“Law school is a different ball game.”
“[W]ere their comments lies? ... Are they racist? ... Are they just failures at teaching?”
“[T]he few black students who were enrolled were at the bottom of the class.”
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The law, medical and business schools at my university are all three comfortably within the top 15, as are many other professional schools. My graduate students come from all across campus, including the law school. In my classes, at least, the law/business/medical school students together make up a substantial majority and aren’t markedly better than my other graduate students.
Here are a few things that I do.
1. Most important, I get it that most of my students graduate > $200,000 in debt. Just to start, I take that seriously. Too many faculty do not. Too many teach what they want to teach and generally deliver far too little considering what these students are giving up to attend. A lot of what is taught has little or no value. Not me.
2. Most enrolled in my classes are students of color, nearly half from outside the US. Even in large classes, I know their names and how to pronounce them by the end of the first week. This takes time. It’s tedious. Yet you might be stunned by the impact that this has on students who have never ever had a professor that gave a sh*t or ever took that time.
3. I organize and deliver the material with the fewest possible prerequisites and never ever any acronyms, lingo or insider references. We start from the beginning, move at Spotify 2x speed and never waste a minute.
4. I set very, very clear expectations. In grading the essay midterms and other writing assignments, I provide comments rather than just assigning a grade. Quite extensive and blunt. Yes, many students come into my class unclear on how to deliver a quality assignment because in their mid-20s no professor has yet spelled it out for them; and this may correlate with race. The fault is not with the students, it is with the stunningly privileged and lazy faculty who teach in our universities.
5. I don’t just announce office hours. I tell students they need to get to my office hours, especially if their marks are low. I follow up rather than pay lip service.
6., 7., 8. —> I could go on. But it all boils down in the end to paying attention to the needs of students of color.
Do I think the average university professor does lousy work in the classroom? Yes. Does their laziness and privileged BS disproportionately affect students of color? Yes. Does this make them racist? The term “racist” is so abused that it isn’t any longer meaningful, but these knuckleheads are at the very least posers, pretending to care about race because they know that they serve students of color so poorly.
Are these professors more risible because they are: a) consistently far left, b) lazy, whiny, hypocritical, ... c) entrenched and self-serving, or d) all of the above? I’ll let you guess.
The odds are at least 50:1 that the G-town professor that you are defending is a lefty. The odds are 100:1 that you would find her loathsome.
And if you knew me, you’d love me. :) My students all do.
I pretty sure that students of color from outside the US are not the kind of students being discussed in this thread. Also, what do you teach?
‘And if you knew me, you’d love me. :) My students all do.’
hmmm; okay...
I wonder. Early in my academic career I discovered the laziness and insouciance of the professoriat at another top rated university. I was appalled that they didn't care if they passed on BS and that they were happy giving out A+s to students who fed their BS back in essays and on exams, if they bothered having exams. I didn't do the latter and didn't get the former kinds of grades. I was there to learn even if they were determined not to teach. To this day I condemn the place and think it should be nuked until the rubble bounces.
I see, so were their comments lies? Were they fabricated? Are they racist? Or as you seem to suggest, are they just failures at teaching?
And if they are failures at teaching, why did the white folks do significantly better? Why weren't they at the bottom of the class as well?
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Once again, could you respond to my questions about this story? Your response was wordy, disjointed and had little to to do with your claim about these people.
I am specifically interested in your response to my last question above.
Just to be clear, I’m not defending (nor indicting) the GT professor’s comments. My real problem is with her dismissal.
While I think the substance of her comment would make for an interesting academic discussion, it appears we have now reached a point our academic culture where such discussions aren’t allowed. That is terrifying and this is what I was chiefly responding to.
One of the underlying, foundational elements of the legal profession is the Socratic method. How do we teach aspiring lawyers how to employ the Socratic method when at the very same time, the school responsible for the teaching disallows any argumentative dialogue and critical thinking that flows from that dialogue. We can’t.
At our premiere educational institutions, we are teaching developing minds that critical thinking is dangerous and we’re doing it all in the name of equality. This won’t end well.