[Falcon X]

Second, no proper commie gives a **** about grades. They're an illusion, an arbitrary, useless mark made by a bureaucratic system in order to trick stupid people into following the illusion of some higher award, and any proper communist would recognize that they are actually necessary or, indeed, real. They're quite a lot like money in that sense, though the analogy doesn't extend to the context of this anecdote.

You gotta be joking...  What la la land do you live in?  OR do your grades suck that much?  (High School they're a joke but in college)..   Your grades show what you can do for the most part.  It usually shows if you can handle the material and how much time you spent on it.

[Stryke 9]

Unless your ultimate goal is to become one of those upper-middle class officeworkers making six figures, grades do not matter. They have no independent existence. Someone with even limited intelligence would recognize this, decide what they wanted out of life, and choose the appropriate approach. They are arbitrary valuations that may affect some very real things in your life, because those who have that arbitrary quality have deemed that it was the cause and hence propogated the concept of money/grades as an end in and of itself.

Awfully hostile, aren't we? Are you threatened by the concept of grades as arbitrary and not always desirable? Perhaps you should avoid these threads if such minor factoids upset you so much.

[CP5670]

Unless your ultimate goal is to become one of those upper-middle class officeworkers making six figures...

Which is the case for most people, myself included. After all, you need money to stage communist revolutions.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Falcon X


You gotta be joking...  What la la land do you live in?  OR do your grades suck that much?  (High School they're a joke but in college)..   Your grades show what you can do for the most part.  It usually shows if you can handle the material and how much time you spent on it.

Not really...it usually shows that you can conform to a specific set of grading standards required of you...either by the teacher, professor, or the school or institution.  

Tests are contrived because its nice to put numbers on things rather than assign individual values to a person with specific traits and values.  The nature of grades is the nature of statistical data and therefore the knowledge that contextual meaning is lost in favour of comparable numbers.

In the case of test scores, they tend to either show your straight memory skills (how well can you throw up what you have been fed) or they focus on how clever you are with language in which case you are marked by a biased marker (who HAS to be biased by their very nature) who will assign a value based on personal opinion.

No matter what, grades are arbitrarilly assigned at some stage of the game either in conception or in process.  I'm not saying little Jonny in the corner who can't tell an apple from an orange is actual a child prodigy but I'm just telling you to open your eyes and see the system for what it is.

And yes its hard to grapple with because there doesn't seem to be a better system...so the point of recognizing it is meerly have your eyes opened.

Red or blue pill.  Your choice

[tEAbAG]

Originally posted by CP5670


Which is the case for most people, myself included. After all, you need money to stage communist revolutions.

Money?  I heard you can get an AK for one goat in parts of Africa.

There are no consertives and liberals any more.  There are moderates and slightly-less-moderate moderates.  The only difference between Republicans and Democrats are who owns them.  (big business and labor unions, respectively)

[CP5670]

I think that grades are important for making money but a poor indicator of intelligence nontheless, but that is rather because the methods for obtaining those grades are all very badly designed. If the tests, curricula, etc. were completely revamped, the grades could become a much better scale of capability in whatever areas, but in their current state they are quite anemic.

Money? I heard you can get an AK for one goat in parts of Africa.

There are no consertives and liberals any more. There are moderates and slightly-less-moderate moderates. The only difference between Republicans and Democrats are who owns them. (big business and labor unions, respectively)

The goat costs money too, though, and you will need a couple hundred thousands of them. But I quite agree with the party stuff.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by IceFire


Do please read what he actually said.  Sandwich was pointing out what he believed the POINT of the original article was...not his own stated viewpoint.  So before you berate someone, understand their meaning critically.

My point was that this is where the fallacy of the entire original argument that Sandwich kindly posted for debate (and once again, not for the purpose of personal attacks).  Sandwhich was agreeing with me for summing things up and getting across the point that there was something inherently wrong with the argument.

Have I mentioned I love this boy - even if he can't spell my name properly?

And I'm not sure how valid the point of the article under discussion is across different nations, governed by different governments with different methods of everything. So let's try and keep the comparisons within a single nation - US to US, Iraq to Iraq, Holland to Holland, m'kay?

[Kamikaze]

Grades determine whether you're fit for a society-loving, rule-abiding, capitalist-slaved role in the world (i.e. most office workers, in fact most anybody who works for somebody and has deadlines and stuff like that).
If you're not, you're thrown in the pile of misfits not meant to work in the society (society being the corporate world) and die off by Mr. Corporation (note the "meant")


Basically just agree with CP an' IceFire on school stuff, Falcon you're right on that school material shows time spent and how you handled the material. But does it matter if you spend time handling a pile of notes you took (hardly worthwhile information for the most part) and spit it onto paper? I'd think not. I haven't heard of a single genius who advanced humanity through staring at stacks of test notes. Have you? (anyone do a lil' study into this? Did godel, pythagoras, turing, gauss... any of them actually do that?)

[Stryke 9]

Actually, there are high-school and college dropouts on every plane of society. There's a bias towards poverty, but it's not a rule, and a talented, legitimately intelligent person can blow off school and get a job based on his/her skills alone, if they really would rather go the hard way. Conversely, it's not rare to see BAs and Masters picking through dumpsters.

[tEAbAG]

I rode the litle buss...

[Turnsky]

well, einstien was a high-school dropout....
intelligence and social aptitude arn't really affected by grades and such... what high school, college, etc gives you are skills, to get yourself a job - whether you're happy in the job or having all your hopes and dreams thrown into a dark pit of dispair is a moot point:p     even the most intelligent people on earth can be out done by people who don't know everything....

there's a saying.."the first step to wisdom is admitting that you don't know everything"

there's a difference between a intelligent person and a 'smart' person...

and intelligent person may have all the highest grades in all the subjects they apply themselves to and yet they don't really know how to apply thier skills to a high degree(like styrke said, it's not rare to see BAs and Masters picking through garbage) it's more likely they'll probably end up working at mcdonald's for the rest of eternity paying off thier student loans:p

smart people... know how to use thier skills and apply them in real life....

an intelligent (A - grade student) person once picked a fight with me a long time ago.... and let's just say that wasn't the smart thing to do:devil:
even the most intelligent people are capable of the most aborrant stupidity.... they're only human after all..but some of them see themselves above the rest of us and that's thier stupidity...

it's all a fine line... i'm sure that this will get numerous holes poked through it.


i'm not afraid to admit when i'm wrong or that i don't know everything.....

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Turnsky
there's a difference between a intelligent person and a 'smart' person...

I prefer to use the word "wise", as without explanation, "smart" can easily be mistaken by people for "intelligent".