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Ahh Harvard

Years ago at my university, we had a new professor of history (formerly taught at Harvard for a decade or so) who handed back our essays and I received an A-.

I said to him "I guess this would be a C+ at Harvard." Such a prestigious school vs VIU (Vancouver Island University) surely has higher standards than a tiny University in Western Canada.

"That's an A+ paper at Harvard" he replied. "With Harvard accepting the best and brightest out of high school, we can't have them getting poor marks."

I filed that away as interesting. Several years later I taught at a Hogwan in South Korea - these are typically shoddily run private schools that have no real understanding of running a school but are all about making a profit. Anyway, the "principal" if that can truly be said about him was all about "the show" and hired people who must have teaching degrees and or a degree from an Ivy League. So he hired professional teachers like myself and hired a woman who graduated from Harvard.

While chatting with her about a paper she said she got a B+ - "In other words, I failed." She noted that if that paper was given to a professor at other universities she would have failed.

I am sure this doesn't apply to the programs Harvard is famous for like Medicine and Law (I hope so) but to the softer subjects like the Arts.

But it is an indicator of putting too much emphasis on the high school final exams - SATs in the US or IELTS or whatever.

As a high school student, I was far more interested in being an all-star baseball pitcher in BC, Girls, playing Hockey, part-time jobs, going to rock concerts.

When I did my homework it was usually 3 minutes before I walked into the classroom.

One nice thing about my university is that you got in through merit regardless of colour or sex. And you sure would not graduate with anything less than merit. As my ex-Harvard professor noted - at VIU he didn't have to inflate grades to satisfy his boss and the bottom line.

Albeit, when we elected a right-wing government - they elected to have each school district pay for everything - so there was a massive shortfall in funds. So they created a school in Mainland China where the rich parents would send their kids. This would then help fund the shortfall back in New Westminster, BC. Because the district needed money for computers and books etc, they inflated the marks of the Chinese students so that they would meet the entry requirements to get into a Canadian/US/UK university. So their C+ meant they could land a spot over a Canadian kid with a C. Problem is that C+ in English should have been a C-

Bah - whole other story.


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