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There's a lot to roll your eyes at in Joe Malone's op-ed to the Patriot Ledger , beginning with the single-sourced tales of harassment for which there's nothing in the way of verification. However, this nugget takes the cake for absurdity:
In yet another case, a young woman complained about her "extremely liberal" and "intolerant" professor. She said, "I finally gave up trying to express my opinion and began taking notes of what the professor said in class. It was once I began to regurgitate his exact thoughts that I started to make better grades, though the style and proficiency of my writing remained the same."
Allow me to decode that for you. After having her "opinions" not be "tolerated" in class (I'm guessing because they weren't based on the theories and evidence that were relevant to the particular discipline and course), the young woman started taking notes and demonstrating that she understood what was being presented in class and, voilà!, she started making better grades. Funny how actually doing what is expected of you in a college course will yield better results.
Here's a news flash to Mr. Malone and students who claim that their opinions aren't being respected. You certainly have a right to your opinion. And expressing your opinion in class is fantastic, if you express it while engaging the relevant materials in a class and available evidence.
Perhaps an example will serve to illustrate this point. Let's say I teach a course on social inequality (which probably already marks me as dangerously liberal and intolerant in the feverish minds of some, but whatever). In it I discuss four common theories for the existence and persistence of poverty, ranging from theories based on individual choices to Moynihan's "culture of poverty" argument to theories of structural inequality. I discuss the evidence for all four theories and give my opinion (based on the existing empirical evidence) on the two theories that I (and most other scholars) find most convincing and useful for further research.
A few weeks later, I give an exam in which I ask the question, "Summarize the four common theories concerning the existence and persistence of poverty and explain how the evidence supports each theory." A very simple, straightforward question. If I received a paper from a student who wrote three pages about how poverty exists because poor people are lazy and don't pick themselves up by their bootstraps, that person would not receive a very good mark for that question. Likewise, a student who claimed poverty exists because of an elaborate conspiracy by the government to maintain a large section of the population in wage-slavery would also receive a poor mark. It's not that I would be "intolerant" of the students' opinions. Rather, it's that the students didn't answer the question. They in no way demonstrate that they understood the explanations that mainstream scholars have provided based on years of empirical evidence. They have not demonstrated that they have learned anything, which is the point of receiving an education, right? However, if that first student had shown that they understood all the theories, but then expressed the opinion - in a well thought out response - that they found the theory of poverty based on individual choices to be the most compelling explanation, they'd receive a good mark for that question, despite any disagreement I might have with their interpretation. Such an answer would show engagement with the material and actual thought being put into the answer - it would show the student had not only learned something, but had also integrated it with previously held beliefs.
At any rate, if Mr. Malone wants to champion the cause of the poor oppressed students who are forced to listen to their professors, take notes, and demonstrate that they understand the lectures and other course materials, he can have at. The rest of us will be focusing our attention on issues that really matter.
Tags:
alleged bias |
indoctrination |
students |
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