Posted on 10/24/2014 8:09:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
Dear Kyle F. Student (not real name):
I am in receipt of your email request for extra credit. First of all, I would like to thank you for writing to ask for extra credit rather than wasting precious class time with your request. This will also spare you from being humiliated in front of your peers. Unfortunately, though, it will probably result in your being humiliated in front of numerous members of our community - some of whom will probably be members of our university community as well. Please allow me to explain.
Your extra credit assignment will be completed in five basic steps. In order to get full credit, you must complete each one of the following steps in order:
1. Buy a cardboard box and tear off a square piece approximately 12 inches wide and eight inches tall.
2. Purchase one black magic marker.
3. Using the black magic marker, write the following words on the piece of cardboard
ABLE-BODIED MAN REFUSES TO WORK
PLEASE GIVE ME SOMETHING I DID NOT EARN
4. Go to the Walmart on Market Street and College Road and hold up the sign at the entrance to the parking lot. Just blend right in with all the able-bodied men who are holding up signs begging for money instead of working. Stay there for approximately one hour.
5. Go home and write a 500 word description of what it felt like to ask people who work for a living to give you something you did not earn. I am especially interested in how it felt for you as a man to beg from women - especially those with small children in need of cheap food and modest clothing. Share your feelings with me, Kyle. And don’t hold back one bit. Pretend like you’re writing a Women’s Studies paper.
I predict that your reaction to this little assignment will take one of two forms. Each reaction requires a separate course of action and, therefore, must be discussed separately.
This would not be terribly surprising to me given your behavior this semester. Recall that you once asked the following question during a test review session: “Dr. Adams, what particular cases should we focus on (emphasis mine) as we prepare for the next exam?” In other words, you actually asked me which cases would be on the exam so that you could just read those – as opposed to all the cases you were assigned this semester.
Also, recall that after I specifically told you not to disclose personal medical information to me you came into my office and announced that you were “bi-polar.” In fact, you began your sentence by saying “I know we’re not supposed to tell you this, but …”
In other words, you seem to be more than just comfortable trying to get special treatment by making people feel sorry for you. In fact, you seem to feel entitled to beg for sympathy. And you would not do it unless you thought you could get something in the process.
In short, if you decide that you feel comfortable hanging out at Walmart with the other beggars then I would suggest that you drop out of college immediately. You don’t need a degree to hold a sign and look pathetic. Save yourself the debt, Kyle.
In fact, you might feel rightfully ashamed – knowing that you are able-bodied and can do much better with your God-given potential.
If your reaction is indeed one of shame then congratulations! The good news is that you will have earned ten points on your final average. The bad news is that it will have to be credited towards the ten points I just deducted from your average for asking me to give you something you did not earn.
Put simply, Kyle, there are two types of men in this world. There are those who spend their lives begging for things they don’t deserve. And then there are the rest of us who spend our lives working to subsidize their dependency. You simply need to decide what kind of man you are going to be.
Good luck on your assignment, Kyle. I look forward to reading your paper.
The IT world you say... I say more like ham handed HR.
So have I. And I have never found humiliation to be an effective tactic there. I have counseled students to drop my class because they don't have the ability, or because they don't have the right attitude. I have been blunt to the point of appearing distant and unfriendly.
But I have never deliberately set out to humiliate any student. And I'm guessing by your remarks that you haven't either.
So I suppose you and I will have to agree to disagree re Adams here.
The article didn't say what other encounters he might have had with this student, but the only thing most people are taking away from this article is that Adams thinks that the student was trying to get something for nothing, which isn't true.
Wrong. He is a professor at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington. But he has tenure (which he had to sue to get, since they tried to deny it to him because he was a Christian and a conservative), so they really can't "make" him do anything...
Add me to your list, please.
As a CJ and Crim instructor, I do so identify with Mike Adams!!
And this semester, I stopped giving all extra credit.
You say it’s humiliation, I say it’s trying to make a point in perhaps the only way that will get through to the guy.
Adams is not an elementary or high school teacher. He is a university professor. He is educating people who demand all the rights of adulthood; why should he baby them? Their future employers would not want an employee who repeatedly goofs off, gets warned that they are about to lose their job, and then wants to do something extra at the last minute to save their butt, invoking the disability card.
I applaud him for it. Our society needs to start treating its abusers harshly. Adams used one of the oldest and — used wisely — most effective deterrents a society has: shame.
Amazing that you conclude that this well-known conservative is a liberal, when he is trying to keep a lazy student from taking advantage. You appear never to have read any of Adams’ work before. He often sets up a fictional character, such as the slacker student in this example, to serve as a talking point for his weekly column.
College students can choose whom they register to have classes with. Adams teaches criminal justice. He is widely known for his sarcastic humor and his classes are frequently teeming with students wanting the challenge of learning from him. Should he put a pillow under the butts of his underperforming students to help them view themselves as victims, when the point of the classes is about people who break laws and must face the music, and when other students get turned away from his classes because they are so popular?
I say no; he should continue to work with the students who are willing to do the assignments and perform the tasks on schedule.
wow! great response.
I wonder if we will get an update on “Kyle”?
Based on his past behavior, the professor knew better
A slack-off who doesn’t do his assignments all year and asks which things will be on the test (so he won’t have to read it all) and then asks for “extra credit” at the end of the year.
Does need to have a little more slack cut to him
He is at a public university -- UNC Wilmington. He has fought and recently won a very public and difficult battle to become tenured as a conservative who was clearly discriminated against in a liberal faculty. His outspoken columns have taken on the idiocies of political correctness on campuses across the nation. I believe this column uses a fictional type of student to discuss a point about whether to coddle young adult students or not.
I agree with your point about the typically politically correct response one might expect had Adams not won that battle so recently (and I believe the university is appealing). It's amazing to me to read the howls of pain by some of the other posters on here about Adams wanting such a fictional student to make the grade without extra help he has not earned a right to.
You think slacker “Kyle” who is an adult should have his parents sue a tenured University professor for not wanting to give a bad student extra credit so the student can barely pass after a whole semester of doing poop?
This is teaching.
My question to you is, which of us is deeply familiar with Adams' work, career, writing and the details of his landmark victory for conservatives seeking tenure? It appears that would be me. You apparently have posted your opinion based on a snap judgment of one piece of writing you took literally, instead of as he intended it -- as a metaphor for discussing a certain type of student.
University of North Carolina is public.
He teaches Criminal Justice. The student was asking for an injustice and the professor gave him a lesson. Individual attention in a University is a valuable thing, “Kyle” should take the lesson to heart.
I did, however, attend one university whose collateral reading requirements were a bit out of touch with reality. Our definition of reading changed depending on the number of pages, given that there were anywhere from 4 to 5 other classes doing the same thing, and you had to ‘complete’ them all.
Reading became anything from perusing, to scanning to rifling through the pages. It all depended on how much time was left after all the required assignments and reading were completed.
Do this think that the article contains all of his communication with “Kyle”? Kyle is an adult, I am sure Kyle can figure some things out on his own, should he bother to apply thought to them.
I thought conservatives opposed tenure for teachers and favored evaluations, student grades, and student progress.
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