Musing on Minimum Standards

This weekend we will be hosting the physical fitness testing portion of our departments hiring process. It is not exactly a hard test but people do need some preparation to ensure they exceed the minimum passing scores. Note how I said EXCEED the minimum scores.

Fitness Testing

The reason I make this distinction is because I know many people will quit at the point where they meet the minimum score. Granted not everyone will quit, but increasingly it seems that is the trend.

Part of our fitness test is doing as many push-up as you can in 1 minute. For males 35 push ups is the lowest acceptable score. I see applicants I know can do 80+ push-ups who will make sure they knock out 35 push-ups then slow way down, even stop, because they “Passed the test already”.

As someone who also teaches at a community college I see this in the classroom also. Last week was midterms. My class had a take home test, part of it was to write a one page minimum essay. Over half the class turned in essays that were exactly one page. Of the people who had two page essays, the second page was only about 3 sentences.

Which means that much of my class got C or low B range grades on the midterm. A few complained. They told me they “earned” an A because the meet the minimum standard.

Correct me if I am wrong but C is the minimum passing grade in school. So anyone only meeting minimum standards only “earned” a C… right???

When did our society decide that being average suddenly equated to being actually above average? Guess this explains the celebrity status of Kim Kardashian, and Paris Hilton.