These wrong expectations have been carefully cultivated for over a decade in students who get to good colleges. For over a decade, they've been getting good scores and they've been made to feel that a good score is the inevitable and deserved outcome of "trying". (The kids for whom this is not true mostly don't end up at good colleges.) "If students expect 90-100% scores are possible, and then they start a subject where all of a sudden that's not true, then they're not going to deal with that well." And they're evaluating you, the professor.
As the professor, you've either got tenure and you don't need to care toooo much about those evaluations, or you are pre-tenure at a research U and you've got to keep 'em reasonable while you crank out papers, or you're pre-tenure at a teaching college and you've got to keep them GOOD. Those evaluations have got to stay above a certain level, though, especially in this job climate. Why go to the trouble of resetting students' expectations by broaching those subjects students will struggle with? So keep things easy.
But then you're to a point in math or physics at which you can't continue avoiding the topics that are taxing intellectually. So you go into it and your students are sophomores with 13 years of straight As behind them and your star student starts to have a slightly tough time with multivariable Taylor series and she gets a 78% on the second midterm. She's totally mortified and gets her grade back up to an A- or B+, but at the end of the semester visits you in your office to apologize and tell you she's changing her major to sociology. She realizes that a B+ tells her that she just can't succeed in mathematics even though she likes it.
And maybe your end-of-semester evaluations for that class are overall pretty good, recovering from the mid-term evaluations that were so stressed out, and you've dealt with the seven requests to take the final late to accommodate vacation or extra study time. Pretty good means you can breathe a sigh of relief in that respect... but you keep thinking about that student who left math because she got one 78% on a midterm. You tell her you got a year of straight Cs in real analysis and still got into graduate school and maybe she wavers for a moment.
Only a moment. "But you're different. You're good at math."
Students conclude they "don't have a talent" for math/science. They don't understand that "talent" is bullshit. Stubbornness, on the other hand, means something.
As the professor, you've either got tenure and you don't need to care toooo much about those evaluations, or you are pre-tenure at a research U and you've got to keep 'em reasonable while you crank out papers, or you're pre-tenure at a teaching college and you've got to keep them GOOD. Those evaluations have got to stay above a certain level, though, especially in this job climate. Why go to the trouble of resetting students' expectations by broaching those subjects students will struggle with? So keep things easy.
But then you're to a point in math or physics at which you can't continue avoiding the topics that are taxing intellectually. So you go into it and your students are sophomores with 13 years of straight As behind them and your star student starts to have a slightly tough time with multivariable Taylor series and she gets a 78% on the second midterm. She's totally mortified and gets her grade back up to an A- or B+, but at the end of the semester visits you in your office to apologize and tell you she's changing her major to sociology. She realizes that a B+ tells her that she just can't succeed in mathematics even though she likes it.
And maybe your end-of-semester evaluations for that class are overall pretty good, recovering from the mid-term evaluations that were so stressed out, and you've dealt with the seven requests to take the final late to accommodate vacation or extra study time. Pretty good means you can breathe a sigh of relief in that respect... but you keep thinking about that student who left math because she got one 78% on a midterm. You tell her you got a year of straight Cs in real analysis and still got into graduate school and maybe she wavers for a moment.
Only a moment. "But you're different. You're good at math."
Students conclude they "don't have a talent" for math/science. They don't understand that "talent" is bullshit. Stubbornness, on the other hand, means something.