"In this age of grade inflation, student entitlements, skyrocketing tuitions, and rampant anti-intellectualism, my wallowing in the pleasures of giving out A’s as if they were $100 bills might seem like ammunition for the enemies of higher education and the professorial life. In the face of that charge, I have only one response: I’m tenured."
Expecting some kind of sly rhetorical trick, where the writer reveals halfway through that his real point is something completely different and entirely reasonable, and he's not simply bragging about handing out A's like candy because it's easy and fun and makes students like him? Yeah, that would have been nice.
"I love giving A’s to students, maybe even more than they love receiving them... I’ve acquired a reputation as an "easy" teacher, and I love that, too.... So part of my plan is to try to show love and empathy rather than contempt and derision, as some of my colleagues do."Contempt and derision, you say?
"Hell, students already have enough stress and uncertainty in their lives as they adjust to living on their own, making new friends, feeding themselves, and taking crazy-making courses on "orgo" (that’s organic chemistry, I think)"
You tell 'em, Professor Santapants! You neither know nor care what your colleagues are teaching but you know they're doing it wrong and anyway what is chemistry LOL
Go on, read the whole thing. Misery loves company, and it's not behind a paywall.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Im-Easy-On-Giving-Lots/244144
--Frankie Bow
Don’t worry, Frankie, is was published only in the Crampicle. This assures it will make no impact, since no one aside from a handful of academics will ever read it. Couldn’t have done a better job if it was classified.
ReplyDeleteWhy not pretend it's youth soccer and give everyone a participation trophy?
ReplyDeleteSo hard to know what is and isn't satire these days.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to comment when I first read this, but as I threw up all over my keyboard it wasn't possible.
ReplyDeleteAs Frod says, only a few academics will read it but the problem is not them, it's attacks on higher ed and those who create them.
Frankie, you owe me a new keyboard!!
"Orgo" is indeed organic chemistry. Aside for being a fascinating subject, with a lab that's lots of fun, it is also useful: it's a course that physicians really ought to know well, in order to be prescribing drugs safely and effectively. Agriculture, which provides nearly all the food you eat, also depends critically on it. Of course, it's part of the natural sciences, where hoary old concepts such as "truth" and "known facts" and "correct answers" still matter. This fluffy coelenterate (that's an animal without a backbone, which still knows the difference between food and not-food) should try it!
ReplyDeleteI'm terribly sorry for calling the inconsequential bit of fluff impersonating a teacher a "coelenterate": it's wrong of me to insult coelenterates, since they've done nothing bad to me. All right then, this person giving out free grades is a menace to meaningful and consequential education. Oooo!
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