Can you blame the kids?

Anyway, I can't help but say that I'm sorely disappointed with the attitude of my NIE lecturer, who is apparently all too ready to propagate the oft-criticised kiasu trait with regards to pursuing academic results. I might have said elsewhere, that all through the course, she keeps talking about grading issues even though the class isn't that interested actually - she just assumed that all of us needed a good grade to find our lives worth living still.

Recently, I wrote an essay criticising the frequently-lauded reader-response theory in teaching literary competency, and got a 'B' grade for it, with some irrelevant comments behind and only one in the essay that says something like: "That might not be the case..." when I said that the theory is irrelevant in that teaching context.

Unhappy with the judgmental remark which is totally unsubstantiated, I wrote a lengthy email for her asking her to justify her remarks about my essay and the grade. She simply passed my essay on to another lecturer to review, and today told me loads of silly things like: "You'll find that our grading is really fair and well-moderated", and "It's just that we have a larger cohort this year, and you should see how good some of the essays are". Blah blah blah...

All this is making me sick. I NEVER GIVE A DAMN ABOUT MY GRADES, especially for something I enjoy and love. I simply stand by the point I made in the essay, and if she give me a 'B', she will have to tell me why my argument doesn't warrant an 'A' by showing that the argument is flawed somewhere, not because she doesn't like what I've said. I don't care if I get a 'C' if she can convincingly show that what I wrote was nonsense.

NIE needs to do more to convince people that it is an 'institute of distinction'; inwardly, I know many people think that what they're learning there is rather lame.