Survival of the fittest

Picture taken from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/f/fittest.asp

"Survival of the fittest". I've come to hate that frase. Sure, it works for the animals (we see it everyday), but for humans I think it's crap. It should be something like "survival of the best schmoozers", or something like that. As a teacher-to-be I have often seen how the students get graded, and let me tell you it's not always fair grading.

You may have heard that "first impressions are everything" at some point in your life? Teachers aren't exempt from that rule. They meet their new students and the teachers' first impression of the student will define how they do at school (both gradewise, how they're treated, etc). The way a lot of teachers grade is by judging how good of an experience they got from the play, the text, the dance, the basketball game, etc. How can they sit and give grades according to how their experience was? Their experience says nothing of how hard someone's worked, or if the assignment has acctually been answered in a good way. Plus, who's to say that their experience doesn't differ from another persons experience? I may find a text really good, whereas another person may find it to be crap. Who's to say that my experience of the text should be the one to grade the person (or vice versa)?

I've been thinking about this for several years now, because I think there's a REALLY big flaw in the system (not only in schools, but also in competitions). You may be thinking that, "the system is more just than you think because there is often times more than one person "judging"". Perhaps in some cases that's true, but what happens if there are a group of teachers/judges who look up to one of the teachers/judges in the group. What do a lot of people do for people they look up to and idolize? They schmooze.... They take their idols' side. I've found that there are a lot more people than I would have thought who don't voice their opinion (for various reasons), but rather the opinion of others. When they don't voice their opinion they end up hurting the person being graded/judged, and themselves in a round-about way. I think we should all get better at voiceing our own opinions (it could mean a whole lot more than we may think). I could go on and on about this, but I think I'll leave it at this for now.