I teach federal government at the local college.
Want students engaged and speak their mind, encourage independent thought and I always take the “other side” in any debate. . .just to get the students thinking.
That said, this term I have a student that clearly has an agenda. No matter the discussion, no matter the subject, no matter what we are examining, this guy will ALWAYS steer the discussion to his encounter with the police 14-yrs ago and his subsequent arrest.
Great, good info when were were discussing the Bill of Rights and how the constitution protects God given rights, but when we are discussing the FCC and Net Neutrality or the federal bureaucracy or the budget-making process, for example, he will jump in, say something tangentially relevant to the topic and then go on a rant about his arrest.
So, sometimes the instructor has to make a decision and sometimes the decision is to recommend the student just shut the heck up.
Frankly, telling the student to ‘just shut up’ should be done in a one-on-one with the student, perhaps giving him a time for just him to relate his experiences privately to the instructor, and then explaining that you (instructor) also have other obligations to the collective class that are made more difficult by the interruptions. Just a thought.
More often than not, sir, it’s the Prof that has the agenda. When are they going to “Shut the hell up”???
“Rants” don’t really happen in college classes, unless it’s the professor.
What is it about professors that makes so many of them: 1)mentally limited to the extent that they’re communist and 2)unable to understand that communism is an agenda?