Grade Inflation

This is a little outside my usual topics, but I think about various problems from time to time, and come up with solutions I haven't heard anywhere else.  

So the first responsibility of schools and colleges is to educate their students.  One of the ways they motivate their students is by distinguishing between poor work and quality work via grades.  But they have a financial incentive to inflate their grades because their students are in some sense their customers at the same time.  If your plumber criticized you to others, you would be less likely to call that plumber again, and less likely to recommend that plumber.  So the plumber has some incentive not to criticize you to others.  Colleges are subject to the same market forces. 

So grades have a tendency to creep upwards over time, which is called grade inflation.  Organizations asking for GPA's come to expect inflated grades, which provides additional pressure to inflate grades.

And employers and grad schools looking at grades may not be fully aware as to what extent any school has grade inflation.  For example, an A from a school that grades easily may not be as meaningful as a C from another school which grades evenly on a spectrum from F to A.

So schools can supply class ranking on transcripts.  This has some value, but it's not fully accurate.  A student who takes care only to take courses from professors who grade easily could have a higher GPA than a student who takes courses from a professor who grades fairly.

Professors, however, wish to maintain control over the grades they give.  If colleges demanded that profs give a certain percentage of F's, D's, C's and B's, they would strongly object.

But the grades different professors provide different levels of information.  The grades of a professor who gives his students all A's provides no information at all, whereas a professor who grades evenly from F to A provides maximum information.

So a college could convert the grades to a percentile based on the information provided.  The students of a professor who submitted all A's would receive a 50 for that course, whereas the students of a professor who gave an equal number of F's, D's, C's B's, and A's would receive 10, 30, 50, 70 and 90 respectively.

So in addition to their GPA appearing on their transcripts, students would see their percentile averages. And employers and grad schools asking for GPA's would also receive cumulative percentiles for the students four years, which would be a more meaningful measure than just a cumulative GPA.   

High achieving students would then have a motivation to pick course with professors who gave meaningful grades, and this would provide some pressure on the easy graders to provide more meaningful grades, instead of the other way around.

Moral Stupidity

 I think, perhaps, that people aren't as morally stupid as they pretend to be.  It just isn't possible.

Temporary Ordination

I have had the view for many years that Sri Lanka was closer to the Buddha's teachings on one point than Thailand or Burma or Cambodia.  Thailand, Burma and Cambodia allow temporary ordinations, where a man is ordained as a monk with the intention of giving up the robes and returning to lay life after a period of time, commonly three days or three months.  Sri Lanka, as a general rule, does not, although there are individual teachers who will ordain a person for one week.

Although no one disputes that the Buddha allowed monks to give up the robes and return to the lower life (there are a fair amount of instances of this in the Tipitika), there is nowhere, at least that I had come across, a record of him ordaining anyone who had the intention to return to lay life.  The Buddha's intention in instituting the bhikkhu Sangha was clear - the person renounced the life of householders and went forth into the holy homeless life.  (It is still called the homeless life, even though it was only in the first ten years or so that all monks were literally homeless, wandering from place to place, sleeping under trees or on rocks.  The Buddha then allowed monks to stay in dwellings offered to them by the laypeople, and almost all monks nowadays do.  Some restrictions apply.)

The Apadana is a book in the Khuddaka Nikaya that had so far gone untranslated into English.  A few years back, however, Prof. Jonathan Walters published online his translation, Legends of the Buddhist Saints, in 2018.  Since it had never been printed, I obtained his permission (which, by the Creative Commons license he released it under, was not strictly necessary) and have printed a number of copies of the first two volumes.  (Please contact me if you would like one free of charge.)  

I recently came across a sutta in it, 288. Sattahāpabbajita (Renouncer for a Week).  The Apadana is about the previous lives of many different arahants under Sakyamuni Buddha, and their small acts of good merit under previous Buddhas, who experienced the fruits of their actions and who eventually became arahants (enlightened people) under Sakyamuni Buddha. Most of the suttas in the Apadana are about small acts of generosity towards a previous Buddha.  A few are about other meritorious actions. In this sutta, Sattahāpabbajita went forth (a standard Tipitika term for becoming a novice monk) for a week (!) after a rift among his family members.  

The fruit of this week as a novice (samanera) was that for the ninety-one aeons since he has not had a bad rebirth.  He declares that's the fruit of (a week's) renunciation.  And then in his last life, under Sakyamuni Buddha, he becomes an arahant.

So we have a clear Tipitika foundation for temporary ordinations, at least as a novice.  

This is one of the things I like about reading the Tipitika directly rather than books about dhamma by later authors.  One finds hidden gems that make things clear.

Central Tenet of Christianity

 The central tenet of Christianity, according to most Christians, is that Jesus, who is both God and the Son of God, can forgive you of your sins so you will not be punished for them in the after-life.

If the cause of suffering is God punishing you, then it makes sense that the cure for suffering is obtaining God's forgiveness.  If the cause of suffering is not God punishing you, then it does not make logical sense that obtaining God's forgiveness would cure you of suffering.  Of course, thinking such thoughts invites God's wrath and eternal punishment.

Buddhism is far more convincing in pointing out the cause of suffering as craving, and providing a path to the eradication of craving and thereby suffering.  The cause of suffering is ultimately within one's own mind and one's own actions.

Criticism

A Vajrayana Buddhist friend said that there are things he regards as Buddha vacana which he does not approve of.

Firstly, there is the question as to whether the belief that it is Buddha vacana is a reasonable one.  For example, the post-Buddha teachings (i.e. Mahayana and Tantra) that are put in the mouth of the Buddha, it is not reasonable to regard them as Buddha vacana.

Secondly, everyone gets criticized, there is no escaping it.  The important question is, is the criticism a criticism from below or a criticism from above?

What is a criticism from below?

A criticism from below is where a person says, "The Buddha was free of craving, lust, passion and greed, and spoke in favor of the abandoning of craving, passion and greed.  I am not free of craving, lust and greed, and do not approve that He was free of them and spoke in favor of abandoning them."

Or a person says, "The Buddha was free of anger, aggression and hatred, and spoke in favor of abandoning anger, aggression and hatred.  I am not free of anger, aggression and hatred, and do not approve that He was free of them and spoke in favor of abandoning them."  This is also criticism from below.

Or a person says, "The Buddha did not kill or otherwise harm sentient beings and spoke in favor of non-killing and non-harming.  He recognized abortion as a kind of murder, and did not even kill animals, and spoke in favor of non-killing.  I enjoy killing and the direct fruits of killing, and do not approve that He spoke in favor of Not Killing. "  This is also criticism from below.

Or a person says, "The Buddha did not steal.  I enjoy stealing and the direct fruits of stealing, and do not approve that He spoke in favor of Not Stealing. "  This is also criticism from below.

Or a person says, "The Buddha was free of passion, did not engage in sex at all, let alone sexual misconduct, and spoke in favor of abstaining from sexual misconduct.  I am attached to adultery, and do not like that He spoke in favor of abstaining from sexual misconduct. "  This is also criticism from below.

Or a person says, "The Buddha did not lie and spoke in favor of not lying.  I am attached to lying, and would have to revise some of my views and experience some consequences I would not like if I did not lie. I do not approve of this."  This is also criticism from below.

Or a person says, "The Buddha did not drink alcohol.  I am attached to alcohol, and do not like that He spoke in favor of abstaining from alcohol. "  This is also criticism from below.

Or a person says, "The Buddha was sane.  He had views which differ from some fashionable views.  I do not approve of disagreeing with fashionable views."  This is a criticism from below.

And what is criticism from above?  A person says, "It is good to abandon passion, aggression and delusion.  It is good to abandon killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and drinking alcohol.  It is not good to harm others."

The Virtue of Unselfishness

When I was in a college, I saw a poster advertising an Ayn Rand study group and the book The Fountainhead.  Was disgusted by the summary of her philosophy, "The Virtue of Selfishness."  Seemed like portraying ordinary ignorance, selfishness, as wisdom.

Saw the movie recently The Fountainhead.  Finished it, and still wasn't sure whether it had anything to do with philosophy, or if it was just a movie that happened to have the same name.  The movie was certainly full of disreputable characters, and the protagonist didn't seem much better.  He was an architect who was loyal to his artistic vision and eventually got to design something according to his personal vision.

Like, so what?  He was fortunate that he won in the end, but that's all it was, was good fortune.  He had no morality, or ability to see beyond himself.  

It's depressing that there are people who think that this is somehow a commendable philosophy or a virtue.  I can be happy for an architect that he succeeded as an architect, but it was nothing more significant or commendable than that.  Everyone in the movie was selfish.  The protagonist was no different.  He had an artistic vision which he was loyal to, but this was no more selfish than anyone else.  So why pretend that the movie somehow displayed that selfishness is a virtue.

Rand was just an ordinary person lacking the ability to understand morality or virtue.  The world is full of them.

Truthfulness

 If your views cannot survive truthfulness, what does that say about your views?  What does that say about your life?