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Re: grade inflation, etc.



On Tue, 04 Jan 2000 10:35:28 -0600 Digby Willard
<dwillard@MAIL.CENTRAL.STPAUL.K12.MN.US> writes:
I've wondered for several years what the
point of grades is, and I haven't come up with any answers that reflect

anything good.

But I think there's another point that's missing here: the great
scientists often have lousy academic records.

Darwin
Einstein
Galileo
Schwinger
James Watson,
Newton
It seems to me that if grades and GPA's are supposed to identify
superior students, they do a lousy job. And that they do quite a bit
of
damage in the process of doing that lousy job.

Am I missing something here?

Perhaps you are missing something.
Please check some of the other outstanding scientists. For example:
Stevinus
Huygens
Varignon
Descartes
Leibnitz
d'Alembert
Young
Poinsot
Pascal
Von Guerricke
Boyle
Hooke
Young
Coulomb
Cavendish
Torricelli
Ampere
Mersenne
Wallis
Saveur
Helmholtz
Amontons
Fahrenheit
Taylor
Black
Rumford
Davy
Gay-Lussac
Joule
Thomson
Fourier
Dulong
Petit
Andrews
CailletetPictet
Mayer
Carnot
Clausius
Kelvin
Bernoulli
Brown
Maxwell
Boltzman
Fermat
Bartholinus
Grimaldi
Fresnel
Arago
Roemer
Bradley
Fizeau
Faucault
Stokes
Faraday
Kirchhoff
Balmer
Rowland
Michelson
Morley
Stefan
Christiansen
Zeeman
Gilbert
Gray
Du Fay
Franklin
Nollet
Aepinus
Galvani
Volta
Oersted
Biot
Savart
Ampere
Seebeck
Ohm
Lenz
Henry
Gauss
Hall
Curie
Hertz
Crookes
Goldstein
Hallwachs
Perrin
Roentgen
Bequerel

Herb Gottlieb from New York City
(Where the exceptions, such as Einstein, prove the rule)