Why are ignorant people put in charge of something as important as education? It is astounding that anyone in their right mind would entrust their children to dim-witted administrators and pencil-pushers who believe the best for black children isn’t excellence, high achievement and dignity, but mediocrity, lowered expectations, empty accolades and high self-esteem.
Apparently too many students were failing classes or flunking out altogether at Benedict College, in my home state. Administrators decided to spread the poverty of lowered standards by scrapping traditional methods of measuring aptitude and base students’ grades on “effort” rather than actual work completed or knowledge gained.
When white liberals do this sort of thing, I’m neither surprised nor shocked because I know they have no concern for blacks’ education. But I’m always astounded when black people themselves do things like this, no matter how often or how widespread the incidents.
Despite what my detractors think, I want the best for black people. That is not to say I don’t care about anyone else. But let’s face it: there is a certain kinship one feels toward members of one’s own sub-culture, or “family”, and I can admit that. Why some blacks are so willing to accept scraps from the table instead of the choicest fare is something I’ll go to my grave wondering.
But I digress. As if the dumbed-down government school education black children receive isn’t bad enough, Benedict, an historically black college, is complicit in the miseducation. I’d heard about what Benedict was doing months ago, but Walter Williams’s latest column put it back on my radar screen. He writes:
Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., enforces an academic policy that defies belief. Say I’m a freshman taking your class in biology. I learn little from your lectures, assigned readings and homework. I do attend class every day, take notes and manage to average 40 percent on the graded work for the semester. What grade might you give me? I’m betting that all but the academic elite would say, “Sorry, Williams, but no cigar,” and I’d earn an F for the course. But if you’re a professor at Benedict College and gave me that F, you’d be fired….SEE [Success Equals Effort] is a policy where 60 percent of a freshman’s grade is based on effort and the rest on academic performance. In a student’s sophomore year, the formula drops to 50-50, and it isn’t used at all for junior and senior years. In defense of his policy, Benedict’s president, Dr. David H. Swinton, said that the students “have to get an A in effort [?!] to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
According to a story published by Columbia’s The State newspaper (www.thestate.com, Aug. 20, 2004), Milwood Motley said the policy compromises the integrity of Benedict. Students are being passed to increase student retention by falsely boosting academic performance. When professors Motley and Williams assigned grades based upon academic performance, Motley said the administration “told us to go back and recalculate the grades, and I just refused to do it.” At that point, Dr. Swinton fired both for insubordination.
Dr. William Gunn, a faculty member for 40 years and president of Benedict College’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, is dead set against the policy and believes most other faculty are as well. Writing in The State (Sept. 22, 2004), Dr. Gunn says the SEE policy not only harms today’s student but as well Benedict graduates who will see their degrees come under suspicion.
Dr. Swinton’s policy borders on lunacy.
For all the high-toned intentions of the SEE program, it’s all the same lower standards stuff. More often I’d like to read a comment from a liberal who actually understands why this is harmful instead of the same old comments that defy common sense. Change is good (hint).
Education writer Joanne Jacobs also wrote about this. She calls SEE the “Low Standards Equals Failure” plan. Jacobs is much too kind. Then again, if she said anything harsher she’d be called a racist, the number one conversation stopper. (Don’t fall for it!) I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that.
I contend that the president of Benedict College received a sub-par education himself, and because he’s “got his” he couldn’t give a **** about students at the school. The SEE program is just more of the same racist garbage that’s rampant in government education anyway.
While liberals are falsely accusing me of “self-hatred”, they fail to see that what Swinton is doing and what parents are allowing fall under the vile accusation, not anything I’ve ever said or written on this blog. But my liberal detractors prefer to harp on my opinions rather than on misguided cogs in the machine like Swinton.
By the way, that two men who stood up against this error were fired shouldn’t surprise you. Expect more of the same, especially if Democrats end up in the White House.
Addendum: Did this guy go to Harvard? No wonder he thinks this hare-brained scheme is a good idea!
Benedict is in my state and for a significant period of time, rumblings have come out that indicate that the university is run like a major athletic department. A very good friend of mine who is a reporter in Washington started out at Benedict but transferred to the University of Georgia because he said he was taken aback by the academic standards then. I hope that you keep an eye on this story and keep us posted.
I also hope you answer my latest email.
Comment by J Thomas — 10.07.04 @ 7:28 am
La Shawn “Expect more of the same, especially if Democrats end up in the White House.”
Does anyone doubt the “No Child Left Behind” program of testing for proficiency will be dismantled with a democratic win.
The Democrats are pro ‘Teacher’s Union, not pro children. Teacher’s in general do not like ‘quality control’ testing of their ‘product’.
Comment by Jim R — 10.07.04 @ 7:56 am
La Shawn,
If the policy isn’t followed at all during the student’s junior and senior years, does Benedict experience an out of proportion failure or withdrawal rate for students reaching their 3rd or 4th year? If not, why not? If substandard performance is acceptable during a student’s first 2 years, what happens when substandard work is no longer acceptable after the grading policy reverts to normal standards the last 2 years?
The problem for superior students, who attend Benedict is that their degree is diluted by crutching less able students along. The perception becomes that a degree from Benedict has less value because of this type of policy.
Say I were an employer, and knew of Benedict’s grading policy, and were faced with choosing between 2 applicants fresh out of school, one of whom holds a degree from Benedict, the other from another school. Common sense would tell you that I might be more likely to choose the other applicant, based on the perception that their degree was more of an indicator that they possessed the knowledge and ability that the degree purports to represent.
Even if the Benedict student I was dealing with was not the recipient of this type of help, but made it through the old fashioned way, the PERCEPTION would be that they got a degree by being “helped along” without really doing quality work.
Comment by Montie — 10.07.04 @ 8:30 am
A gentleman’s SEE
Walter Williams, as quoted by La Shawn Barber: Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., enforces an academic policy that defies belief. Say I’m a freshman taking your class in biology. I…
Trackback by dustbury.com — 10.07.04 @ 9:01 am
I really want to see what the liberal justification for this one is. You can’t justify it. It defies reason. I wouldn’t want a degree from that school no matter what the circumstance.
Comment by Chris Roberts — 10.07.04 @ 9:32 am
LB-
You and I are drinking from the same coffee pot again. I commented on my blog about this as well.
Reflects back on our past arguments about lowered standards and affirmative action.
Comment by Chris Roberts — 10.07.04 @ 11:34 am
Here’s my own theory, and racism and keeping a particular group stupid so they stay Democrats is not really it: I’ve noticed that ill-educated people wouldn’t know what good education was if it bit them on the butt. And, more to the point, most of these people have a socialist worldview, in which effort = value (no matter what crap a person cranks out).
Having had read some “enlightened” papers from those schooled in the postmodern way, where a facility for pumping out obfuscated prose is taken to be a marker of intelligence, and having talked to some of those guys - I think these people don’t really understand why =somebody= has got to actually =know= stuff that’s =true=. As opposed to “everyone has their own truth” kind of foo-foo.
So, my “charitable” take on all this is that the people pushing these policies are just plain dumb, don’t really know anything of use themselves, and don’t see why anybody else should have to prove they know anything of use. Thing is, those in charge of college accreditation aren’t this stupid. And when people realize the diplomas being handed out by an institution are completely meaningless, the institution will get no more students. A self-correcting problem, I’d say, but I’m sorry for the students who have gotten caught in the middle of this.
SC has many decent schools, like Fuhrman, Clemson, and USC - and my cousins in SC go to a local school, Francis Marion University, which was pretty decent last time I checked (my grandma got her masters degree there about 15 years ago). I would recommend transferring to one of these fine institutions.
Comment by meep — 10.07.04 @ 11:35 am
Low expectations, more errors = more money:
“‘Our library director is very frustrated that she has this lovely new library and it has all these misspellings in front,’ said city councilwoman Lorraine Dietrich, one of three council members who voted Monday to authorize paying another $6,000, plus expenses, to fly artist Maria Alquilar up from Florida to fix the errors.”
(Article from USA Today: “A $40,000 ceramic mural was unveiled outside the city’s [Livermore, CA] new library and everyone could see the misspelled names of Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other historical figures.”)
Comment by MORSteve — 10.07.04 @ 12:07 pm
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
Meep - I always appreciate your take on these issues. You are right about this stuff correcting itself. It’s a natural process, but socialists always push the unnatural thing, and people rebel! And those who are supposed to benefit from wrong-headed policies are hurt in the long run.
But don’t tell that to John “Section 8 Housing” Kerry.
Comment by LB — 10.07.04 @ 12:51 pm
What happens when these kids get out into the “real world”? When it comes to salary increases & promotions, most bosses don’t care about “effort” - they want results!
Comment by Mayflower — 10.07.04 @ 1:04 pm
That’s what skin color quotas are for, Mayflower. Unfortunately, blacks who’ve succeeded despite race preferences (or who’ve not relied on preferences at all but on merit, for example) suffer.
Comment by LB — 10.07.04 @ 1:08 pm
LaShawn points out an important new column by Walter Williams.
Comment by Inoperable Terran — 10.07.04 @ 1:28 pm
I got out of bed today. Do I get an A for effort?
Comment by Kiki B. — 10.07.04 @ 3:12 pm
It’s silly.
But it’s following the trend of “auditing classes for credit.”
Comment by DarkStar — 10.07.04 @ 6:30 pm
DarkStar, I almost fell out of my chair.
Comment by La Shawn — 10.07.04 @ 6:34 pm
Jim R, “No Child Left Behind Act” presently thanks to President Bush is a underfunded mandate, Ted Kennedy agreed to lend his support for the Act because GWB promised to fully fund it. Thanks to President Bush, the “No CHild Left Behind Act” will force states to increase class sizes, cut off teacher training, and after school programs. President Bush should consider changing the name of this legislation to “children Left Behind Act”
Comment by Daniel — 10.08.04 @ 2:52 pm
I think I’ve read DarkStar enough to know that even he believes you should earn your grades.
Definitely silly, and arcane.
And this is from a school prez from the Ivy League?
Almost makes me think he has some Northern “arrogance” to him. :>
Comment by Chris Roberts — 10.10.04 @ 12:13 am