The Looking Spoon Blog

“By ignorance we mistake, and by mistakes we learn”
-Unknown

So what happens when open minded progressive students get a chance to put their mouth where other people's money is?

Why is it different? These girly boys are not man enough to admit their hypocrisy, that's why.

The "progressive" tax comes knocking on their academic door and their "intellect" can't handle the confrontation. It's so simple, if a high GPA is the key to greater opportunities to get into a better college, or grad school, or med school, or law school...or forget better, how about to qualify for admission period, then a GPA ammounts to academic "income" that is EARNED.

Who wants to work hard for that 4.0 when some a-hole is just going to knock it down to a 3.0...or a 2.0, so some other a-hole who majors in parties and getting laid "has a better chance" at what will truly become "just a piece of paper" if this proposal ever became reality.

Actually, if we want do know the real difference between redistributing income and GPA, it's that GPA can't be used as a political weapon by the left to get votes for themselves. These students would've been totally agreeable to this if they were ignorant jerks, with no education whatsoever, dictating this policy to the people actually going to school and working hard to earn the GPA they have.

This is the American left/liberalism/progressivism/socialism....mired in willful ignorance.

h/t Moonbattery (via iOwnTheWorld)

**UPDATE** Looks like I got the attention of the libs based on the comments. I guess any traffic is good traffic....and this topic really hit a nerve. So welcome!

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**UPDATE #2** I am absolutely floored at how much this presses the buttons of the liberals commenting here. This post is hardly the most outrageous or inflamatory thing I've said about them on this blog. I'm also flattered that they want to comment, even though they are just repeating what was already said from one of their group think brothers.

If any of you latecomers don't want to wade through the muck I'll save you from it like Jesus saves souls and outline to two salient points these libs are making (which is hard to decipher from the non-sequitur points), followed by my response (at the risk of repeating myself in some of the comments I've already made), and then I'm personally done with the topic...even if the trolls are not.

Basically their argument is that GPA and money don't live in the same universe because education is way more egalitarian than our economic system and that these differences are illustrated in two ways.

1. The analogy is bad because GPA can't be inherited like money, nor does it serve the same function as money, nor can the amount of money you have max out like GPA, etc.

Analogies compare similarities, so they would always fall apart if you take them to the degree that the libs have done here. The argument isn't in any way about how an earned GPA is the SAME as earned income.

The argument is about taking what is earned and giving it to people that didn't earn as much in the name of "fairness." That is really the only argument being had here. Even though there are arguments to be made that GPA and money aren't necessarily all that different (an example of which is below on the point of inheritance) everything else is extra BS that is completely beside this point.

2. Unlike with money, students enter school with an even playing field GPA-wise, everyone starts at zero and goes from there.

This argument is a pie in the sky attempt to separate education into some fantasy land where the rules of real life don't apply, and it simply doesn't live in reality.

There is no even playing field in education, period. For starters, a GPA from an Ivy League school carries much more weight than the same score from a state university.

Even if you wanted to limit this point to a single campus there are some classes where the grade is curved and others that aren't. This doesn't even begin to touch areas of study where the grade can be extremely subjective for a class with multiple sections and instructors, such as art and creative writing.

Then there is the admission of students that would otherwise not qualify, but for affirmative action. Is this "hand up" to an institution they shouldn't technically be admitted to putting them on an equal playing field with the student whose academics dictate that the truly belong there? Or do they now have to work harder to catch up? (this is not a question of the legitimacy of the policy, but of the realities surrounding it)

What about the notion that students enter a college campus with their GPA's essentially set to zero and THAT is the even playing field? Is it really "even" for a high school graduate entering with a 4.0, and one with a 2.0?

Yes, they start at the same place, but the better student has better study habits, a better work ethic, and probably (yet, not always) comes to the school with a better foundation and support put in place by parents and teachers. These inherent (or inherited from high school) abilities to do better in school put the better student on very firm ground to outperform the 2.0 student before the semester even starts.

Also, if it were true that all students start from an even field universities wouldn't be offering remedial courses to help students catch up to the minimum level of math and reading necessary to graduate.

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To believe this post poses an argument of "false equivalency," as one troll puts it, you would have to accept their premise that there are many more layers to money that make it too complex to compare to academics and the earning of GPA scores. Based on the points above this is clearly a premise that is as convenient as it is untrue.

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**UPDATE #3** Comments are now closed. It's bad enough you Fark trolls aren't posting anything new to say, but now the comments are becoming as inane as criticizing the grammar of conservatives who want to participate (by the way, many of you aren't exactly guiltless of this offense). Cry fascism all you want, but this topic has been exhausted. So if you want to bitch and moan go do it at Fark....here's the link

Finally don't be fooled by the lopsided amount of liberal "counterargument" here, the two blogs I h/t'd have plenty of good conservative perspectives on this that add to the perspective brought on here.