Yes, I could see all of them, if I had the time to wait about five minutes for each one to load. It's a form the students fill out, very short, and it's apparent there are boxes to check. ..... I just went to the site and had no problem this time, maybe this morning there were too many freepers hitting the site. Here's what you will see there:
Click on the school name to view the complete posting.
Here's the complete text from the first listing. This is a great service to students who are looking for good classes and good teachers. I hope there will be many many more postings.
entry #39.
| University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) |
Nov. 27, 2002 |
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| Course: Soc 108F: Studying People At First Hand |
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| Course Catalog Description: A vital aspect of modern sociology is the study of social activities in natural settings. This course explores the different methods a fieldworker can use to discover truths about society. |
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| Professor: Kumkum Bhavnani |
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| Required? Yes, for my major or minor |
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| Lecture Bias: Objectionable |
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| Comments: Sociology 108f is billed as a methods class in which students are taught methods of research in dealing with people. Among the different methods are interviews, survey etc... It seemed unlikely to me that there could be any bias in the instruction of methods of research. I was surprised to find out that there in fact is a way for such a thing to be manifested. On the first day of class professor Bhavnani explained that the primary focus of the class would be on ethnography. She then went on to explain that throughout the course she would use past research and ethnography to convey methods of research. I was not put off by this at all; however, that soon changed. The first piece of research she presented was in the form of a video called "Women of the Hezbolah". The video depicted the plight of Palestinian revolutionaries who were fighting for a free Palestine. In the video several women explained why they were fighting and what terrible subjugation they have experienced at the hand of Israel. In one scene they showed two individuals visiting their childhood home which had been decimated. The general concept of the video was to convey that something terrible had been done to Palestinians and that the hesbolah was going to make it right at any cost. Later in the video young children were shown marching with automatic weapons in a rally with hezbolah revolutionaries. In my opinion these people were terrorists and I was appalled that they would enlist their young children to fight, but I could understand that the video was attempting to offer a new perspective on a familliar subject or as Professor Bhavnani put it: Making the familliar unfamilliar by providing new insight. So it was clear to me that this video was presented from an extreme left perspective, but I accepted it expecting to see many other presentations from different perspectives. The next video she showed was called "Maria's Story," in which a group of communisit-like rebels in El Salvador were fighting their oppresive United States backed government. This video followed one particular guerrilla fighter named Maria who enlisted children to fight with her. When one of the children was shot, she was recorded screaming about what type of monster would shoot a child. I suppose the point of showing children fighting was to ensight support for a cause that was so in jeopardy that they need children in order to progress their cause. Once again I saw another piece of extreme left propaganda but I still hoped for something balancing. The next segment Bhavnani discussed with the class was her own research study of women in prison, in which she interviews prisoners in America and abroad and shows how unfair the prison system is to their needs that a mother could not be with their child. It was clear to me that the mother should have thought of that before committing crimes but that type of view was never presented or discussed. Throughout the course the same type of left oriented material was presented one after another. Although Professor Bhavnani asserted that the material was presented for the purpose of showing different methods of studying people, it became clear to me that the course title "Studying People at First Hand" was an excuse to present objectionally biased material. In my oppinion the course should have been called Studying People from a Leftist Perpective. This of course would not work however, because at no time did Professor Bhavnani admit that she was in fact pushing a leftist agenda disguised as instruction on methodology. Upon completing the class I could not help but feel that I had not really learned much about studying people from the professor herself. She gave us assignments to go observe people or to interview people in which I had to teach myself how to best complete such tasks, but her instruction on the subject was minimal at best. |
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| Comments: Although there was no discussion section for the class, there were two Teaching Assistants of whom I had virtually no contact with, with the exception of one day in which one of the teaching assistants presented her research on the flower picking industry of South America. In the presentation she explained how capitalist enterprises were subjugating laborers in South America, etc... |
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| Readings Bias: Objectionable |
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| Comments: The readings were supplements to the presented material and contained the same bias that the lectures had. |
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| General Comments: I believe that in a methods course there is no reason to present such controversial material, particularly when it is presented with no rebuttal. I believe that we could have learned the same information about studying people looking at a video of a family gathering or some other such benign event. |
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University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
Bucknell University