Posted on 10/03/2022 9:25:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Today the NY Times published a surprisingly interesting story about the current state of academia. The focus is one professor at NYU, Maitland Jones, who has long been considered one of the top professors in the field of organic chemistry. Jones taught at Princeton until 2007 and then moved to NYU where he had a year-to-year contract. His textbook on the subject is now in its fifth edition. But this year Jones was fired after a group of about 80 students started a petition claiming his class was too hard.
…last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.
Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores…
“We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class,” the petition said…
“We urge you to realize,” the petition said, “that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students’ learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole.”
NYU was clearly bending over backwards to please the complainers. They even offered to let students retroactively withdraw from the class, meaning low grades would not be on their record. But from Professor Jones’ perspective his teaching hasn’t changed all that much, the students have.
“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams.
The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”
After several years of Covid learning loss, the students not only didn’t study, they didn’t seem to know how to study, Dr. Jones said.
Apparently this course has a reputation of being a “weed out” class for students who want to become doctors. A fellow chemistry professor at NYU argued that students who couldn’t pass Jones’ class probably shouldn’t be allowed to become doctors. “Unless you appreciate these transformations at the molecular level, I don’t think you can be a good physician, and I don’t want you treating patients,” he said.
I can’t find a copy of the student petition, just the few excerpts mentioned by the Times. The tone of those excerpts sounds a lot like the sort of woke hyperventilation about student well-being we’ve seen a lot in the past few years. So I wonder whether the rest of the petition had more of that.
In any case, Times’ commenters are once again sounding more rational than NYU and its Gen Z students. Here’s the top comment with over 1,600 upvotes.
One of the students complained that the grades did not reflect the time and effort they put in.
That perspective misses the point. In life you are graded for results rather than effort. The students better understand that pretty soon.
The #2 comment is from a fellow professor who sides with Dr. Jones.
I’m a college professor and echo Dr. Jones’s observations about students having increased difficulties with concentration the past decade or so, beginning with the advent of smartphones and the ubiquity of social media. And although, in my experience, students are doing better mentally this year, they are still struggling in the wake of covid.
From this article, Dr. Jones sounds like a brilliant, deeply dedicated (still teaching at age 84!), if demanding professor. I would, however, amend Marc Walters’ statement to say that the university would “extend a gentle but firm hand to the customers and those who pay the tuition bills.” That’s really what we’re talking about: pleasing customers, getting good reviews, maintaining high U.S. News rankings, etc.
I, for one, hope I don’t receive medical care from a doctor who couldn’t pass a tough undergraduate organic chemistry course.
One more from another professor in a different field.
I taught a language that is difficult for English speakers to learn.
One year, the first test of the second semester came back with scores in an upside-down bell curve. The students either wrote a nearly perfect exam or missed almost everything. Very few were in the middle.
I asked the “A” students each to write an anonymous paragraph about how they had studied for the test. I collected these paragraphs and compiled them into a single handout.
When the class saw the handout, some of the students who had done poorly said things like, “But that’s a lot of work!”
Exactly.
Teaching mostly at small colleges that prided themselves on giving students individual attention, I had generous office hours and offered review sessions before the finals. I put certain aspects of the course on a self-paced basis.
Guess who showed up for the office hours and review sessions. The students who were already doing well. Guess who zoomed through the self-paced part of the course. The students who were already doing well.
Doing poorly in a class should be a reason not to go into certain fields. A student who can’t hack organic chemistry does not belong in medical school. A student who can’t hack calculus shouldn’t go into engineering. These courses should not be simplified for their sake.
Alternatively, we could just make sure that everyone gets a good grade so no one has their feelings hurt. But good luck relying on one of those doctors or engineers.
Httt
Having flunked Geometry in high school, that destroyed my dream of being a mathematician.....Fortunately, my love of beer led me to become a bartender.
This problem is much more than two years old, so your theory fails to explain observed facts.
Yes, perseverance is also important; those who give up too quickly will fail. OTOH, Those who (metaphorically) ride a burning airplane all the way to the ground will also fail. Some times, you have to punch out before it’s too late and either try again or re-consider your life choices.
I didn’t care much for chemistry either....
I think I forgot most of it within minutes of taking the finals...
Who knew the movie “Idiocracy” was actually a documentary of the world to come.
What a pathetic state we are in. It won’t be long before doctors routinely kill patients, bridges collapse, planes fall from the sky, power plants explode, and trains run off the rails. Clearly the only answer to this is MORE wokeism.
What a bunch of pathetic spoiled brats! Yes it is hard and so is life. These are the punks that will take care of us in retirement? WE are doomed.
This is why our tech companies request the lifting of immigration quotas...so they can fill slots that require competency in certain fields.
Organic Chemistry is,bydefition, difficult. I asked a pre-med student how to get through it. He said:”Memorize te book “
He was right. Our tests were starting with coal, limestone and air,work through 26 steps to get to final answer, which was given. Miss one step and you failed.
Ping
I have often explained to my employees that if you contract to dig a ditch 10 feet long, 4 feet wide and 1 foot deep, north to south start at the stake but instead you dig a ditch 10 long, 1 foot wide, 4 feet deep going east to west then you have failed to fill the contract nor did not product useful work.
So I can’t wait until these alleged students contact for a new house and the finished product is a complete disaster. The builder ask for payment which the former students refuses due to lack of building a safe, as designed house. So all the builder needs to retort is “well the bill reflections the time and effort I put into Project”! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
:: It won’t be long before doctors routinely kill patients, bridges collapse, planes fall from the sky, power plants explode, and trains run off the rails. ::
You should write a book about a future America.
You can call it “Atlas Shrugged”.
Wait...wut?
The problems are being layed on smartphones. Youngsters using them too much and destroying the ability to read organic chemistry books......
BUT the vaxxxxxxx accelerated this trend. You are mistaken if you don’t think the vaxxxes are screwing with peoples brains. Not everyone of course!
“I drove my car into the Burger King because I was vaxxed.”
This happens! These are called vaxxidents. Vaxxxx induced loss of control of your automobile.
I uhhhh...have to run to the bathroom...be back in 15-20 minutes.
KEK
Nonsense, this has been an issue for years. The vaxx protocols just exposed what has been going on for years.
Yes, perseverance is also important; those who give up too quickly will fail. OTOH, Those who (metaphorically) ride a burning airplane all the way to the ground will also fail. Some times, you have to punch out before it’s too late and either try again or re-consider your life choices.
________________
absolutely!
I have a adopted child with a 130+ IQ who will bag hamburgers and be swing manager of bagging burgers for the rest of her life, she cannot persevere in any one course of study .
I have another adopted child who is at best average, walking towards his first million, because of his ability to persevere in his chosen field.
The west can be so proud of the smut and ignorance we are now foisting on the world . Bullying, lies, perversion, self destruction are things to really stand up for and this wonderful agenda needs to be taken around the world in the name of “democracy”. That’s it “democracy”. It happens when everyone shuts up and takes it up the wazoo from their satanic betters.
“This story is horrible. Clearly the course is passable. Some students passed with good grades”
This line you said is the whole point. Shows who should actually be there and those that should not.
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