Oh, the Humanity

I've now submitted my grades for the semester. My Modern Philosophy class did well enough, especially since that course covers challenging material, and it was the first philosophy class for some of those students.

As for my two sections of Intro...well, that's a different story. They bombed--bombed--the final exam. There was one 90, one 81, and everything else was pretty far below those scores. What really hurt them was the first section. Worth 40 points, it consisted of 22 questions that could be answered in a few words or a sentence or two, and which covered material that was central to the course. Most students didn't even clear the 20 point threshold, even with the two extra credit questions. Several got single-digit scores.

It's as if my students hired random people off the street to take the exam for them, and underpaid them. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who correctly answered the question, "What is epistemology?" even though I not only clearly defined the term, but used it throughout the semester in such a way that makes it pretty obvious what it means (theory of knowledge, for those of you who don't already know).

Grades for the course were somewhat better. I ended up scaling the final, and generously rounded a few times, but there were still far more C and D grades than everything else combined.

I had begun to suspect early on that my students here were generally weaker than those I had in years past. That suspicion just got confirmed big time. Sheesh. Maybe next semester's batch will be better.