Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005
To: letters@globeandmail.ca
From: Geoffrey Smith
Subject: education supplement

Looking at all those 'A' grades in the table on the front page of your University Report Card section, and looking at our decreasing ability because of class size to provide the face-to-face guidance that we used to in areas of reading, writing, and critical thinking, I can only conclude that university marks--like those of many students--have become inflated in the last decade. Perhaps it is time to move away from letter grades--pretty blunt instruments I think--and move to percentages. In addition, you should be tougher on us. All those superlative marks leave the impression for the politicians (with their purse-strings) that all is well and we are doing just fine in academia.

Geoff Smith
Kingston