By Professor
Doom
So, last time around, we saw a professor
give a student zero after zero on writing assignments, in an era of higher
education where it’s extraordinarily rare to give out such grades.
It’s very clear the professor has an
agenda of indoctrination into his own particular mythology, one I won’t honor
with a discussion of here. That said, I concede the professor totally has the
right to grade as weirdly as he wishes.
Administration doesn’t care about this
sort of thing, what it wants are happy customers, providing those sweet, sweet,
student loan checks.
Are the professor’s customers happy,
outside of this one, un-indoctrinated student?
According to the website Rate My
Professor, Russum has an overall quality rating of 4.3 and the average grade of
an “A.” His page is also adorned with a chili pepper to indicate his physical
attractiveness. One student labeled him a Marxist and feminist in 2011.
Oh, well, there it is, then. A decade ago,
I’d get a chili pepper or two, but, alas, those days are past for me
(discovering a local grocery store with extraordinary butter cream technology
hasn’t helped). I’m a little hit-and-miss on Rate My Professor otherwise, I
admit. While Rate My Professor is hardly scientific, neither are the in-class
student evaluations. Let’s take, along with a grain of salt, a look at what
some of the students had to say:
This professor is great! I took the
12 week course online, It is an easy class if you do the assignments, make sure
that you write the acquired amount of sentences if you do not, you will get an
F.
--I want to clarify here: all you
need to do to pass is write the appropriate number of sentences. And agree with
the professor, apparently. This is education?
He spent our first 3 hour class
belittling religions and even atheism, while glorifying his beliefs. He says we
should "discuss". He just wants us to adopt his contradicting ideas
as he shuts down our own.
--anyone get
the feeling this student didn’t pass the course?
Took 6 week online summer course.
VERY easy as long as you read the chapters, watch the movies and do the essay
at the end of the week. He's very particular on # of sentences you write. So
make sure you count. Final with 5 pages (for a B) is brutal since its
essentially 5 pages on your opinion so make sure you have one.
--again,
we’re seeing the same idea here as to what exactly is required of students:
write a certain number of sentences, and you’d better agree with the professor.
Or else.
He was totally crazy, but as long as
you did the work and showed you opinion you got an A,
--Again,
definitely seeing a theme.
It's not very difficult to get a good
grade in this class. Just show up and do all your work and participate.
However, his lectures are very unclear. He tries to push his views on you and
dislikes it when you disagree with him. He talks about being a Marxist and a
Feminist and makes it seem that everything else is wrong.
--Yeah, ok, we
get it. Student evaluations are a pretty feeble tool for judging teaching, but
when you see the same issues come up year after year, you have to at least
consider that there’s some accuracy to what students are saying.
I’ve cherry-picked the responses here, but
it’s clear this is a relatively easy professor and course. Write a certain
number of sentences, agree with him on all counts, and you’re set. A few of the
responses make him seem a bit more balanced, but it’s tough to accept that
balance when his own course syllabus is so belligerent about his beliefs.
Despite the zeroes, the student still got
an A for the course. The professor isn’t stupid, he knows admin only cares
about passing students, after all, and education isn’t on the table.
The fact still remains, he gave this
student outright zeroes for her work expression Christian beliefs. She didn’t
turn in blank papers, so he’s definitely being unfair by the standards of most
institutions today. I emphasize, he totally has that right…but if admin will
step in to protect a cheater against “unfair” treatment, surely they’d do so
here. Right?
So back to the real question: what is
administration’s response to behavior towards a Christian student that is
easily as unfair as the previous professor’s behavior towards a class nearly
full of disrespectful cheaters? The latter were quickly protected by admin.
Polk
State College Core Values
- Service
- Integrity
- Knowledge
- Diversity
- Leadership
There’s that word, “diversity”, that clearly
means whatever admin wants it to mean. The primary meaning is that certain
groups will receive favored status over other groups, although the usual
definition (i.e., the definition normal people use) is to allow and consider
other elements, particularly people, cultures and ideas. Thus, the professor is
free to have his belief system…but should be tolerant of other belief systems.
Not doing so violates the core value of diversity.
Will admin be doing anything about this
odd advancement of a belief system on students, and odiously unfair treatment
of other belief systems? Doing so would require leadership, another core value.
Let’s take a look at administration’s
commitment to their institution’s core values when it’s time to demonstrate.
These guys are paid an awful lot of money, so I’m sure they’ll prove their
worth:
Dean of Academic Affairs Donald Painter said that he had reviewed the
materials presented in Russum’s Humanities 2020 course and “believe[d] them to
be appropriate.” Painter apologized that the student and her family found the
course materials to be “distasteful,” but said the materials would not be
modified.
Gee whiz, this is a 2000-level, 2nd
year course, and all you need to do to get an “A” is write the appropriate
number of sentences, and agree with the professor? And the Deanling is
perfectly fine with this. Yes, that’s what higher education looks like today
for many courses. I ask quite a bit more than that in my second year courses,
for what it’s worth, but I accept that things are different on the
indoctrination side of campus.
The Deanling finds nothing wrong with the
course, despite serious issues with diversity there for all to see. But what
about persecution of a Christian? Maybe we’ll see some leadership in that
regard? Let’s see:
“Polk State College officials said
the school's legal counsel is reviewing the issue but declined to comment…”
This is an interesting counterpoint to
previous professor’s act of unfairness. Students can be insulting and cheat,
and admin will immediately swoop to the rescue if it feels the cheaters are
being treated unfairly, while another student with Christian beliefs can’t be
spared unfair treatment without administration first consulting with lawyers.
Hmm.
The lawyers did respond, in detail, to
the allegations. It’s a pretty thorough response, roughly summarized as “shut up”. The lawyers (and administration)
agree with me that the professor totally has the right to grade however he
wishes, and that absolutely includes practices that are distinctly unfair. The
legal precedent for this is very strong…odd that it didn’t seem to apply for
the previous professor, however.
I’ve often been told that higher
education has been taken over by people with an agenda, an agenda that has
nothing to do with education. I don’t know if I’m ready to agree with “taken
over”, but it’s tough to look at what’s happening and not concede that, yeah,
there’s plenty of indoctrination going on here, and the above shows that, when
it comes to doing anything that might interfere with indoctrination, there’s a
distinct double standard going on.
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