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The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Archive for category School/Education

Getting Paid for Grades

Dec 13

Posted by Carl Drews in Carl, School/Education | 2 Comments

Back in high school a few of my classmates got paid by their parents to get good grades. I remember some guys said they would get $5 for an ‘A’ and $2 for every ‘B’. Then I heard much higher figures from some non-honor roll students: 20 bucks for every ‘A’ and $10 for every ‘B’! Wow! I would have cleaned up at the end of every marking period! I coulda had that ten-speed bike in no time, instead of painting our house that summer (Of course, if I hadn’t painted the house I would never have learned the words to “Road to Shambala”, by Three Dog Night, listening to my transistor radio up there on the scaffolding while slapping white paint against the shingles.) 

The odd thing is that the rates for good students were a lot lower than for the kids that rarely made the honor roll. “Biff” might earn 20 clams for every ‘A’, but he rarely got one. So the net payout from the parents was pretty minimal, whether their kids had high GPAs or low. 

Now that I’m in graduate school, I realize that I am getting paid to get good grades. And it ain’t no small potatoes, either! My company has an educational assistance plan that pays for tuition, usually about a thousand spondulicks for a three-credit course. I also get 5 hours per week to attend class during the day, which is a good benefit! But here is the catch: “To continue in the Educational Assistance Program, you must receive grades of “C” or higher for undergraduate course and “B” or higher for courses taken in a graduate degree program.” 

I took my final exam on Saturday night. I think I was between an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ in the course; not bad for a guy who four months ago would not have recognized a partial differential equation if one had fallen into my lunch! I think I did okay on the final. But if I blew the final, and I get a ‘C’ in the course; I am out of the Education Assistance Program. Sudden death! One strike, and you’re out! 

I have heard that professors will bend over backwards to give their students at least a B-. Other sources say no – their profs are strict that an ‘A’ is 90 or above, a ‘B’ is 80 or above, and so on. I don’t think I’m a slacker, but I did sign up for the Atmospheric Dynamics course a little weak on the prerequisites. 

So I’m getting paid a thousand dollars for every ‘A’ or ‘B’. If I get anything below a ‘B’, I’m out of the program. Maybe I can still try to get a Master’s Degree on my own, but it will be a lot more difficult. 

The stakes are high. This game is for keeps. 

Hey Wait a Minute, That’s Me in the “Before” Picture

Nov 14

Posted by Sean Murphy in School/Education | No Comments

In Adding Value — but at What Cost? Marshall Goldsmith distills a useful prescription out of a recent conversation: 

In my experience, one of the most common challenges that successful people face is a constant need to win. When the issue is important, they want to win. When the issue is trivial, they want to win. Even when the issue isn’t worth the effort or is clearly to their disadvantage, they still want to win. 

Research shows that the more we achieve, the more we tend to want to “be right.” At work meetings, we want our position to prevail. In arguments, we pull out all the stops to come out on top. Even at supermarket checkouts, we scout other lines to see if there’s one that’s moving faster. 

In Jon’s case, he was displaying a variation on the need to win: adding too much value. It’s particularly common among smart people. They may retain remnants of a top-down management style even if they don’t want to. These leaders are smart enough to realize that most of their subordinates know more in specific areas than they ever will, but old habits die hard. It’s difficult for them to listen to others disclose information without communicating either that they already knew about it or that they know a better way. 

The problem is, while they may have improved the idea by 5%, they’ve reduced the employee’s commitment to executing it by 30%, because they’ve taken away that person’s ownership of the idea. Therein lies the fallacy of added value: Whatever is gained in the form of a better idea may be lost six times over in the employee’s diminished enthusiasm for the concept. 

It can be painful to see yourself in the “before picture” of an advice column, and this one points how you can fool yourself by cleverly reframing “winning” as “adding value” and be just as obnoxious and counter-productive. I guess that’s the difference between my 20’s and my 40’s. In my 20’s I believed that I was held back by the people around me (typically managers) and situations I found my myself, now I see that it’s mainly my own actions/inactions that hold me back.

St. Louis Public Schools: Better Than The WWF?

Oct 13

Posted by Kevin Murphy in School/Education | 2 Comments

Archpundit at Blog St. Louis has the continuing controversies in the St. Louis Public School system covered like a blanket. The short version is that a majority of the board became tired of ongoing failure of the SLPS to educate the children of St. Louis and decided to hire a business turn-around firm instead of extending the contract of Cleveland Hammonds as superintendent. This was a pretty radical move, but they felt justified by the slow at best progress under traditional superintendents. Personally, I find the logic impeccable from the standpoint that (as related to me by Edgar Denison, who was a hatchet man at Union Electric as well as famed amateur botanist) nobody likes a hatchet man, and the company wants to get rid of you as soon as you’ve finished chopping. Consequently, no superintendent who wants to stay with the school district would attempt the required reforms – closing schools, laying off employees, outsourcing non-core functions, and in general treating the SLPS as something other than a jobs program.

Attention has turned from the “secrecy” of the initial hiring of the firm and its planning leading up to the first day of school to the (failed) boycott called for by some members of the community to the ongoing insane (and I use that term in what I believe is a clinical sense) behavior of some members of the school board. If you have a strong stomach and a morbid curiosity, you’ll be thrilled by the complete accounting at Blog St. Louis. And don’t forget to read the comments for my own penetrating insights into the complex situation.

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