Job Discussion Forums

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

Quote:

Police raid elementary school over teacher promotion scandal

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/police-raid-elementary-school-over-teacher-promotion-scandal

MO39 · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:30 pm Post subject:

I was shocked to read that a super-prestigious university like Oxford is so hurting for funds that it has resorted to pandering for money from foreign students. I can't imagine that happening in the US in the Ivy League, for example, where competition for acceptance is quite fierce, and the schools are rolling in endowment money. Of course, less prestigious universities and colleges in the US may not be in such good financial shape, especially many private four-year liberal arts schools, and might look for foreign students to fill classes and the universities' coffers.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

Unless things have changed a lot there is no continuous assessment at Oxford or Cambridge. You're marked according to the exam result. You are supposed to give the tutor an essay every week for the course and you then have a one-to-one session where you talk about it. For much of my university career I was able to persuade the tutors that if I knew the stuff well enough I didn't need to write about it so the tutorial was just a talk without need of an essay.

So I doubt the dons dealing with Mr. Cervelli knew what to do or what the standards where at his university. And I suspect the dons also just gave him any old grade because they rightly thought the American system bloody stupid. This statement gives an idea of the disjunct between Cervelli and his tutors: I wondered if I could write an absolute crap essay and still have my tutor tell me it wonderful Never did I, or anybody else I know, get a comment on how good or bad our essays or opinions were. It would have been considered impertinence and an irrelevant waste of time. You discussed the ideas that were in the essays, or that came up in discussion tangentially. Giving the essay a grade reeked of primary school.

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

I agree the American system must be different. I would consider a professor or a tutor worthless if they did not offer feedback, if they did not tell me what they thought i did well, as well as what I did poorly, what sources I should have considered that I didn't

or perhaps this is a difference in perceiving what a

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

What an Oxbridge tutorial normally consists of is the don taking the opposite point of view to the one you express so that you have to defend your case.

The point I'm making is that the American needed grades for his American university and the dons would be quite unused to giving any.

Otterman Ollie · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 9:45 am Post subject:

Generally the staff at my esteemed estabishment get told they have a job for the next academic year, that is usually what counts more than anything in the great scheme of things. Amazingly, despite the fact that a serious shortage of competent, experienced and committed teachers exists we still get treated as a commodity rather than an asset. I really couldn't be less interested in promotion, just to be treated as something other than a factory worker would be a step in the right direction.