All this video was recorded yesterday... except the flashback. (That was originally blogged on February 17th.)
And here's the NYT article on "self-compassion" that I talk about in the car.
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
"Chicago is up in the house!"/"He's never nipped at anybody but he barks and growls"/"I wanna be your dog"...
... "Everyone left is from Chicago"/"It's the love-in of a lifetime"/"People are going to be really embarrassed some day to look back and realize that they had joined in on something that was really a mistake and they chose the wrong side and that they joined it with such fervor"/"Did you ever do that when you were young?"
All this video was recorded yesterday... except the flashback. (That was originally blogged on February 17th.)
And here's the NYT article on "self-compassion" that I talk about in the car.
All this video was recorded yesterday... except the flashback. (That was originally blogged on February 17th.)
And here's the NYT article on "self-compassion" that I talk about in the car.
A professor is forced to resign after making a racist remark: Is he more likely right-wing or left-wing?
"A political science professor at Murray State University has resigned after telling an African American student that she didn't show up early to class because slaves were always late."
I see that the first commenter there says: "Another asshole, undoubtedly a Republican/TeaPartier."
My guess is exactly the opposite. What would possess a professor to say something like that? From my long experience with professors, I think it is the left-wing professors who: 1. Feel confident in their own goodness on racial issues, 2. Analyze events in terms of race, 3. Think up "critical theory"-type explanations that explore ideas about racial difference, 4. Imagine that it's clever to express these ideas out loud, and 5. Are capable of making the mistake of thinking that the students will know that they are good people who do racial critique that is supposed to be understood as an attack on white people.
A "Republican/TeaPartier" is much more likely to be strongly committed to color-blindness. Ironically, that's something that, in academic circles, can quite easily get you called a racist. (Try asking a lefty lawprof about Chief Justice Roberts's statement that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.")
Anyway, the professor in this incident is named Mark Wattier. The school is Murray State University. I haven't checked into what his actual political propensities are or what he really had in mind when he said whatever he said that is being reported the way you see it in the linked article. My motivation to write this post was the commenter's reflexive assumption that Wattier displayed right-wing ideology. That is absurd.
I noticed that story because John McWhorter and Glenn Loury are talking about it on Bloggingheads. Their discussion centers on whether the student is "lowering" herself by requesting an apology.
I see that the first commenter there says: "Another asshole, undoubtedly a Republican/TeaPartier."
My guess is exactly the opposite. What would possess a professor to say something like that? From my long experience with professors, I think it is the left-wing professors who: 1. Feel confident in their own goodness on racial issues, 2. Analyze events in terms of race, 3. Think up "critical theory"-type explanations that explore ideas about racial difference, 4. Imagine that it's clever to express these ideas out loud, and 5. Are capable of making the mistake of thinking that the students will know that they are good people who do racial critique that is supposed to be understood as an attack on white people.
A "Republican/TeaPartier" is much more likely to be strongly committed to color-blindness. Ironically, that's something that, in academic circles, can quite easily get you called a racist. (Try asking a lefty lawprof about Chief Justice Roberts's statement that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.")
Anyway, the professor in this incident is named Mark Wattier. The school is Murray State University. I haven't checked into what his actual political propensities are or what he really had in mind when he said whatever he said that is being reported the way you see it in the linked article. My motivation to write this post was the commenter's reflexive assumption that Wattier displayed right-wing ideology. That is absurd.
***
I noticed that story because John McWhorter and Glenn Loury are talking about it on Bloggingheads. Their discussion centers on whether the student is "lowering" herself by requesting an apology.
School's out for the demonstration...
... and students, here in Madison, Wisconsin, are marching from West High School down to the state capitol to protest Scott Walker's union-busting budget plan:
Should you go to law school?
As you may have noticed, the NYT put up a long article about whether it's worth it to go to law school — whether it's a good investment. The article begins with an anecdote about a young man with $250,000 in student loans and compares his situation to that of a person who bought an expensive house and has a big mortgage loan to pay off. Of course, education is different from a house. You can sell the house, but you keep your education in your head.
Both the house and the education may turn out to be worth less than you paid, but the present-day value of a house has to do with what someone else is willing to pay to take it off your hands. You don't sell your education to someone else. You try to get a job. When you buy a house, you have some expectations about how the market price will change over time. When you get an education you have expectations about what kinds of jobs you may be able to get with it. But so much depends on you. You have to have absorb and process the material the school teaches, you need to present yourself appropriately in interviews, and, once you get the job, you have to perform well. Your services are the product. The education was part of making your services worth buying in the job market. But no one ever purchases your education from you.
Now, why focus on law schools? People buy all sorts of education. It's expensive. And students major in plenty of subjects that are far less likely to result in jobs. Here's where we get to the real meat of the article: Do the law schools trick students into thinking they are buying a bigger boost in the job market than they're really going to get? And it's the old U.S. News and World Report problem. As schools vie for higher ranking, they do what they can to produce statistics that factor into the calculation, and one thing is the percentage of "graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation." Law schools today report an average of 93%, which is 9% more than back in 1997, even though everyone knows the job market for law grads has gotten much worse.
Another statistic that counts in the rankings is median starting salary:
Quite aside from the economic issues, many people go to law school only to figure out they don't like being a lawyer. But you have to do something in life. What will it be? What else are you going to do? For far too many young people, law school seems like a specific, sensible choice. Three years of education, and you will be highly qualified for a wide array of respectable jobs. If you're reasonably smart and hard working, you will get through it. But it's not a magic ticket to affluence and prestige.
My advice: Know what you're doing! Think!
Both the house and the education may turn out to be worth less than you paid, but the present-day value of a house has to do with what someone else is willing to pay to take it off your hands. You don't sell your education to someone else. You try to get a job. When you buy a house, you have some expectations about how the market price will change over time. When you get an education you have expectations about what kinds of jobs you may be able to get with it. But so much depends on you. You have to have absorb and process the material the school teaches, you need to present yourself appropriately in interviews, and, once you get the job, you have to perform well. Your services are the product. The education was part of making your services worth buying in the job market. But no one ever purchases your education from you.
Now, why focus on law schools? People buy all sorts of education. It's expensive. And students major in plenty of subjects that are far less likely to result in jobs. Here's where we get to the real meat of the article: Do the law schools trick students into thinking they are buying a bigger boost in the job market than they're really going to get? And it's the old U.S. News and World Report problem. As schools vie for higher ranking, they do what they can to produce statistics that factor into the calculation, and one thing is the percentage of "graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation." Law schools today report an average of 93%, which is 9% more than back in 1997, even though everyone knows the job market for law grads has gotten much worse.
Another statistic that counts in the rankings is median starting salary:
Many schools, even those that have failed to break into the U.S. News top 40, state that the median starting salary of graduates in the private sector is $160,000. That seems highly unlikely, given that Harvard and Yale, at the top of the pile, list the exact same figure....That is to say, the U.S. News rankings are, on their face, unbelievable.
So the glut of diplomas, the dearth of jobs and those candy-coated employment statistics have now yielded a crop of furious young lawyers who say they mortgaged their future under false pretenses. You can sample their rage, and their admonitions, on what are known as law school scam blogs, with names like Shilling Me Softly, Subprime JD and Rose Colored Glasses.It's important for prospective students to know what they're getting into. But are they being tricked into thinking it will be easy to become a lawyer, make a lot of money, and love your job too? I don't think so. The bad economy has made the odds worse, but students aren't fools. The NYT focuses on one particular individual, who seems to have been especially unrealistic. (You can go to the article to see the details on this one guy. I don't know why he was chosen as the star of the article.) I think most students do think hard about taking on loans and training for the legal profession. You've got to search for the truth and think hard about where your decisions will lead you and if you want to go there.
“Avoid this overpriced sewer pit as if your life depended on it,” writes the anonymous author of the blog Third Tier Reality — a reference to the second-to-bottom tier of the U.S. News rankings — in a typically scatological review. “Unless, of course, you think that you will be better off with $110k-$190k in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt for a degree that qualifies you to wait tables at the Battery Park Bar and Lounge.”
But so far, the warnings have been unheeded. Job openings for lawyers have plunged, but law schools are not dialing back enrollment.... Apparently, there is no shortage of 22-year-olds who think that law school is the perfect place to wait out a lousy economy and the gasoline that fuels this system — federally backed student loans — is still widely available.
Quite aside from the economic issues, many people go to law school only to figure out they don't like being a lawyer. But you have to do something in life. What will it be? What else are you going to do? For far too many young people, law school seems like a specific, sensible choice. Three years of education, and you will be highly qualified for a wide array of respectable jobs. If you're reasonably smart and hard working, you will get through it. But it's not a magic ticket to affluence and prestige.
My advice: Know what you're doing! Think!
"You have a steady diet of borderline cases. Is this bending up your mind?"
"Is this having the effect of dulling your sensitivity to the 7 major values of certainty in law? If you’re getting accustomed to life on the borderlines — that's what you're in, life on the borderlines — could that have a prejudicial effect on the general standards that you have with regard to what the law is like? And you just take for granted that the law will be open-ended, spongey, discretion-ridden? Some of you do think there’s value to predictability, determinativeness. There are probably not just 3 ways in which it’s valuable, but probably about 15."
Said the eminent, venerable law professor Robert Summers, according to the verbatim notes of a student in his Contracts class at Cornell Law School. Summers recommended that students try to write everything down, and the student, my son John, followed the recommendation. At the link, you'll find much more about Summers — the ideal of the Socratic law professor, who taught his last class on December 1st.
Professor Summers taught law for 50 years. That's about twice as long as I've taught law, and I see myself as well past the middle of my teaching days. I encountered Professor Summers when I interviewed at Cornell — it was my first law school interview — in the fall of 1983. He went on an oddly long rant about how awful it was to have to grade exams.
If I had a transcript of that now, I'm sure I would see that it was hilarious, but at the time, I was terrified, and I furiously racked my brain to think of some interview-appropriate response. Perhaps if I'd been less tightly wound that day and laughed instead of looking however I looked — mystified? blank? clock-watch-y? — I'd have ended up at Cornell.
But I ended up at Wisconsin. And I'm pleased that my son John grew up in Wisconsin and that he ended up at Cornell — with the presence of mind and the sense of humor to appreciate the great Professor Summers.
John says:
Summers talking about another lawprof:
Said the eminent, venerable law professor Robert Summers, according to the verbatim notes of a student in his Contracts class at Cornell Law School. Summers recommended that students try to write everything down, and the student, my son John, followed the recommendation. At the link, you'll find much more about Summers — the ideal of the Socratic law professor, who taught his last class on December 1st.
Professor Summers taught law for 50 years. That's about twice as long as I've taught law, and I see myself as well past the middle of my teaching days. I encountered Professor Summers when I interviewed at Cornell — it was my first law school interview — in the fall of 1983. He went on an oddly long rant about how awful it was to have to grade exams.
If I had a transcript of that now, I'm sure I would see that it was hilarious, but at the time, I was terrified, and I furiously racked my brain to think of some interview-appropriate response. Perhaps if I'd been less tightly wound that day and laughed instead of looking however I looked — mystified? blank? clock-watch-y? — I'd have ended up at Cornell.
But I ended up at Wisconsin. And I'm pleased that my son John grew up in Wisconsin and that he ended up at Cornell — with the presence of mind and the sense of humor to appreciate the great Professor Summers.
John says:
... Summers took the Socratic method to the extreme. He rarely made any direct statement about anything, almost always preferring to ask questions instead.For me, that is a luscious bite of incentive to keep trying to find the wit and the nerve to go for the Socratic ideal. What if I took a secret vow to teach speaking only in questions? How long would it take the students to notice? And by notice, I mean, notice that I'm using the technique of only asking question, not notice that I am really, really annoying.
He mockingly voiced the way he thought students would react:Isn’t it a pity that you need to analyze cases? You can’t just go around with your mouth open waiting for a spoon that will feed it to you in one big, luscious bite! Students should sue. The teachers should just give you the law.
Summers talking about another lawprof:
MacNeil was a whale of a law professor! Never uttered a declarative sentence! Never uttered a declarative sentence! Not in 35 years! Best law professor we've ever had! Now he's retired. What a mistake that was. What a mistake that was.
"Students chatting on Twitter both inside and outside the classroom got higher grades than their nontweeting peers..."
According to a recent study reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
At the end of the semester, the tweeters had grade-point averages half a point higher, on average, than did their nontweeting counterparts. And students who tweeted were more engaged. Twitter users scored higher than those who didn’t use the tool on a 19-question student-engagement survey over the course of the semester—using parameters like how frequently students contributed to classroom discussion, and how often they interacted with their instructor about course material.I have a lot of colleagues who oppose computers in the classroom and even ban them, and I wonder if this will flip any opinion. I've always been very pro computers in the classroom.
I'm shocked, shocked to learn that semi-clad models are writhing in the law library!
"... Brooklyn Law School officials rented Diesel its library expecting a tasteful photo shoot for a jeans ad -- but what they got was a steamy display of writhing young models in skimpy lingerie grinding against books and computers."
Wait. Why did they expect a tasteful photo shoot?
What exactly was the school assured of? The models aren't naked. They've got on underwear. And what is even so gross and shocking about this? Man, Diesel is getting way more great publicity than its stupid underpants deserve. Where did this controversy really start? I'm inclined to suspect that the administration is only shocked* after the fact and only because some students have managed to create the impression that the school might be accused of contributing to a "hostile environment" form of sexual harassment.
As for the young woman who is grossed out that a model in panties writhed in the vicinity of a computer she uses... do you realize how many people type on those things with hands they didn't wash after they went to the bathroom?
----------------------------------------------
*Shocked!
Wait. Why did they expect a tasteful photo shoot?
"It's gross. I work on those computers every day!" fumed a female student, referring to a shot showing two bra- and panty-clad women climbing over the machines toward an open-mouthed man....If the law school — I emphasize law school — did not impose restrictions when it took Diesel's money then it has nothing to complain about.
The frisky photos, shot last spring, show off the hot bodies of male and female models as they prowl around the library's floors, tables and bookshelves -- while wearing tight-fitting panties bearing various seductive messages.
"We are as shocked and mortified as you must be by these photographs," interim dean Michael Gerber wrote in an e-mail yesterday to students, faculty and staff.
"When the school gave its permission to do the shoot, the school was assured that the photos would be in good taste. They are not.""Assured" "good taste" — that's not specific enough to make me believe Diesel violated a contractual term. The school took Diesel's money and had to know that any advertising for clothing for young adults is likely to involve some display of sexuality. Especially if the scene is a library. That's what I'd expect.
What exactly was the school assured of? The models aren't naked. They've got on underwear. And what is even so gross and shocking about this? Man, Diesel is getting way more great publicity than its stupid underpants deserve. Where did this controversy really start? I'm inclined to suspect that the administration is only shocked* after the fact and only because some students have managed to create the impression that the school might be accused of contributing to a "hostile environment" form of sexual harassment.
As for the young woman who is grossed out that a model in panties writhed in the vicinity of a computer she uses... do you realize how many people type on those things with hands they didn't wash after they went to the bathroom?
----------------------------------------------
*Shocked!
The NYT likens real, consensual sex to a false allegation of rape and frets once more about privacy and the internet.
"Duke Winces as a Private Joke Slips Out of Control," reads a NYT headline. I wondered what Duke winced? John Wayne is too dead to wince, and who cares what some Euro-aristocrat feels? Turns out it's Duke, the University, and the article is about that college girl who made big, detailed PowerPoint presentation about her sex conquests and sent it out to "a few friends" by email, whence it migrated to the web, purportedly to her shame and dismay. Supposedly, the young woman — Karen Owen — didn't mean for her hilarious writing to go viral. Is that so? My experience with writers is that they want readers. But that's a side issue ignored by the NYT, which is fixated on Duke University:
On campus, students were abashed, if not a bit fatigued by the notoriety.What?! Why liken real sex between consenting individuals to a false charge of rape?! "Notoriety" — that's a ridiculous umbrella term.
Just four years ago, the Duke men’s lacrosse team was embroiled in scandal when a woman falsely accused three Blue Devils players of having raped her at a party where she was to perform as a stripper. One year later, the charges against the players were dropped and the prosecutor in the case, Michael B. Nifong, was disbarred.
Seven of the 13 athletes Ms. Owen wrote about were — or still are — on the lacrosse team. This incident has angered many of those who are already sensitive to their image, according to students and alumni who know them. The lacrosse players contacted would not comment.Huh? So... those 7 guys aren't the ones who were falsely accused of rape, are they? And are the lacrosse players really so "sensitive" that it bothers them for people to know that they had actual sex with classmates?
On campus, other students had plenty to say.Who suggested the crazy punishment of revoking her degree? And since when do we punish people for talking about their sexual encounters? If she's lied about someone, maybe they have a defamation claim, but it's hard to see how a young man is hurt by the rumor that he had sex with a woman, even if she thinks he wasn't a good enough lover.
Kishan Shah, 18, a pre-med student from Carmel, Ind., said the university should not revoke Ms. Owen’s degree, but “they should let her know that she has disgraced the school.”
Mike Lefevre, a 21-year-old senior and the president of the student body, said that people were not sure whom to be more concerned about. “Should we be more worried about the young woman’s privacy or worry about the individuals who were named?” he said. “It’s not so clear to us who was the victim, and who we should reach out to.”Give me a break. If you do things with people, they can talk about it. These days the talk is on the internet. Get used to it. If you don't like it, try limiting your sexual encounters to people who love and respect you. And quit whining.
Huge crowds of students lining up to get into the Obama rally here in Madison.
I took this little video of the line at 2:25 CT. The security checkpoint wasn't set to open until 3:30, and the event won't start until 4:45.
It looks like President Obama will have the fabulous crowd he's hoping for.
Here's the email sent just now from the UW Police:
It looks like President Obama will have the fabulous crowd he's hoping for.
Here's the email sent just now from the UW Police:
President Obama’s Library Mall rally is expected to draw a capacity crowd this afternoon. For safety and security reasons, Bascom Hill will be opened as a site for overflow spectators who can not fit into the event area.So if you're one of those who think "Right now Nietzsche is a little more important" and things like that, you will be overwhelmed by sheer power and volume. I'm not enough of a Nietzschean to say what Nietzsche would have thought about that.
To accommodate spectators, there will be amplification of the event and music up Bascom Hill, beginning at 4:30 p.m. As a result of the noise, there could be potential impacts on classroom meetings, academic activities or other events scheduled after this time.
Ron Paul! You need to come speak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Yesterday, after the faculty meeting, I walked down Bascom Hill, which was extremely well-posted with student activist posters....
(Enlarge.)
... including this one, which is horrifying for so many reasons...
"Fast Trains Are Cool." As if the government should provide us with everything, even coolness. Big Brother loves you, and Big Brother will also supply the coolness that's currently missing in your gray little life. Wow! We can go fast. Train go fast. Student not think about who pay for cool fast train. Ride train. Train cool.
I kept walking, down to library mall, where I was accosted by a guy with a clipboard, a sort of campus character I would normally discreetly evade, but he was part of a group of students I'd noticed earlier, telling people it was Constitution Day, and therefore we ought to sign a petition to bring Ron Paul to campus to speak, so I stop...
... and even sign the petition. He tells me Ron Paul has said that if students collect 1000 signatures, he'll come to the campus to speak. I ask him if he's finding many conservative or libertarian students on this campus. He admits that there don't seem to be too many, but that he does think the students these days are pretty open-minded and interested in hearing different points of view. Is it possible that the new generation of UW students is more flexible and less rigidly committed to left/liberal ideology? He thought so. I asked if I could take his picture, and I got the picture above, and that sparked this convergence...
... and I asked if it was okay if I blogged them, and the answer was "Blog?!" as if it were 2004 again. I felt young. Cool. On my own. Without a fast train or a Big Brother. And I'm thinking: Ron Paul! Come to the University of Wisconsin! I need to blog this to help get Ron Paul to the University of Wisconsin to talk to our possibly really open-minded young people before they get swept too far by the empty promises of cool things. Before they get... railroaded.
(Enlarge.)
... including this one, which is horrifying for so many reasons...
"Fast Trains Are Cool." As if the government should provide us with everything, even coolness. Big Brother loves you, and Big Brother will also supply the coolness that's currently missing in your gray little life. Wow! We can go fast. Train go fast. Student not think about who pay for cool fast train. Ride train. Train cool.
I kept walking, down to library mall, where I was accosted by a guy with a clipboard, a sort of campus character I would normally discreetly evade, but he was part of a group of students I'd noticed earlier, telling people it was Constitution Day, and therefore we ought to sign a petition to bring Ron Paul to campus to speak, so I stop...
... and even sign the petition. He tells me Ron Paul has said that if students collect 1000 signatures, he'll come to the campus to speak. I ask him if he's finding many conservative or libertarian students on this campus. He admits that there don't seem to be too many, but that he does think the students these days are pretty open-minded and interested in hearing different points of view. Is it possible that the new generation of UW students is more flexible and less rigidly committed to left/liberal ideology? He thought so. I asked if I could take his picture, and I got the picture above, and that sparked this convergence...
... and I asked if it was okay if I blogged them, and the answer was "Blog?!" as if it were 2004 again. I felt young. Cool. On my own. Without a fast train or a Big Brother. And I'm thinking: Ron Paul! Come to the University of Wisconsin! I need to blog this to help get Ron Paul to the University of Wisconsin to talk to our possibly really open-minded young people before they get swept too far by the empty promises of cool things. Before they get... railroaded.
"At what point should you give up on your dream of becoming a lawyer?"
"It’s a question on many people’s minds lately. Whether they were laid off during the recession and haven’t been able to get back in, or if they’ve just graduated law school to the triumphant sounds of crickets, people are wondering when it’s time to stop throwing good money (and effort) after bad."
Above the Law, via Instapundit.
Above the Law, via Instapundit.
"Americans are too damn polite..."
"... so that a conversation between them consists of each person trying to say what the other person would have said had it been their turn to speak. And that isn’t a real conversation at all."
A British professor, quoted by an American lawprof (Einer Elhauge) in an article (published last October) called "Is 1L one hell? Survival tips from a law professor." There are 10 survival tips, and the Britprof's quote is from #9: "Don't be boring." That's a good tip for everyone, but as applied to first year law students:
Professor Elhauge's #1 tip is something I've been saying to students for a quarter century:
A British professor, quoted by an American lawprof (Einer Elhauge) in an article (published last October) called "Is 1L one hell? Survival tips from a law professor." There are 10 survival tips, and the Britprof's quote is from #9: "Don't be boring." That's a good tip for everyone, but as applied to first year law students:
Don’t be afraid to disagree or be provocative, or even to try on positions you aren’t quite sure about. And don’t close your minds to those who disagree with you. You may find that they are more convincing than you thought, or that discussion with them deepens your understanding of just why they are so wrong.Students (and others) are afraid to say something wrong or — horrors! — frowned upon by their peers 'n' profs. We need the fear of being boring as a counterweight. Oh, I'm kidding. You don't need to be afraid of being boring. You just need to succumb to seductive and intense pleasures of not being boring.
***
Professor Elhauge's #1 tip is something I've been saying to students for a quarter century:
1. Realize the Difference Between Being Confused and Understanding the Confusion
Often students have the following the experience. They read the materials and thought the law seemed pretty clear. Then they went to class. And now the issues seem confusing. So they wrongly conclude that class is actually lessening their understanding. What this reaction misses is that often the correct understanding is that the laws and issues are unclear. There is conflict about what the doctrine means, when it applies, when it trumps other doctrines, and what justifies it, and the same set of issues can be framed in multiple ways. Realizing this doesn’t mean you are confused; it means you understand the confusion.It's a gift to delight in understanding that comes in the form of confusion. Most lawprofs have this gift, I think. Which makes it all the more annoying for the law students who resist the realization that their confusion is in fact an understanding of confusion. See? It's annoying. We're annoying, we lawprofs.
Encouraging students and professors to communicate by texting.
Georgia Gwinnett College is spending $1000 per professor to pay for smart phones for professors who are supposed to respond to student texts within 24 hours. Professors already have computers and respond to email, so what is the point of this? You want students dashing off little notes full of typos and abbreviations and professors struggling with teensy keyboards and adapting to the ultra-concise writing form? And what happens when there are misunderstandings? These are inevitable in texting.
Leave texting to friends and family and to coworkers who interact casually. Professors — however friendly they may seem in person — must relate to students in a professional way.
It might work for Tee Barron, a math prof. Maybe math students are coolly unemotional, consuming messages, but I think student-teacher texting is likely to go bad... very bad. And that's assuming fully virtuous professors who don't even dream of entering into inappropriate relations with students.
Leave texting to friends and family and to coworkers who interact casually. Professors — however friendly they may seem in person — must relate to students in a professional way.
Tee Barron, an associate professor of mathematics, says she sometimes gets texts from students asking questions that they could easily have answered by consulting a classmate or the syllabus, but that can be corrected with a benign rebuke. “I’ll sometimes text back, ‘Hahaha by the time it took me to e-mail or text me you could have found this out yourself and now you’re going to have to anyway,' ” Barron says. “I think after the first couple times the [students] who are high-maintenance and try that — they start getting it.”So you're going to taunt and tease them into behaving appropriately? But you're not modeling appropriateness! You're letting them think you have a cutesy, jokey relationship. And who would text the 27 words "Hahaha by the time it took me to e-mail or text me you could have found this out yourself and now you’re going to have to anyway." (I'm counting "hahaha," a misspelling of "ha ha ha," as 1 word.) In the real world of texting, it's going to be more like "get it yrsf" or "u gotta b kiddng" or something even more abbreviated and subject to misreading.
It might work for Tee Barron, a math prof. Maybe math students are coolly unemotional, consuming messages, but I think student-teacher texting is likely to go bad... very bad. And that's assuming fully virtuous professors who don't even dream of entering into inappropriate relations with students.
"This list isn't about the mindset of the class of 2014. It's about the mindset of the people who write it."
"It's about what makes them feel ancient. It's not about how college students think at 18; it's about how we think at 40 and 50 and 60. It's about how we think about the markers we once drove into the ground to mark what we considered Now, and how alarming it is to note that they are farther away than they used to be."
NPR reacts to the new Beloit College "mindset list."
From the list:
ADDED: I found the facsimile of the manuscript on line and determined that Jefferson did write "potatoe." See for yourself.
NPR reacts to the new Beloit College "mindset list."
From the list:
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive....
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection....
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.(Have they ever used a dial on a phone?)
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.Okay. That one distracted me. (I'm distractable, and no, I wasn't the youngest in my class when I was a schoolkid. I was the oldest.) This gets me to something I wanted to talk about. Yesterday, I was reading the "Religion" chapter of Thomas Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia," and I came across this:
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.That's the famous quote I was looking for. But read on:
... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.So Dan Quayle gets a boost from Thomas Jefferson. (And so does Tom Coburn, who recently pressed Elena Kagan with the question: "If I wanted to sponsor a bill and it said Americans, you have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day and I got it through Congress and that’s now the law of the land, got to do it, does that violate the commerce clause?")
ADDED: I found the facsimile of the manuscript on line and determined that Jefferson did write "potatoe." See for yourself.
"If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it’s O.K. if you say other people’s words..."
"... it’s O.K. if you say things you don’t believe, it’s O.K. if you write papers you couldn’t care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade... And it’s O.K. if you put words out there without getting any credit."
The internet is changing the way students think about plagiarism... or — I would add — they way they lie about it.
The internet is changing the way students think about plagiarism... or — I would add — they way they lie about it.
"[S]tudent evaluations (against which I have inveighed since I first saw them in the ’60s) are all wrong as a way of assessing teaching performance."
Stanley Fish writes:
[T]hey measure present satisfaction in relation to a set of expectations that may have little to do with the deep efficacy of learning. Students tend to like everything neatly laid out; they want to know exactly where they are; they don’t welcome the introduction of multiple perspectives, especially when no master perspective reconciles them; they want the answers.That's not just an old professor complaining that the students don't like his style. Fish is critiquing a proposal — from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, "a conservative think tank dedicated to private property rights and limited government" — that would give cash bonuses to teachers (at the college and university level) based on so-called "customer satisfaction":
But sometimes (although not always) effective teaching involves the deliberate inducing of confusion, the withholding of clarity, the refusal to provide answers; sometimes a class or an entire semester is spent being taken down various garden paths leading to dead ends that require inquiry to begin all over again, with the same discombobulating result; sometimes your expectations have been systematically disappointed. And sometimes that disappointment, while extremely annoying at the moment, is the sign that you’ve just been the beneficiary of a great course, although you may not realize it for decades.
If there ever was a recipe for non-risk-taking, entirely formulaic, dumbed-down teaching, this is it....ADDED: Normblog thinks Fish exaggerates:
[T]here are some things that even a student can tell. She may not yet know enough to understand all the subtleties of a challenging teaching method, but she does know something, and she knows more as she goes along. She can tell the difference between clarity and obscurity, between a love of the subject from her teachers and a dullness about it, between an enthusiasm for learning and an indifference towards the process and the students themselves, between a conscientious teacher and a lead-swinger, between an inspiring lecturer and a useless one.
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