People are alienated, they feel the need to connect to others but they don’t know how to do it in the world of neoliberal competitiveness and of seeing humans as consumer goods. The current identity craze is a cry for help on the part of lonely consumers who only know how to declare their humanity through attaching attention-grabbing labels onto themselves. The “oppression Olympics” are, yet again, an attempt to reach out to others in the strictly neoliberal logic of competition as the core human value.
Market Humans
Clarissa's Blog 
Completely out-of-topic question.
Do you know what an all-or-nothing grading system is?
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I think it’s about multiple choice tests where you need to select several correct answers from a list. But you need to get all of them right to get credit.
Example:
David Gendron is
A. A man
B. A cat
C. Quebecois
D. A panther
E. A French-speaker
You need to answer A, C and E to get credit. If you answer A, B and C, you don’t get credit even though 2 of the answers are correct.
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I’m not am expert on multiple choice, though. If people know better, please share.
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That’s what I thought first. I don’t think it’s so great, but it doesn’t bug me like in my case.
But in my case, it’s about two independent paragraphs, and I find this unacceptable.
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I’ve never live something as crazy in all of my very long student and teaching life.
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What happened, though?
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Here’s an example.
(Don’t worry: it’s more difficult in my course)
NUMBER (1 pt)
Write two correct sentences with the verb to like in Simple Present.
1) I like chicken.
2) She likes Trump.
Within this system, if you forget the s at « She likes », you lose all your two points.
I’m so angry that I’m wanting to drop out of my course now.
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Here’s an example. (CORRECTED)
(Don’t worry: it’s more difficult in my course)
NUMBER 1 (2 points)
Write two correct sentences with the verb to like in Simple Present.
1) I like chicken.
2) She likes Trump.
Within this system, if you forget the s at « She likes », you lose all your two points.
I’m so angry that I’m wanting to drop out of my course now.
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That’s a very weird way of grading. I’ve never seen anything like this.
I’m sorry it happened to you. I hate this kind of thing because there’s no real learning benefits to it.
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Seriously, what should I do?
Drop the course?
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If I’ve done something like as a teacher or as a TA, I would have been fired on the spot.
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Moreover, we are in week 4, and he didn’t tell us about it until today at his office.
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But he had the time to tell us twice that electronic devices are forbidden in his class, because of the « scientific evidence » (sic).
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He’s definitely not a smart person. I’m very sorry this is happening.
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However, I’m dumb because I didn’t listen to others who told me to take a lit class or a linguistic class in place of this grammar course. But I’m too stubborn to listen to others…
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Ok, then listen to me and don’t drop the course just yet. Give yourself a couple of days to step back and think about something else.
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The problem is that I have an assignment and a quiz to prepare for Thursday, with the same kind of questions, and I don’t the desire to do that now. Another problem is that this grading system applies to 60% of the course.
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That sounds like a very insane course.
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It would not be insane without this fucking grading system.
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Getting back to the topic, I just realized that a lot of the ‘oppression olympics’ reminds me of the old cliche about children who misbehave because that’s the only way they can get adults to pay attention to them – and they prefer the negative attention of getting yelled at and/or hit to being ignored.
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Did you see the 1st link in the link Encyclopedia from yesterday? It’s like the Mexican soap opera we loved in the USSR. It was called “The Rich Cry, Too.”
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And that’s how this freakazoid defends his crap:
« Let me offer a comparison that might clarify things for you:
Consider multiple choice exams. Sometimes a multiple choice item has just three options, say A, B & C. Sometimes a multiple choice item has many options and the right answer is, say, F –F being ‘Both A & B are right’. In order to get a point in this marking system, you need to choose F. You are not awarded half marks for choosing just A or just B. (By the way, this marking system is used extensively in the Psychology Department). That is the system that we are using: by getting just one item right you are not actually ‘owed’ any points, because a correct response entails that both items are correct (i.e. there is a contrast that demonstrates the student’s understanding and mastery of the material). »
What an asshole!
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