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Originally Posted by AVoiceOfReason
Absolutely. When I taught at the local college, I told my students from the first day what it would take to make an A in my class, and there was none of that "well, I've already given 3 A's, therefore you don't get one" thinking. I wasn't bothered to give one A or 10 A's--it just didn't matter to me. The individual was judged against MY standard, not that of others.
It's discouraging at best and sadistic at worst to use a strict curve--only a set amount of A's and a set amount of D's--and while I agree that gradeflation is out of hand, a skilled teacher can make individual judgments that don't rely on an unfair system of evaluation.
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In the sciences I found that the bell curve is the norm since no one really masters the material. The exams tended to be very hard, often insanely hard and as such those who knew the material best got the A's. They would even state ahead of time that IF you got a 90% or whatever you would get an A regardless of the curve, but the funny thing is it had yet to be an issue due to the difficulty of the testing (if you got a 90% odds are you were already well into the right of the curve).
Now I did have some profs who went with the good old straight 70-80-90 type grading but I found those classes almost laughable by comparison. Instead of stretching me to my limits and rewarding me for REALLY understanding the material, I could get by just learning their expectations, which were always lower than my ability.