Claim: Professor uses grading of exams to teach about socialism.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, March 2009]
An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the
students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little...
The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.
Variations: A July 2009 version altered the second and third lines of the item to:
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".
Origins: In March 2009, one of the e-mail forwards of the moment was the piece quoted above. It appeared variously titled "Excellent Lesson In Economics," "Great Experiment," "Experiment in Socialism," "Texas Professor," "A Simple Analogy," "A Great Lesson on Socialism," "Economics 101," "Something for Nothing?," "A Perfect Analogy," "Simple Economics" and "Capitalism vs Socialism."
There is indeed a real school named Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, but that school is merely the latest setting for this illustrative tale meant to explain the teller's belief that communism (or socialism — the terms are used interchangeably although their meanings are different) cannot work. Another example of an illustrative tale used to explain what might otherwise be a difficult concept to grasp is the "How Taxes Work" item that was widely circulated in 2002.
While we can't as yet pin down the origin of the grade averaging piece, anecdotal evidence indicates it's at least fifteen years older than its 2009 outbreak would tend to indicate, in that one of our readers says he heard it at bible college in 1994 from a professor teaching world civics.
