Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 12, 2015

Working for a university, I got a lot of “interesting” phone calls. A woman called for her husband wanting to know about our doctoral program. After a lengthy conversational equivalent to pulling teeth, it seems her family was stuck in the poverty trap which included section 8 housing that had mold issues. Her husband became a self-proclaimed amateur expert on mold, and what the wife really wanted to know if there was a test he could take to become a doctor so he could challenge the landlord in court. It was soooooo sad. I got her info and passed it along to the housing authority, but knowing all too well the laziness of government bureaucrats, I doubt anything substantive was done; more likely her family suffered retaliation for the indirect reporting.

@Night-Gaunt49Speaking as a native Finn, the scools do assign homework, but not in unreasonable amounts. (At least, not when I went to school.) But the test part is right, absolutely.

There is a place for testing….But assessment can be done many ways…A chit chat about the subject matter, one on one with a student works well…Either they know what they’re talking about or they don’t….

Amen, Caulfield!

Queue. A five letter word that needs only one…

I resent the comments of “Boots at the Boar”. I worked for almost 30 years for state government and found the employees I worked with to be anything but lazy. They certainly were overwhelmed by the workloasd and could not get to everything as soon as they would have wanted.

Yes!!!

Too bad that in real life the tests keep on coming, usually with greater consequences than simply a bad grade.

Good luck with that, Caulfield. Really. I was known to give unannounced pop quizzes, so my students knew they had to stay on their toes at all times.