Math, Science Popular Until Students Realize They’re Hard
Title could almost be from The Onion.<p>But it's true. It is hard, but that's okay. The whole point of the grading system was to acknowledge subtlety; that it's okay if you don't have an A, because it doesn't mean you haven't learnt anything, it just means you haven't learnt <i>everything</i> [in that course]. But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all.<p>This is my own bias talking, but I think that tests were people routinely get above ~80% are badly designed tests, because set up the wrong expectations in students. If students expect 90-100% scores are possible, and then they start a subject where all of a sudden that's not true, then they're not going to deal with that well. Whereas if everyone's getting results in the 60-80% range, it sets up an attitude that "this is hard, but that's okay -- it's meant to be, and there's no shame in realising that there's a lot left to learn." Which I think is altogether more helpful...