ot nothing to see here, keep moving.

IDAwHOa · Post by **IDAwHOa** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 11:01 pm

Wald, my boy, those are what I call HOOP CLASSES. Jump through the hoop Mr. Student. Do just what I say and think what I think and then you MIGHT pass my class and get your revered diploma.

Hmmmm, wonder why I don't have a degree?

I don't.

Oh, and when you tell someone to not do something or to not look at something, guess what happens? :roll:

chas · Post by **chas** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 9:33 am

Walden, that's true of classes where things are subjective, and is why I'm a science geek. If I can, say, solve Gauss's equations in a variety of geometries, I can. Half of the profs I ever had didn't care how I did it, 49% loved it if I found an interesting way of solving it, and there was one bad egg who didn't like it if I didn't do things exactly the way he'd taught. OTOH, if I thought an English (history, philosophy, etc.) teacher was full of crap the way she interpreted a book/essay/event, and I offered different views of things, I was universally marked down. (All you have to do is read one of the philosophical or political threads on C&F to see that there are many valid interpretations of just about anything.) The very people whose job it is to expand your mind and to teach you to think for yourself really only wanted to make automata who would regurgitate what they had fed us.

I found life much less stressful when I decided that I was in school to learn what I wanted to learn, and crappy grades from crappy teachers/profs ceased to bother me.

TelegramSam · Post by **TelegramSam** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:25 am

I think it's been pretty well established time and time again that outside of mathematics and to some degree the hard sciences, the world of academia is nothing but a joke.

Hell, the philosophy prof I had last year even admitted that it was all BS on the first day and told us that the sooner we realized it the better off we'd be.

Bloomfield · Post by **Bloomfield** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:31 am

chas wrote:OTOH, if I thought an English (history, philosophy, etc.) teacher was full of crap the way she interpreted a book/essay/event, and I offered different views of things, I was universally marked down.

Not my experience.

t-sam wrote:I think it's been pretty well established time and time again that outside of mathematics and to some degree the hard sciences, the world of academia is nothing but a joke.

That's just rubbish, Sam. IMHO, of course.

antstastegood · Post by **antstastegood** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:48 am

I agree with Sam here. I have my social science final in about two hours, and the class has been nothing but 10 weeks of completely odd philosophy, all BS in my opinion. However, the instructors wouldn't admit that. They did admit in class that an unstated goal of the course was to produce a crisis in our minds and change the way we think. And the material presented was very one-sided.

It is a common perception among students, (here at least), that our social science and humanities programs are nothing but forums for indoctrination into postmodernism, deconstructionism, moral and scientific relativism, and a nice side dish of collectivist and so-called multiculturalist politics. Disclaimer: The liberal students see the bias also, not just us conservatives. The only difference is that they agree with most of it.

OutOfBreath · Post by **OutOfBreath** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:53 am

Bloomfield wrote:
t-sam wrote:I think it's been pretty well established time and time again that outside of mathematics and to some degree the hard sciences, the world of academia is nothing but a joke.
That's just rubbish, Sam. IMHO, of course.

Well, now we know what bloomfield does for a living...

Seriously, a couple of decades ago I enrolled in philosophy 101. The prof was this ancient dude who probably learned at Plato's feet -- he was old enough and he certainly idolized Plato.

Anyway, the first six classes were identical. I mean, absolutely identical. He called roll exactly the same way, made exactly the same comments about peoples names, wrote exactly the same thing on the board, gave exactly the same assignment, and gave word-for-word the same lecture.

I will say this much for him, he did grade fairly. It was clear that he idolized Plato and a paper on Plato was our first assignment. I was quite critical of Plato and there were several places in my paper where the old coot marked things like "I disagree - but you support your argument well" and so on. I got an A on the paper.

The A didn't stop me from dropping the course. As an adult student with a family and working all day and going to school at night I just couldn't waste that much of my life or money in a class where it was pretty clear that I was going to learn nothing except, maybe, patience (and I had plenty of coworkers and a child to teach me that).

I told the counselor this when I was dropping the course and the counselor actually apologized and said they'd been trying to get rid of that professor for ten years but he had tenure and there was nothing they could do. The counselor said "off the record" that the old f*rt had reduced his philo 101 class to three lectures for the entire semester. If I'd hung in there a few more weeks I could have heard the second lecture.

If that's not making a joke of "education" I don't know what is...

Bloomfield · Post by **Bloomfield** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 11:10 am

OutOfBreath wrote:
Bloomfield wrote:
t-sam wrote:I think it's been pretty well established time and time again that outside of mathematics and to some degree the hard sciences, the world of academia is nothing but a joke.
That's just rubbish, Sam. IMHO, of course.
Well, now we know what bloomfield does for a living...

First of all, I don't.

If that's not making a joke of "education" I don't know what is...

If you are confusing US American under-graduate education with the world of academia, fine.

elendil · Post by **elendil** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 11:34 am

Geez, I can't believe all the bad attitudes here! Don't you people understand that your professors have your best interests at heart and you should cooperate with the process for your own good?

True story, my wife had my father for Psych 101, but that was something like 35 years ago, so almost anything can be overcome, I guess.

TelegramSam · Post by **TelegramSam** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 12:26 pm

elendil wrote:Don't you people understand that your professors have your best interests at heart and you should cooperate with the process for your own good?

TelegramSam · Post by **TelegramSam** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 12:29 pm

And Bloom, you can kindly shove it. I see no compelling evidence to the contrary, and unless you can give me some, don't even bother trying to convice me otherwise. Note that I did exclude mathematics and the hard sciences, so don't talk about cures for cancer, &c.

elendil · Post by **elendil** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 12:42 pm

Sam gestured:

but I couldn't quote it!

I guess being a professional smart ass has its hazards. Maybe we need a tongue-in-cheek emoticon.

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 12:44 pm

Walden wrote:The whole mainstream educational system (not just American, but what I've seen overseas, as well) is wacky. Not geared so much to seeing that a student learns something, but that the student is in sync with the instructor's mindset well enough to pass quizzes and examinations, with short-term cramming that will be forgot in time for next semester's cramming.

Is that an over-generalization? Yes, but I feel there is some truth in it.

There is not merely some truth in it. It is almost an absolute.

Bloomfield · Post by **Bloomfield** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 12:50 pm

TelegramSam wrote:And Bloom, you can kindly shove it. I see no compelling evidence to the contrary, and unless you can give me some, don't even bother trying to convice me otherwise. ...

Have you noticed that I am not even bothering to convince you otherwise?

(And your blanket codemnation is still rubbish, sorry.)

TelegramSam · Post by **TelegramSam** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 1:15 pm

Well, bloo, I think you're rubbish. So there.

Post by **Nanohedron** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 1:20 pm

TelegramSam wrote:Well, bloo, I think you're rubbish. So there.

Jeez, can't you do your TSam crabby thing without personal attacks?