As the assiduous reader will know, a great deal of my intellectual, emotional and creative energy is spent on two activities: irrigating a desert and understanding what follows here. Notes 1. Abused people are under the illusion that if they learn to obey more perfectly, accept abnegation more completely, the pain will stop. 1.1. If … More Et encore…
PZ: These students refuse to learn. WM: They do not share your views on the value of learning. PZ: But they are in school, so they are on the turf of learning. They should play by house rules. WM: Not necessarily. PZ: So the house rules no longer emphasize the value of learning? WM: … … More A Corporative Whiteman
… Interpretation of the Constitution to the Christian Right I thought that the way in which my academic freedom was curtailed was in the need to cater to the tendentious religions and politics of the students. I have long been aware, to give one very clear example, that I as a professor cannot criticize Creation … More On Outsourcing
To celebrate turning in final papers we went out to a semi-underground Cuban club and danced to son and reggaeton. Old men sang call and response rumbas outside. The students brought their friends, and the friends said the kind of professor they most dislike is the kind who gets up each day in class and … More Morphing Into the Corporate University
I Now we have discovered that the people who normally teach the multisection course I and one other colleague suffered through this semester have secretly rewritten the textbook, to make things more tolerable. They do not teach from it but from their rewritings. These are secret so that we can preserve the illusion of having … More On Impracticality
This evening I have been told two things, to wit: 1. Our students are a disaster area and we should cave to this situation. I disagree. They are a disaster area because they have not been required not to be, or more importantly, because they have not been shown, rather than just told how not … More Five Things
One of my students has written me a two page letter in which he recognizes that he is failing my course and requests a D because he is graduating and needs it. He is unable to earn a D, he says, because the subject is beyond his grasp. This is why he has not prepared … More A Letter
If your parents believe that you can pass 15 credit hours’ worth of college level work by merely attending class, they can insist that you also work full time, because 40+15=55. If your parents insist that missing class to drive them to the doctor or babysit your sister’s children should be an “excused absence” from … More An Academic Culture
Now I am going to give back one of those exams, on which once again every one has made, essentially, either an A or an F. It is depressing. People with F’s will, as usual, have a great deal to say about how it is the fault of the textbook or other materials, or my … More Anschluß
Unless you are in the honors program or a graduate student, in which cases situations vary, you can tell me your class and a little bit about your life; I will then guess what your grades are and be right. I hardly need to see your work, because I have diagnosed you by class and … More On Grading
