Holy crap
So, during a session on service learning in writing classes, I encountered something that pretty much floored me. A Ph.D. in the department told my incoming group of people how he had designed a class that revolved around human sexuality. This to my mind is uncontroversial. What floored me was when I saw the work that the students had done. One group had prepared a website for a non-profit that had big "vote for Obama" graphics on the front page. One of the required activities for the class was to attend an AIDS walk. I mean, it seemed to me that he was pushing them into specifically liberal activism. I was horrified. I mean, I'm an apeshit liberal if I ever met one, but I don't use my fucking classroom like that, to push my pet projects. I agreed with absolutely everything that this guy was saying about this state's sex education system, and I routinely donate to the groups he was discussing, but what if a student has a religious objection?
It bugged me that I had to come across as the token conservative for the day, but the other hires nodded their heads when I asked if this was, well, legal. And when I asked if he would allow a student to work on a project for an abstinence-only outfit, he said he probably wouldn't.
This is the deal. In the classroom, you must remember that there is an unequal balance of power and it tips in the instructor's favor. It's a perversion of the profession to use that to push your own pet political causes, isn't it? Please respond.
HJ
Seed Newsvine
9 comments:
Yes.
I agree with you. If the Professor is zealously forwarding a personal agenda, it could have a chilling effect on some of the less liberal students.
This kind of behavior should be checked whenever encountered. Sometimes it can lead to a strangely conflicted feeling when you agree with the person, but not the method.
Another 'yes' from me.
There is a distinction to be made here between penalising students for having a different political view, and penalising students for failing to understand a different political view.
If a lecturer sets an essay on liberalism in the 21st Century and a student writes a poorly reasoned essay in which they fail to grasp the subject (at the far end of the spectrum "Liberals are all Communist atheists who are trying to take away our rights") then that's fair grounds to fail that essay.
If the lecturer requires students to take part in a gay pride march in order to pass, that's an abuse of power.
I agree with you. I always felt that the point of a university is to get the students to think for themselves, which will typically get them to think that way anyway.
For example, when I started university, I was a full on catholic, as well as full on believer in aliens being behind UFO's. 4 years later, I'm an atheist and think UFO believes are full of it. The reason? I took 4 semesters of physics as part of my engineering degree, and there was no way that either idea was intellectually tenable. I didn't need to be indoctrinated by a liberal professor, because I learned how to think for myself in college, and applied what I learned to come to my current viewpoint in life.
Absolutely.
Agreed. That lesson sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Yep. You're absolutely right. And I'll second Mobyseven's comments.
This sort of thing only plays into Bill O'Reilly'S narrative.
Of course it is. IMO, it's wrong at any level of education to foist doctrinaire thinking upon a student with no options for contrary opinion.
The ideal process should encourage individual development of critical thinking and not mere conformity, irrespective of ideology.
'Well-meaning' don't mean shit in this context.
My friend was a young UCLA professor during the Vietnam protest era. This was when campus-wide protests and shutdowns were everywhere, and a student tried to get him to agree to a class session to discuss the war and the struggle against The Establishment.
He largely agreed with their political views, but he had to say, no, this is a music theory class. You cannot usurp class time, even from fellow students who might agree with you, to deny them even an hour of the music education they're trying so hard to get. Take it outside.
This sort of outrage can come from many directions, and must be fought.
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