacher! The only thing we can do is to be as fair as we can be.