Grading and politics

[dfrecore]

Hmmmm...due to cancel culture and shutting down free speech on college campuses across the country, safe spaces at many schools, etc., I think you are completely wrong.  They've done surveys, and college students who are more to the right do not feel like they can express their views.

Well, I think it probably has more to do with how and where people express their views. There are appropriate venues and times for different kinds of discussions. I know that this can sometimes be a problem at college since kids don't always understand that or understand boundaries.

Of course, students should also consider whether the college they are attending is the right fit for them. Every school has its own culture and tends to attract particular types of students. If a student doesn't feel comfortable at school or feels like they cannot express their views because those views are too different than other students and faculty, then maybe they are at the wrong school. That said, I also believe that schools should be a safe space for everyone and they should also go out of their way to accommodate (or at least tolerate) different opinions. But my desires don't really factor into how things really work.

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.

I appreciate your wife's views, but I don't think she's the norm.  I think there are a LOT of professors who are so biased that you can't even have discussions about things they don't agree with.

I think there is a difference between a teacher refusing to have a discussion and how they grade a paper that is based on a written rubric. Bias in the former I can understand, but bias in the latter seems unacceptable.

There are plenty of people that I know I wouldn't enjoy a conversation with, so I don't put myself in a position to have one. Professors don't always have that luxury. They are constantly being put in positions where have to engage with students and being inundated with questions and opinions. I can only imagine how draining that has to be. Particularly when people want to bring up politics when you're not in a class focusing on politics. Of course, I also feel like people are over-politicizing everything these days and turning everything into a partisan issue. If I were a professor, I think I'd probably shut down those kinds of conversations as well, or at least table them for a more appropriate time and venue.

Of course, I'm sure that biases also run both ways. I expect that there are also students that are so biased that they are unwilling to consider other opinions or ways of looking at the world, even from professors. This goes back to probably being at the wrong school to begin with.

For one particular student I know, he was at our local CC, so it's not like he has thousands of other choices.  He is literally one of the NICEST, sweetest kids I've met, and it was an American Government class.  And he was pro-constitution...and got an F on a paper for saying why the constitution was a great document.  He was a straight-A student in high school, and a straight-A student in 3 semesters in college, so it's not like he wrote a bad paper, and he knew it.  He just dropped the class and moved on to a non-crazy teacher.

Even my daughter, who would not ever publicly challenge a teacher in any respect (she's just not a confrontational kid) said "oh great, another crazy teacher" and her boyfriend said "just spout a bunch of nonsense and get a good grade." And several friends chimed in with "yep, just tell them what they want to hear, make crap up, say you've been raped, or are trans or something, and you'll be fine." These are 18/19yo's from different schools, none are particularly political or adamantly right-wing, and yet they've all learned how to play the game by their first semester in college!  Yep, these are all kids who graduated in 2020, and have a single semester under their belt and just make crap up to get a good grade.  Every single one of them (and there were like 6 of them talking).