Chinese Logic? Anyone? Anyone? (changing a student's grade)

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

I screwed up a students grade and will have to change it.

As some may know, this is a BIG NO-NO here. But there’s more.

She missed the Midterm for a valid reason (Uncles Funeral). I forgot this and failed her.

In the case of an exam missed for a valid reason, I assign them the same % grade contribution for the missed exam as they got for a comparable exam (in this case, the end-of-term, 23%) that they sat. This raises her overall grade from 52% to 75%

Taiwanese teachers are not comfortable with this procedure. Possibly they don’t understand it, (They don’t, after all, generally understand percentages. I am NOT kidding!) but they say its “unfair”. I think they would prefer to see some pointless busy-work, like a “make-up” test, to somehow keep up appearances, though as far as I can tell this will almost certainly be less fair, as well as being a pain for all concerned.

This antipathy would normally be of no concern to me, but in this case I’m going to have to defend the grade adjustment procedure, since I’ll have to appear before the “why did you screw up your grade(s) committee”. The boss has suggested that I’ll have to have a “logical explanation” for the adjustment procedure (NOT, please note, for the screw-up).

Would that it was so simple. A “logical explanation” I got, but it is, of course, absolutely NOT what I need. I need an explanation that will satisfy Taiwanese Academics, and it had better, therefore, be bullshit.

Or I just go for open defiance, but that won’t fly right because I MADE A MISTAKE (and, MUCH worse, completely failed to conceal it.)

Any suggestions?

2

  1. It is unfair to give the student a make-up exam or project because there is no way she could possible preform as well as possible while her heart and mind are suffering the torments of grief. To be fair, you have given her the same grade she made on a previous exam because it accurately reflects how she was preforming in your class prior to her great loss, yet puts no added and undue stress on her at this difficult time.

  2. You are very concerned about this matter and about this student, so you have burnt incense and made offerings to your ancestors, earnestly seeking an answer. Your grandfather (who was a very respected and accomplished scholar in your home country) came to you in a dream offering guidance. He told you to assign the same grade she made on a previous exam, so you have done as your ancestors have instructed you to do.

1 Like
3

[quote=“Ducked”]I’m going to have to defend the grade adjustment procedure, since I’ll have to appear before the “why did you screw up your grade(s) committee”. The boss has suggested that I’ll have to have a “logical explanation” for the adjustment procedure (NOT, please note, for the screw-up).

Would that it was so simple. A “logical explanation” I got, but it is, of course, absolutely NOT what I need. I need an explanation that will satisfy Taiwanese Academics, and it had better, therefore, be bullshit.

Or I just go for open defiance, but that won’t fly right because I MADE A MISTAKE (and, MUCH worse, completely failed to conceal it.)[/quote]
I think Housecat’s #1 suggestion will serve you well. Alternatively: just tell the student to give you a couple of paragraphs talking about something inane, like what she’s going to do in summer vacation. Tell the committee this kind of, oh, ‘guided research project’ will stand in place of the exam.

I’ve gone before one of those committees before to change a grade: it worked out for the student, but I remember that I followed my boss’s advice on how to present my case - and that presentation was mostly BS. It worked out, sure, but I’ve always felt crappy about lying like that to suit whatever face requirements were being met.

So basically I’m warning you that if you go the “satisfying Taiwanese academics” route, things will probably technically end well, but it won’t make you feel happy about yourself. But doing something that makes you feel ethical/ principled may also be a dumb move.

(My own situation was different: I had a student that got something like 55% with me, and then appealed because she was graduating and would have had to come back to school for another year for an English course that was, to be frank, a joke. I felt that although she deserved to fail the course, she didn’t deserve to have her whole life put on hold for a year, so I was willing to pass her; my boss told me to give some BS story - I don’t even remember what it was - rather than the truth. I still wish I’d told the truth, even though that may have caused trouble for me; but I figure that’s what panels of your ‘superiors’ are for. “Here’s the situation: this is what I’d like to do, but I leave the decision in your wise and capable hands.”)

4

[quote=“housecat”]1) It is unfair to give the student a make-up exam or project because there is no way she could possible preform as well as possible while her heart and mind are suffering the torments of grief. To be fair, you have given her the same grade she made on a previous exam because it accurately reflects how she was preforming in your class prior to her great loss, yet puts no added and undue stress on her at this difficult time.

  1. You are very concerned about this matter and about this student, so you have burnt incense and made offerings to your ancestors, earnestly seeking an answer. Your grandfather (who was a very respected and accomplished scholar in your home country) came to you in a dream offering guidance. He told you to assign the same grade she made on a previous exam, so you have done as your ancestors have instructed you to do.[/quote]

First bit is reasonable. But I guess that can’t be helped.

2nd bit is pure, fat, waving-cat gold. :thumbsup:

Just have to work on my straight face a bit.

5

:roflmao: doesn’t exist in the form you know it as. 5000 years of culture matey.

6

[quote=“lostinasia”][quote=“Ducked”]I’m going to have to defend the grade adjustment procedure, since I’ll have to appear before the “why did you screw up your grade(s) committee”. The boss has suggested that I’ll have to have a “logical explanation” for the adjustment procedure (NOT, please note, for the screw-up).

Would that it was so simple. A “logical explanation” I got, but it is, of course, absolutely NOT what I need. I need an explanation that will satisfy Taiwanese Academics, and it had better, therefore, be bullshit.

Or I just go for open defiance, but that won’t fly right because I MADE A MISTAKE (and, MUCH worse, completely failed to conceal it.)[/quote]
I think Housecat’s #1 suggestion will serve you well. Alternatively: just tell the student to give you a couple of paragraphs talking about something inane, like what she’s going to do in summer vacation. Tell the committee this kind of, oh, ‘guided research project’ will stand in place of the exam.

I’ve gone before one of those committees before to change a grade: it worked out for the student, but I remember that I followed my boss’s advice on how to present my case - and that presentation was mostly BS. It worked out, sure, but I’ve always felt crappy about lying like that to suit whatever face requirements were being met.

So basically I’m warning you that if you go the “satisfying Taiwanese academics” route, things will probably technically end well, but it won’t make you feel happy about yourself. But doing something that makes you feel ethical/ principled may also be a dumb move.

(My own situation was different: I had a student that got something like 55% with me, and then appealed because she was graduating and would have had to come back to school for another year for an English course that was, to be frank, a joke. I felt that although she deserved to fail the course, she didn’t deserve to have her whole life put on hold for a year, so I was willing to pass her; my boss told me to give some BS story - I don’t even remember what it was - rather than the truth. I still wish I’d told the truth, even though that may have caused trouble for me; but I figure that’s what panels of your ‘superiors’ are for. “Here’s the situation: this is what I’d like to do, but I leave the decision in your wise and capable hands.”)[/quote]

I’m afraid I’ve done maybe three now, and its been suggested that more might be fatal, though the last one was three years ago so I might have some more slack. Last-but-one I had to write a report, which was then mis-translated into Chinese, and then I had to answer questions on the Chinese version (which was not what happened, and which I couldn’t read), while attempting to minimise conflict.

It was tricky. I gave up on the conflict-minimisation after a while.

It had been a spreadsheet error which had lowered some students grades by about 10%. No pass/fail differences IIRC.

Cttee member : “It says here there were student complaints. How many students complained?”

Me: “No, I’m afraid that is also incorrect. No students complained.”

Cttee member: “Then how was the error detected”

Me: “I noticed it and reported it the day after the grade submission deadline”

Cttee member (slightly incredulous) “You reported it?”

Me: “Yes”

Cttee members look at each other nonplussed. There’s an embarrassed shuffling of papers. Eventually, one asks:-

"Ah…Is this because of your religion?"

Me: (Now its my turn to look nonplussed)

“Er…No. I don’t have any religion”

More baffled glances…then an especially westernised prof, says, in a going-out-on-a-limb-here kinda way…

“Um…Is it perhaps a…well…honour code thing?”

I think for a moment: " You mean…telling the truth…um…yes, I suppose you could say that"

The assembled company nod sagely, and move on.

I was in a just-sub-borderline situation like the one you describe above last year, and I’m afraid I succumbed to fairly heavy pressure from the boss, and the girls form teacher to fail her. She’d seemed to have colds a lot, but she didn’t have official medical excuses.

I suspect that the pressure was partly motivated by the girl being spectacularly sexy, which may have meant they were suspicious of my motivation for wanting to pass her, but I don’t think that was my reason.

If I had passed her I don’t think there would have been any further enquiry, so it wouldn’t have gone to any committee, those are just for grade changes, but the boss would have been pissed off.

7

I don’t conduct mid-terms or finals. Instead, I base their final grade on a number of video assignments and quizzes. If a student misses a quiz and bothers to give me an excuse (bullshit or genuine, it doesn’t matter), I simply tell them that I will give them a score for the missed quiz equal to the score they get on the next quiz. (This seems to be similar to what you do with your mid-terms and finals.) I should add that this is not a policy that I ever announce to the class as a whole, as I expect them to turn up for all the quizzes.

As far as I can recall, in every case the student concerned has thought this was a fair arrangement. But then again, given the alternative of getting zero for the missed quiz, this is not surprising.

My point is, why not present the student’s point of view? If he or she thinks it’s fair, who is another teacher to say it isn’t? It doesn’t affect the other students’ grades.

8

[quote=“adikarmika”]

My point is, why not present the student’s point of view? If he or she thinks it’s fair, who is another teacher to say it isn’t? It doesn’t affect the other students’ grades.[/quote]

I don’t think they’d like that AT ALL.

Who are they? They are the Why Did You Screw Up Your Grades Committee

(And dont you forget it, Big Nose.)

9

The fact that you are being required to supply a “logical explanation” implies that there is no satisfactory possible explanation. Give the make-up.

10

[quote]Cttee members look at each other nonplussed. There’s an embarrassed shuffling of papers. Eventually, one asks:-

“Ah…Is this because of your religion?”

Me: (Now its my turn to look nonplussed)

…

[/quote]

Hells bleedin’ bells. I’ve heard some stories about Taiwanese academia but that one should win some awards. Do you promise you’re not just winding us up? That actually happened?

I can now fully understand (and appreciate, like fine wines) your regular rants!

11

[quote=“finley”][quote]Cttee members look at each other nonplussed. There’s an embarrassed shuffling of papers. Eventually, one asks:-

“Ah…Is this because of your religion?”

Me: (Now its my turn to look nonplussed)

…

[/quote]

Hells bleedin’ bells. I’ve heard some stories about Taiwanese academia but that one should win some awards. Do you promise you’re not just winding us up? That actually happened?
[/quote]

Sure. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Except that, on reflection, I’m not sure I actually said “You mean …telling the truth?”.

That’s what I thought, and thought I said, but it seems rather obviously snide and I wonder if the verbalisation is a memory edit. The rest is pretty much verbatim.

[quote=“finley”]
I can now fully understand (and appreciate, like fine wines) your regular rants![/quote]

Moi?

Sure you don’t mean fine whines?

Slightly OT, but I think this is my favorite Taiwan academe incident. 100% Genuine Emperors New Clothes. Sad really:-

Someone very senior asked me to review a postgrad students thesis abstract.

I forget the topic, but it was in the (IT) management studies research area, one that I rather despise, but have some practical (and, I’m afraid, peripheral “academic”) background in.

Even for something in this area by a Taiwanese it was a truly appalling piece of writing, with recursively nested jargon, and buzzwords in depth. However, I’d readied something related for publication shortly before, so I could more-or-less decipher the mumbo-jumbo, and, as usual, there wasn’t actually much to it, though in this case, less usually, not nothing.

So I tidied it up, typed it out, and gave it back to her supervisor over coffee.

Credit where due, she actually read it.

“Oh.” ses she. “You’ve made it quite simple”

Now in “real” academia, if you can find it, this would, I suspect, be high praise indeed.

But this was Taiwan. And Management Research. So although delighted I wasn’t totally surprised by the next bit.

“I was hoping for something more academic”

:roflmao:

But perhaps one had to be there?

12

[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“Ducked”]

This antipathy would normally be of no concern to me, but in this case I’m going to have to defend the grade adjustment procedure, since I’ll have to appear before the “why did you screw up your grade(s) committee”. The boss has suggested that I’ll have to have a “logical explanation” for the adjustment procedure (NOT, please note, for the screw-up).

Would that it was so simple. A “logical explanation” I got, but it is, of course, absolutely NOT what I need. I need an explanation that will satisfy Taiwanese Academics, and it had better, therefore, be bullshit.

[/quote]

The fact that you are being required to supply a “logical explanation” implies that there is no satisfactory possible explanation. Give the make-up.[/quote]

Hmm…take your point. This probably isn’t going to go very well…

13

ed: I have some questions for you. I ask these questions not to have a go at you, but because I’m genuinely curious as to your answers because I experience/have experienced similar things to you on a regular basis and I don’t know how to react to them. I find myself either hitting my head on a brick wall or just giving up, but I wouldn’t say I’m particularly successful at really getting what I want or need for real personal and professional satisfaction.

  1. What are you trying to achieve with teaching? What are you trying to achieve with being honest?

  2. To what extent do you think you’re successful with 1)? In what light would you see your “teaching” career over here so far? (How long have you been doing this, by the way?)

  3. How do you reconcile (both on a daily basis and over the long term) your own personal values with the bullshit that inevitably follows from exercising them?

14

[quote]“Oh.” ses she. “You’ve made it quite simple”

Now in “real” academia, if you can find it, this would, I suspect, be high praise indeed.

But this was Taiwan. And Management Research. So although delighted I wasn’t totally surprised by the next bit.

“I was hoping for something more academic”
[/quote]

I’ve been there. Someone studying for his comp.sci. MSc asked me to review a paper he’d written in English (supposedly for publication in a journal) on an image processing topic. His english was OK, but what he’d written was basically just a review of another paper that his supervisor had published (in Chinese). It simply described what Master ShiFu had done, no more, no less. Not one original word. I gently suggested that, if he wished to explore the algorithm expounded in his supervisor’s paper, then he should at least discuss its shortcomings and suggest improvements or possible future research (it was a pretty mediocre technique with plenty of room for improvement). This was back in the days when I had only a vague understanding of ‘face’, but I saw fear and horror flare in his eyes and knew I’d put my foot in it. The problem was, when I attempted to do as you did - simplify the english to make it more comprehensible - I found that it simply revealed what a pisspoor excuse for an academic study it was. The claptrap is required to obfuscate reality.

I’ve heard that Chinese academics, when writing in Chinese, do in fact use the most complicated, convoluted language possible, the aim being not to communicate, but to impress the reader with how fuckin’ clever you are. If nobody can understand a word you’re saying, then obviously you’re really smart. Right?

btw I’d also be interested in the answers to Guy’s questions … you sound like you’re this close to sticking pencils up your nose and screaming “wibble” [for non-English readers … it’s probably on youtube]

15

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]ed: I have some questions for you. I ask these questions not to have a go at you, but because I’m genuinely curious as to your answers because I experience/have experienced similar things to you on a regular basis and I don’t know how to react to them. I find myself either hitting my head on a brick wall or just giving up, but I wouldn’t say I’m particularly successful at really getting what I want or need for real personal and professional satisfaction.

  1. What are you trying to achieve with teaching? What are you trying to achieve with being honest?

  2. To what extent do you think you’re successful with 1)? In what light would you see your “teaching” career over here so far? (How long have you been doing this, by the way?)

  3. How do you reconcile (both on a daily basis and over the long term) your own personal values with the bullshit that inevitably follows from exercising them?[/quote]

These are not trivial questions, but I’m going to give them fairly flip and cynical replies, at least for now, partly because I got things to do, and perhaps also partly because, like many non-trivial questions, I’m trying to avoid thinking about them. But the replies will be essentially true and no disrespect is intended.

  1. What are you trying to achieve with teaching? Survival. I hope to pass the time with the minimum of unpleasantness. It would be good if the students felt they had learned something, and perhaps essential to the primary objective, but its a secondary consideration.

This would logically seem to imply the minimum of effort (I know some other foreigners who exemplify this very well, which logically I can’t deprecate) but in fact some fucked-up mutant Protestant Work Ethic crossed with massive inefficiency seems to get in the way and I work long and largely futile hours.

What are you trying to achieve with being honest? Self respect. Its a moral imperative. Plus I’m a counter-cultural irritant/ambassador. Really pisses off the locals having to put their multi-cultural money where their mouth is.

“And that is the most, I think, that any conscious entity can hope to achieve.”

2) To what extent do you think you’re successful with 1)? Given the limited objective, fairly successful so far, but the future looks bleak.

In what light would you see your “teaching” career over here so far? (How long have you been doing this, by the way?) A dim light, which grows dimmer with each passing year. I recently went through some class 2007/8 Freshman papers and was stunned by the high standard, relative to the current, un-motivated knuckle draggers. I think I’ve been doing this for 7 years.

3) How do you reconcile (both on a daily basis and over the long term) your own personal values with the bullshit that inevitably follows from exercising them? Well, to the limited extent that I do, through direct conflict, and by bitching and moaning, including “venting” on Forumosa. Thanks all.

16

Interesting. I get the impression that student quality (and especially motivation/ attitude) has declined over the past 6-7 years, but unlike you, I don’t have any earlier material to compare to, so I often wonder if that impression of mine is just a typical “things used to be better in the old days” approach. Your records suggest it’s not just in my imagination.

Oh, and has someone who has also spent a bit of time in North American academia, and far too much time with cultural studies: obfuscating banal or incoherent or non-existent ideas with impenetrable jargon is not unique to East Asia. The academic tradition of proving how brilliant you are by being incomprehensible is alive and well in many humanities departments around the world.

17

ed: Yeah, I find myself in the same situation as you a lot of the time. There are times when I think I should just do the bare minimum possible, especially when there are bureaucratic fuckups (usually because everything is left until the last minute) that end up turning whatever I took weeks to think about and carefully prepare into a complete shambles. I have some really great students who get me through it though and I labour away for their benefit. I have some absolutely shocking students though and this year just gone (though many could actually be decent kids under the right circumstances), I was constantly cockblocked by their homeroom teachers over the most basic of issues. That kind of stuff really wears me down rapidly. Lack of professionalism and collegiate support really does my head in. I would never dare to fuck with other teachers in the way that some of them seem to do to me (and each other) as standard operating procedure.

Aside from the parents, who obviously need a slap across the face a lot of the time, the single biggest issue I see with the education system here is the complete lack of professionalism and organisation from teachers and other people in authority. I understand that kids are kids. I don’t let them off entirely, but teenagers will try it on. I did. Someone needs to pull them into line, as well as lead by example.

Some teachers at my school complain about how slack the kids are, yet those teachers dress like a bunch of slobs, don’t clean up after themselves, turn up late to class, and haven’t prepared anything (i.e. they just stand out the front and lecture from the textbook). Why would the kids take those guys seriously? They know the teachers are just phoning it in and they’re just holding a mirror up to that. I’ve done several winter and summer camps and every time, the materials have been prepared either the day before the camp (and inevitably, the printers have fucked up, so some of the materials have been incredibly shabby, but there’s been no time to reprint them) or even after the first day of the camp, as happened at my last school. Again, why would kids give a shit when they can see that the people who are supposedly meant to be in positions of authority don’t give a shit? In the six semesters I have taught in the public system, I’m yet to start a semester with a correct/fully-finalised schedule (sometimes stemming from them not having all the Taiwanese teachers yet!) or the correct teaching materials. All of this is absolutely elementary and 100% avoidable (indeed, it should be sorted out months before a semester begins), yet again and again they get tripped up over this stuff.

18

Interesting. I get the impression that student quality (and especially motivation/ attitude) has declined over the past 6-7 years, but unlike you, I don’t have any earlier material to compare to, so I often wonder if that impression of mine is just a typical “things used to be better in the old days” approach. Your records suggest it’s not just in my imagination.[/quote]

I was going through the papers as a “collateral tidy” to searching for my misplaced passport, (since found) throwing them in a crate for disposal, but then I made the mistake of reading some, so now I have a crate of jumbled papers I can’t quite bring myself to throw away, instead of the neat store I had before :doh:

I certainly don’t deny that. Its particularly rife in the “Management Science” area, where appalling obscurantist rubbish, much of it of US origin, seems to be the norm. I’m afraid, however, that its no accident that this field seems to be especially popular in Taiwan.

19

[quote=“Ducked”]“Oh.” ses she. “You’ve made it quite simple”

Now in “real” academia, if you can find it, this would, I suspect, be high praise indeed.

But this was Taiwan. And Management Research. So although delighted I wasn’t totally surprised by the next bit.

“I was hoping for something more academic”[/quote]
This is very common in Taiwan.

I once translated an essay for an application to study in the US, but it was returned to me with the complaint that it was written in a “childish manner”. Of course, she didn’t specify what she meant. I read through it, didn’t notice any “childish” phrasing, and saw that the article was clear, concise, and logical. I showed it to my native-speaking colleague, who agreed.

I sent it back, saying that it’s been checked over and is up to academic standard. I couldn’t understand what she meant by “childish”. She finally replied (though a third party, the coward) that it was written too clearly and explicitly; it didn’t leave room for interpretation. It also needed more obscure words. :loco:

I replied that the purpose of academic writing in English is to convey information clearly, not to obfuscate or leave things open to interpretation. But she demanded that I change the writing style to reflect her expectations anyway.

I said “Oooooo-kay”. I picked up Roget’s thesaurus and went through the paper, changing common words into ridiculously obscure ones, and sent it back. She said it was perfect.

Boy, is she in for a surprise when she goes to school in the US!

20

What makes that really funny is the implicit subtext: she knows more about English writing than you do (yet, she’s still asking you to fix it …). I used to dread my ex asking me questions about some point of English grammar or idiom; the conversation would invariably end with a sneering “Are you sure you’re a native speaker? Sounds like you don’t even know your own language”.

Wasn’t there a scene in Friends where Joey uses a thesaurus to rewrite his CV to make himself seem “more intelligent”?