Grading Hell: Death to the Teachers!!!

[Agathon]

Ever wondered why you hated high school? Well the reason is probably that your teachers were incompetent fools. I know this is very likely, because I have spent the day grading the work of folk who hope to one day become child molesters of the mind.

Yes, I am grading for a philosophy course that caters to future teacher trainees; and I've decided that, to save the children, all of them should be rounded up and shot before they can do any real damage. I'm about 35 papers in to a 70 paper load and I'm already crying tears of rage.

In my experience as a university teacher (nearly eight years now) I've come to several conclusions - the computer science students and engineers are good at logic, but lousy at ethics and metaphysics; the humanities and social science students are slightly better at ethics, aesthetics and politics, but not as good in other areas; and the teacher trainees have no brains to speak of.

Why is this? Are the salaries lousy? What explains the fact that teacher trainees consistently produce the worst, ill-argued guff in the university system. I've had a couple of Leisure Studies majors who were much better.

What you get from teacher trainees is usually 5-6 pages of quoted material referenced with the awful Harvard system - e.g. (Tosser: 1999a) - and interspersed with comments like "I feel that this is mean", or "some people think this is wrong". Nothing comes close to a cogent argument and there are often far too many simple spelling and grammatical errors.

Anyway, my verdict is: mindless ****s the lot of them.

Anyone here ever been a TA, grader or lecturer? Whom do you hate with a passion.

[Az]

Can I attest to fellow undergrads from other departments?

[Agathon]

Oh yes....

[Az]

( Oh and please continue. Hordes of undergrads have begun tracing your location

[monkspider]

Stick it to 'em Aggy!

[Fake Boris]

When it comes to the debates organized by the teachers, most students are plain idiotic.

[Az]

How about this?

We take Organic Chemistry 2 for Chemists together with the guys from Materials engineering. The Professor is extremely naughty, so much so, that he sometimes wonders out loud, why would someone attempt to answer a question, if he doesn't know how. I, too, was called to the board to show the mechanism of a particular reaction, and I, too, made some mistakes. I didn't think that he insulted me by saying I was wrong.

Some people, namely some of the Materials engineering guys wrote an anonymous letter to the professor with a CC to the vice-dean, about how, apparently, the professor verbally abuses the students. I think that he's a kickass lecturer, plus, I didn't think he did anything that terrible, but noooo, they had to whine. So our union leader sends a letter in support of the professor, and the leader of the Materials people calls us suck-ups. He didn't even take the course that simester, he doesn't know what the **** he's talking about, and just because of some whiny *****es got their panties in a bunch, we have to shut up? we like that professor, he explained the material very well.

[the_ceebs]

The worst ones I've had to deal with are Business Studies graduates.

Not a single one I would trust to do more than make the coffee. If Business is in their hands the economy of the world is stuffed.

[DinoDoc]

Canadian University professors first!

[Boris Godunov]

Re: Grading Hell: Death to the Teachers!!!

Originally posted by Agathon
Why is this? Are the salaries lousy?

Maaaaybe.

It's also because teaching, by and large, is exhausting, thankless work that exposes you to a lot of potential violence and problems. You also have to deal with educational bureaucracies that are positively Byzantine and administrators who are REALLY stupid.

My roommate Caroline is a teacher, she can fill you in on the horrors.

[Asher]

Does anyone else find it amusing that somebody teaching Philosophy is *****ing about people being stupid?

The problem with formal philosophy is insane syntatic overhead. Arguments needn't be structured so damn formally, and they also shouldn't be forced to be on such inane things such as Philosophy.

The only thing truly useful that is "taught" by philosophy is logic. And as Agathon already pointed out, the people who actually need this tend to be actually good at it...it comes naturally to them.

[Fake Boris]

For Agathon:

We had a seminary on Derrida. We started discussing about Derrida's claim that culture and science is rendered possible by 'scripture' (I hope I've got the right word here, since as you know I study in French).

Then people started saying how that is true, and how oral cultures had an hard time progressing, and bla bla.

I was getting quite , until the teacher had to explain that 'scripture' applies to any form of communication that works with language, and that oral speech also followed its rules.

Idiots. How is it that they are even allowed to study philosophy?

Once, we had this lecture on Plato, and someone raised his hand: "Sir, are you telling us what Plato said, or your personal interpretation of it?"

idiot.

The worst part is with Kant's ethics. People just don't understand him, so they start attacking with arguments he has clearly countered in his book.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Asher
Does anyone else find it amusing that somebody teaching Philosophy is *****ing about people being stupid?

The problem with formal philosophy is insane syntatic overhead. Arguments needn't be structured so damn formally, and they also shouldn't be forced to be on such inane things such as Philosophy.

The only thing truly useful that is "taught" by philosophy is logic. And as Agathon already pointed out, the people who actually need this tend to be actually good at it...it comes naturally to them.

Actually, most scientists suck at philosophy, because they won't hear anything about non-empirical facts.

There is some advanced logic in philosophy, and it doesn't come naturally. You have to learn it, just like you would study differential calculus.

[Agathon]

Arguments must be structured sufficiently to eliminate confusion and ambiguity.

Science students seem to have problems with simple ethical concepts because science doesn't deal with value. Students that come from backgrounds like poli sci and English, where values are an important topic of discussion are simply better at doing it because they are used to it.

And Asher is prime evidence of what is wrong with a lot of them. They believe that only what is useful has value. But if it does then the value it has must depend on something which is intrinsically, as opposed to instrumentally, valuable. In fact the really important things are those with intrinsic value since that is what we study the others for the sake of.

Knowledge is in some respects intrinsically valuable, since people are naturally curious. Universities are in part set up to promote activities in the service of this desire. So complaining that people study things with no practical use misses the point. After all I fail to see how philosophy is any less useful than studying the properties of distant stars, which may not ever yield any results other than satisfying our curiosity about the origins of the universe.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
For Agathon:

We had a seminary on Derrida. We started discussing about Derrida's claim that culture and science is rendered possible by 'scripture' (I hope I've got the right word here, since as you know I study in French).

I've never read Derrida and I don't plan to.

Once, we had this lecture on Plato, and someone raised his hand: "Sir, are you telling us what Plato said, or your personal interpretation of it?"

idiot.

The worst part is with Kant's ethics. People just don't understand him, so they start attacking with arguments he has clearly countered in his book. [/QUOTE]

as if Plato was around to ask.