Via the World’s Only Rational Man, we have this link to an article discussing low grading standards in education departments in colleges and universities. I could have told them about that without all the trouble of doing the research — my experience in education classes in college was prettymuch spot-on with this assessment. I can’t paint with too broad of a brush, as I did have a couple of good professors for education classes, but my educational psychology prof stands out in my mind as a perfect example of this phenomenon. She even admitted to us one day in class that she had taught sixth grade for a while, but stopped because she couldn’t keep control of the classroom. It was not hard to understand why after hearing some of the drivel she spouted in class — all of your students must feel good all the time, you can’t ever embarrass them or criticise them, they should always get good grades, etc. Oddly enough, this philosophy was largely followed by the elementary ed majors, but not those of us in the class who were in the secondary ed program (and incidentally, majoring in our particular field rather than in education). We mostly just sat in the back of the room and laughed at her, imagining her trying to teach high schoolers.
Another way they could have done this study would have been to look at commencement programs. I seem to recall my undergraduate commencement program listing an astoundingly high number of elementary ed majors as graduating with honors. They really made other majors look bad, but those of us who had taken education classes knew what the true score was. Pity that it takes papers like these to bring it to the attention of the broader public.
