Posted on 12/24/2008 12:35:29 PM PST by Zack Nguyen
...I work at colleges of last resort. For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.
...A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them. Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught.
Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence.
In each of my courses, we discuss thesis statements and topic sentences, the need for precision in vocabulary, why economy of language is desirable, what constitutes a compelling subject. I explain, I give examples, I cheerlead, I cajole, but each evening, when the class is over and I come down from my teaching high, I inevitably lose faith in the task, as I’m sure my students do. I envision the lot of us driving home, solitary scholars in our cars, growing sadder by the mile.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
American liberal academia is immature. It just goes on and on!
Ms. L is not an employee. She is a customer paying (along with taxpayers) the professor’s salary.
As for accepting the bottom rung of society, it depends on what you value in life. This professor works happily in a place that teaches about drunken orgies and free sex and godlessness and liberal doctrine.
Lots of people are bored with the hypocrisy of this professor’s world.
Well, take off that costume and join the real world, LOL.
You can blame "liberal academia" for laziness of students, but it is irrelevant. What matters is that, someone who refuses to do work because they are bored is a kid or a kid in an adult's body.
The world of responsible adults does their duty, regardless of how they feel about them. The kids are just dead weight.
"... so just give her her damned 'A' already...."
Your approach would reduce academics to mere diploma mills. Get your ticket punched and move on. It makes education worthless. Without testing to ensure student learning, testing is worthless.
This professor works happily in a place that teaches about drunken orgies and free sex and godlessness and liberal doctrine.
And just where in the bloody hell did you get that red herring from?
Lots of people are bored with the hypocrisy of this professor’s world.
And they can flip burgers for a living. A billion Chinese are willing to do the work that your "bored" students are not.
I don’t agree with what she did. I just think her motivation is boredom and maybe rebellion.
... and who gives a flying flip why? No employer does.
Well?
And just where in the bloody hell did you get that red herring from?
Article: "I told her that I thought the abortion question was more of an ethical dilemma than a historical controversy."
And they can flip burgers for a living. A billion Chinese are willing to do the work that your "bored" students are not.
That would "Mexicans".
A degree from a diploma mill is worthless. It shows only that you paid your money. It is not a useful credential, since it gives no evidence of having learned or accomplished anything. This is why no employer gives any credence to degrees from known diploma mills.
"I told her that I thought the abortion question was more of an ethical dilemma than a historical controversy."
Clearly you did not understand the assignment either. The assignment was to research a historical event - not an ethical debate.
Yes professor, anything you say professor...
No no no. I'm talking about the same job - journeyman level carpenter. If you don't think any skill is involved then you have just never done it.
To have kept up with inflation they should be making $50 an hour. But you think the status quo is OK? I'm sorry but in most trades skilled workers make shit wages compared to what they made 30 years ago. But hey, as long as we are deluded enough to think this has no effect on us, we don't care right?
So let them eat cake, let's party some more and send what remains of our wealth to our enemies in the East and ME - and those countries south of us.
I find your flippant view distressing. In my experience carpenters are worth far more than most middle managers. That aside, as conservatives we had better make sure everyone rises with the tide or "everyone" is going to vote socialist out of desperation.
Ms. L is not an employee. She is a customer paying (along with taxpayers) the professor’s salary.
Ms. L and the taxpayers are not the only consumers involved. The other students who actually did the work to pass the class don't want her ignorance to devalue their degree. Potential employers don't want to be defrauded by a degree and a class transcript that claims she demonstrated skills that she does not have. Prof. X did them all a service by flunking her.
As for accepting the bottom rung of society, it depends on what you value in life. This professor works happily in a place that teaches about drunken orgies and free sex and godlessness and liberal doctrine.
This is a bigoted, unwarranted ad-hominem attack - the sign of a failed argument. The classics and fundamentals of writing are not characterized by the above.
Lots of people are bored with the hypocrisy of this professor’s world.
Then stay out of it and find another way to get the skills. Or be happy with the dead end job because the job you want requires a degree that requires the skills the classes teach. Hope you're happy in your fantasy world.
Hey, I agree she doesn’t belong there. Even if she did the work, a 40-year-old woman is not going to get much use out of this class.
Just FYI: Every liberal and RINO in the country attended college and did the work.
Politics doesn't have a damned thing to do with this problem. An uneducated conservative is useless in the fields of law, science, medicine, economics, or business.
I don’t think liberals and RINO’s allow conservatives into those professions anymore.
Or, maybe the orgies, free sex and godlessness taught in college don’t allow any conservatives to survive till graduation.
???
I don't know about you, but when I went to college and grad school, I was never invited to any orgies. My faith survived intact. When I was done with grad school, I chose to go into the Army.
So your thesis (such as it is... it is closer to a rant) is shot to hell with my own experience.
Your daughter sounds like a go-getter. I had a similar experience in the job market. No one cared what my GPA was, just that I had a diploma. And a good thing too - my undergraduate GPA was poor at best.
Even if she did the work, a 40-year-old woman is not going to get much use out of this class.That has to be the most ignorant statement you have made in this whole discussion. In the article, Prof.X pointed out that writing skills are core for all later course work. I had my version, Grad Student TA X, the first semester of my freshman year. We all failed the first paper. He taught us to write with cogent thesis statements and well-crafted paragraphs that built arguments to support the thesis. This was foundational for every other paper I wrote, even the dreaded lab reports in my science and engineering classes. The literature classes teach how to dissect an author's argument and were foundational to permit me to evaluate the scientific journals I read on a daily basis. Take the blinders off, Donna.
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