Is this a joke? Dude, I don't know anymore!
Via Alex at Detached Observer, I've discovered this outrageous story of a college "English prof" who required his students to read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (yes, the entire book) and then write an essay relating Zinn's arguments to something in their personal experience. The "English prof" objected to a particular student's logic -- a student who happened to disagree fairly strongly with Zinn -- and when the "prof" couldn't get him to understand the "errors" in his logic, he guaranteed him an "A" if he agreed to sign the following statement: ""I, [name], believe Zinn is wrong because socially and/or economically underprivileged individuals are inherently evil; that true freedom, justice, and equality can never exist because the world is a dark and violent place; and that those who bear the burden so that the upper class can exist deserve their fate." The student signed the paper. Then the "English prof" wrote a post in which he sighed high-mindedly about the student's willingness to sell his soul for a grade.
Un. Effing. Believable. This is disturbing, first, because, as Alex points out, this "prof" clearly has so little idea what he's talking about, and second, because he seems so little able to engage or even to understand the excellent comments that appear on his thread or over at Critical Mass and elsewhere. The heartening thing about the incident is that so many academics actually do seem to understand the egregiousness of this little episode, though the clucking and commiserating in some of the initial comments to the professor's post are laughably self-parodying.
Update: In the comments here, Alex calls our attention to this comment by the inimitable Rose Nunez: "I'm just happy an English instructor is actually assigning his students fiction." Ba dump dump.
Un. Effing. Believable. This is disturbing, first, because, as Alex points out, this "prof" clearly has so little idea what he's talking about, and second, because he seems so little able to engage or even to understand the excellent comments that appear on his thread or over at Critical Mass and elsewhere. The heartening thing about the incident is that so many academics actually do seem to understand the egregiousness of this little episode, though the clucking and commiserating in some of the initial comments to the professor's post are laughably self-parodying.
Update: In the comments here, Alex calls our attention to this comment by the inimitable Rose Nunez: "I'm just happy an English instructor is actually assigning his students fiction." Ba dump dump.
posted by Kate Marie | 8:30 AM | Permalink
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9 comments
9 Comments:
Hmm. Sounds like the student was just humoring an obviously insane professor. An act of charity, for sure.
Let he who is without Zinn cast the first stone.
I think Rose Nunez' comment on this at Critical Mass was the best response I've seen so far.
Hey, Alex, thanks for the heads up about Rose's comment. I hadn't noticed it, and I've been missing her voice in the blogosphere!
What bothered me so much about this incident was how this teacher believed that during his first semester on the job he was encountering a situation so exceptional and so bizarre that it required some sort of wildly creative response. I've been teaching college part-time for seven years, but not even on my most frustrated days have I ever considered testing my students' consciences by asking them to sign declarations affirming my subjective view of the consequences of their own faulty reasoning. If the student truly was unable to argue his point logically, then he deserves a low grade, not an even more complex (and arbitrary) test of his logical faculties.
As I said in my comments over on this guy's site, if he's going to be teaching English, he'd better get used to far greater challenges than this one frustrating student. He ain't seen nothin' yet.
"I've been missing her voice in the blogosphere"
Me too. Theres very few blogs that leave me with the desire to obsessively argue over every detail in the comments. God forbid you stop writing, Kate Marie, God forbid.
I'll take that as a compliment, Alex. And right back atcha. I must say that you (and Madman) do take the cake for obsessively arguing points in the comments.
I am a bit frightened, though, by how frequently I've agreed with your recent postings. :)
Jeff, I saw your comment at that guy's site and I thought it was typically generous and astute. I would never have had as much patience with the guy. This is going to sound awful, but I consider you to be a sort of Saint Francis of the blogosphere -- a brilliant, funny, New Jersey "real man" version.
Alex: I'm glad you jumped in to comment on your blog about this incident. Because of this teacher's terrible choice of reading assignments, it's easy for blog-commenters to make this a left/right issue, and heck, it's not totally off-base for them to do so, but the bigger problem here is amateurish teaching. I think that's something most of us can agree upon regardless of other political bickering.
KM: You flatter me far beyond what I deserve, if only because I try to put my best face forward online in ways I don't in real life. I'd deny your compliment further, but to my blessed, beatific surprise, I appear to have songbirds alighting all around me...
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