Today in Art History, I overheard one of my classmates talking about the grading policy in his Calculus 1 class, he was so happy about it, saying that if you do well on the first two tests, that you wouldn’t have to work the rest of the semester.  Turns out the class is graded on three tests, one of which is dropped.  I find this appalling and I believe it does a disservice to the students.  The goal of any grading system should be to inspire and reward mastery, something that is blatantly missing from that policy.  I think that dropping an assignment that is not worth much of the grade is not a bad idea in fact I could get behind that, but dropping a third of the graded material seems excessive.  At some point I believe that this professor must have lost his vision along the way, bending under the pressure of the administration wanting to commercialize education.  This does not only undermine the educational process, but hurts the students especially when they move on to Calculus 2 and beyond.  Calculus is not for everyone, but the curriculum should not be dumbed down and the grading policy compromised too make more people get through that class.