Grade Inflation

I was thinking about grade inflation the other day and it was bothering me. Then I read in the Maryland Gazette about the new county grading policy and it became relevant. Why are we so afraid of failing people? Some people fail. That's the nature of life. Some people are smart and will get straight A's, other's will fail. We can't all be above-average. I understand the pressures that the schools and teachers must be under. Every parent wants their kid to do well. If you're the teacher who is failing everyone, that brings down the statistics for the school and all of a sudden funding might be cut. That's pressure. If you give a kid an F, then you'll get flack from their family. If you give them a D or C-, then they can probably live with that. You won't hear complaints when you round up an 88 to an A. The thing is, it's dishonest and insulting for everyone when you inflate grades. The whole point of grades is to establish whether you know the subject matter or not. If you send people into the world with an A in US history, I'm going to assume they know about the constitution and the Civil war. It's frustrating talking to people who have graduated high school and don't know how to read or what the Civil war was. It's false advertising. When I hire someone with a high school degree, I expect them to know certain things. When I hire someone who received A's and B's in school, I have a higher expectation. When their grades are inflated, I don't know what to expect. And that leads to degree inflation. It used to be that a person with a college degree was pretty assured of getting a job. A college degree meant something. But now, with grade inflation and degree inflation, a degree means that you paid money to a school for a couple years. College graduates are unemployed in record numbers. I place part of the blame on a system that has allowed unqualified people to obtain college degrees in order to make them feel good and generate student loan income. Anyway, Kudos to all those teachers out there who still have the gumption to fail a kid who deserves it. (disclaimer: I never failed a class, per se, I did fail to receive credit when I just stopped showing up to one elective. And my 88's were never rounded up to an A. I came by my B's honestly.)