Grading and politics

[dfrecore]

As an aside, I have discovered that am becoming annoyed when people use the phrase cancel culture. It isn't like shutting down things we don't like or that are unpopular is new or a change in culture. That been around forever and extends well beyond politics. These days it feels like people are using that buzzword whenever other people ignore their point of view or stop them from doing something they want. So it is starting to feel like whining.

It's amazing to me how the Left in this country has changed over the last few years.

Only someone who feels like losing your job for something you said 20 years ago thinks this is whining.  Everyone else realizes it's a real problem in our culture these days.

[eriehiker]

I think that teachers AND students need to be a lot more pragmatic right now.

People are going to have their positions on things. However, courses like government/civics teach a system in which people support their ideas and then work within that system to achieve goals.

One of the problems with populist Republicans - not conservative, btw - is that there is a tendency to not want to work within the system. I think that it is beyond the bounds of a government class to discuss storming buildings and calling for execution of political opponents. I teach a high school civics class and almost everybody is on board with this. However, I do have one student who simply opposes everything just because he has no interest in working within the system. I work well with him and allow him to state his position, but there is a point at which I have to cut him off because he drives everybody in the room nuts and he would talk for the full hour if allowed to do that.

We have a very pragmatic system with near-constant checks and balances. That said, people need to work within the system.

[wow]

I was a straight A student in high school. My freshman year of college, I got a D on my first English paper. I was shocked. I discussed the paper with the professor but still didn't think the grade was justified. However, I took his feedback as guidelines for what to change in the future.

I recently ran across that paper while sorting through old things. I read it. It was terrible. If I had graded it, I would have given myself an F, not just a D.
In retrospect, this happened because I wasn't really taught how to write well in high school. I was taught to write to a specific formula similar to the five paragraph essay. in high school, all I really had to do was stick to the format to get a good grade. In college, I had to make sure I had solid argumentation and used reliable sources to back up my argument. My paper had to be logical and coherent.

When I hear kids complaining that they got a bad grade because the professor has it out for them or didn't agree with the premise of their paper, my general impetus is to want to know what the paper actually said and what the actual feedback was that their professor gave them. Kids these days are raised to think that any disagreement with them or criticism of their abilities is an attack on their personal beliefs. Conservative or liberal or neither, maybe they just need to listen to their professors and try learning instead of digging their feet in.

[eriehiker]

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis stated the following in Whitney vs. California:

“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

The traditional view of this quote has been to simply allow everyone to say what they want to say. Everything goes. However, there is an implied counterpunch in this quote. It means that if someone says something ridiculous or offensive, then it is the responsibility of the vast majority of reasonable people to use free speech in great quantity and power against the ridiculous/offensive speech.

This is what we saw with the preacher Fred Phelps who protested at soldier funerals. The best answer and solution was massive counter protest. Phelps ultimately recanted his positions, partly as a result of persistent and personal counter-protest against his positions. I think that it was perfectly fine to overwhelm Phelps with free speech and use personal and social avenues to back him against the wall and make him change his mind. Don't make incendiary comments and take political positions against the system if you are not prepared to watch players in our very pragmatic and very successful democratic system challenge you back.

[dfrecore]

I was a straight A student in high school. My freshman year of college, I got a D on my first English paper. I was shocked. I discussed the paper with the professor but still didn't think the grade was justified. However, I took his feedback as guidelines for what to change in the future.

I recently ran across that paper while sorting through old things. I read it. It was terrible. If I had graded it, I would have given myself an F, not just a D.
In retrospect, this happened because I wasn't really taught how to write well in high school. I was taught to write to a specific formula similar to the five paragraph essay. in high school, all I really had to do was stick to the format to get a good grade. In college, I had to make sure I had solid argumentation and used reliable sources to back up my argument. My paper had to be logical and coherent.

When I hear kids complaining that they got a bad grade because the professor has it out for them or didn't agree with the premise of their paper, my general impetus is to want to know what the paper actually said and what the actual feedback was that their professor gave them. Kids these days are raised to think that any disagreement with them or criticism of their abilities is an attack on their personal beliefs. Conservative or liberal or neither, maybe they just need to listen to their professors and try learning instead of digging their feet in.

First, the professor made it VERY clear that the problem was his view of things rather than his writing style.  Second, he's a straight-A college student who had all A's prior to that course, and after.  He's graduating with a 4.0, even as one semester he had cancer treatments.  He's now trying to figure out which PT school to go to as every one he applied to gave him a yes.

He was not some cocky young blowhard - he was an earnest, hard-working student with big goals and aspirations.  This teacher just hated his point of view, and no matter what he said, he wasn't going to be able to pass the course because she had it out for him.

I do love everyone's assumptions though.

[ROYISAGIRL]

I was a straight A student in high school. My freshman year of college, I got a D on my first English paper. I was shocked. I discussed the paper with the professor but still didn't think the grade was justified. However, I took his feedback as guidelines for what to change in the future.

I recently ran across that paper while sorting through old things. I read it. It was terrible. If I had graded it, I would have given myself an F, not just a D.
In retrospect, this happened because I wasn't really taught how to write well in high school. I was taught to write to a specific formula similar to the five paragraph essay. in high school, all I really had to do was stick to the format to get a good grade. In college, I had to make sure I had solid argumentation and used reliable sources to back up my argument. My paper had to be logical and coherent.

When I hear kids complaining that they got a bad grade because the professor has it out for them or didn't agree with the premise of their paper, my general impetus is to want to know what the paper actually said and what the actual feedback was that their professor gave them. Kids these days are raised to think that any disagreement with them or criticism of their abilities is an attack on their personal beliefs. Conservative or liberal or neither, maybe they just need to listen to their professors and try learning instead of digging their feet in.

First, the professor made it VERY clear that the problem was his view of things rather than his writing style.  Second, he's a straight-A college student who had all A's prior to that course, and after.  He's graduating with a 4.0, even as one semester he had cancer treatments.  He's now trying to figure out which PT school to go to as every one he applied to gave him a yes.

He was not some cocky young blowhard - he was an earnest, hard-working student with big goals and aspirations.  This teacher just hated his point of view, and no matter what he said, he wasn't going to be able to pass the course because she had it out for him.

I do love everyone's assumptions though.

Situations like this kind of makes me curious on the paper itself. Like what was so bad about what he wrote that justified( not saying it was appropriate) his differing opinion to getting an F.

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[eriehiker]

Also, I think that people who are so offended about a failing grade on an assignment or a failing grade in a class are ridiculous. Does anyone care if a person fails a class or gets an F on a paper? In the grand list of bad things that can happen to a person, a failing grade in a class is very small. We have a long history of people who go to jail, get beaten and die for their political positions. Bad grades suck, but I could envision situations in which an F would ultimately get a person to just stop for one moment before saying something and think about it. A liberal who calls in to any of a thousand talk radio shows will be cut off in one second for saying something nice about Obamacare. A liberal who prays for equal gender roles at any of thousands of churches in America will get the cold shoulder from the congregation. Okay, so a professor who has spent an entire life getting paid next to nothing and finally lands a very rare job as a college professor gives a kid an F for being a pain in the ass in class. So what? Go get a job as a radio talk show host.

---

One more thing. The idea that there is some monolithic educational establishment is ridiculous. I live very close to Hillsdale College in Michigan. Liberal students are likely just not to attend there because the college is very clearly a conservative college. My guess is that Democratic students there face the same challenges as Republicans at liberal colleges. Ultimately, the free market will decide if the education at these institutions is valuable. Harvard is a private institution. If someone gets an F there for a politically-laced paper and leaves, there is going to be anyone of a thousand kids who want that spot. The product that Harvard provides is valuable in the marketplace and so it continues to be a force in our democracy. Don't like the F? Start more colleges like Hillsdale and see if the market wants that.

[StoicJ]

The New Left for ya : )

There really isn't any sort of common ground.

[eriehiker]

The New Left for ya : )  

There really isn't any sort of common ground.

Hey, you can only listen to Rush Limbaugh for so long before you get the idea that maybe Republicans aren't in the mood to compromise.  Hehe.

The best way to be is to be honest about your positions, fight for them and then be prepared to make a deal.  The ability to make the deal is what made Reagan great.  Maximize leverage and then cut the deal.

Note: The ten senators who met with Biden had this kind of situation. They had a lot of leverage in negotiations with Biden. Instead of $1.9 trillion, maybe they could have proposed a $1.5 trillion deal and legitimately put some limits on spending. I think Biden would have taken that. Instead, they proposed a ridiculous lowball $600 billion package. That was never going to fly. They either couldn't make that deal or didn't want to make that deal.

[Merlin]

Boy this thread has left the original topic.

Yeah, I was thinking I might need to split all the discussions about grades and politics into another thread over in the off-topic section.