# Am I Evil for playing this trick on my students?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [August 26, 2003, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798 "2003-08-26T18:12:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/21 "2003-08-26T21:24:19Z")
My favorite introduction to a class moment like this was in my High School Chemistry class.
The teacher came into the room and without saying a word pulled out a bunsen burner over which he heated a beaker with filled with a clear liquid. He poured in a measured quantity of a brown power and mixed it with a glass stirring rod.
The whole class was intently watching it for an interesting reaction. After a few moments he carefully took the beaker and took a sip from it.
As the class sat there with perplexed looks on their faces, he reached below the lab table and pulled out a container of instant coffee.
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### Author:  [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/22 "2003-08-26T21:28:34Z")
If he teaches at UCF, it’s distinctly possible, but for the fact that I graduated 7 years ago 😉
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### Author:  [@tanookie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanookie)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/23 "2003-08-26T22:09:54Z")
Sleepytimebaby, I’ve taken psych and I’ve taken grant writing. Neither is harder than the other only different.
I’ve also found that I learned more and respected my professors more when I felt they were people as well as professors. It is possible to have a fairly informal classroom environment and still teach effectively.
I am also more likely to go to a professor during their office hours for questions I may have or extra help if they have less formal classroom environments. Some of my most memorable classes and most challenging had professors I called by their first names and hosted class on the greens.
Enjoyment and education are not mutually exclusive.
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### Author:  [@j.c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j.c)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/24 "2003-08-26T22:50:04Z")
I’m with sleepytimebaby - it’s seems unlikely that this would come across ass anything but a childish game to me.
Phlosphr - you cleared this with the ethics committee, right? Lawyers take all the fun out of life…
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/25 "2003-08-26T22:56:14Z")
What’s unethical about this?
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### Author:  [@Monstre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monstre)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/26 "2003-08-26T23:02:24Z")
Heh - good gag. I like it.
Wouldn’t work in the classes I teach, though. There would be too many students retaking the course that recognize me. 😛
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/27 "2003-08-26T23:12:04Z")
If I were your student, I wouldn’t be impressed, either; I expect(ed) professors to be at least as serious about my classes as I was. It wouldn’t make me mad, or anything, it just wouldn’t score any points with me. \
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### Author:  [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/28 "2003-08-26T23:26:46Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Sometimes it turns into a personality study and I write a report on my findings other times I just ride the wave of playing a good trick.
Write a report for whom, to what purpose? Are you complying with your school’s requirements for ethical research on human subjects?
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### Author:  [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/29 "2003-08-26T23:34:06Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Phlosphr \*
> \*\* I’m psyched for this semester because I do not have to teach 101. I got experimental and abnormal on M,W,F and interviewing and counseling on T,T. (3 hour lecture) \*\*
You’re “psyched” about teaching these? Excellent word choice!!
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### Author:  [@New\_Improved\_Scott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Improved_Scott)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2003, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/30 "2003-08-26T23:36:09Z")
Here I though you were gonna do something really evil to your students. That’s fine.
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/31 "2003-08-27T00:34:23Z")
Oh man, now you’re _tempting_ me. (I’m a 27-year-old grad student who looks 18. Classes start tomorrow. All of a sudden I have lots of Evil Ideas 🙂 )
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### Author:  [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/32 "2003-08-27T01:37:57Z")
I’ve heard of professors who did that. Me, I wasn’t too long out of college when I started teaching intro psych, so I could have pretended to be a student. I just didn’t, because class was only 50 minutes long and each lecture was timed to take up all of class time, with little wiggle room.
My social psych professor pulled a stunt like the one **troub** described. He had his brother-in-law rush in, wearing a mask, and rob him, using threatening language. He did it on a Monday, at 8:30 in the morning, in a classroom just down the hall from the department head’s office. Woke us up real good. 🙂
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### Author:  [@fushj00mang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fushj00mang)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/33 "2003-08-27T01:53:20Z")
Phlosphr,
Dude, that brought back memories. I had a professor (history, not pysc) who did the same thing. Dr. Rissenhaur was the coolest.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/34 "2003-08-27T02:11:17Z")
**AudreyK** , how long ago was this? These days, if anyone tried that, there’d be three or four students dialing 911 on their cellphones in the first 15 seconds…
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### Author:  [@ForumBot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForumBot)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/35 "2003-08-27T02:11:17Z")
Feh, I usually dislike those “look at me, so wacky!” antics professors try to play on students each day. The whole idea of one professor being the “cool one” never really sat well with me.
But that’s just me. Everyone else in the world seems to love it.
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### Author:  [@jesleigh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jesleigh)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/36 "2003-08-27T02:23:38Z")
Our A&P professor does that…he sits in the back and joins in conversations. He says they first day of class he can really catch up on the college gossip ;).
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/37 "2003-08-27T02:28:45Z")
I think the key thing here is that **Phlosphr** isn’t just playing a prank on his students - he’s using it as a little example of the types of issues that come up in the opening module of his course, the Perception module. It’s a little mini-demo of the types of issues that the students are to deal with in the course. That makes good sense to me - almost anything that can get first years to come out of their shells at the beginning of the year and talk about the topic is a good thing.
If he were just doing it for shock value in a class that it had no relation to as a teaching tool, I’d be less sanguine.
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### Author:  [@Cosmopolitan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cosmopolitan)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/38 "2003-08-27T02:52:20Z")
Count me as being…unimpressed. I mean, it’s not _evil_, or even unethical by any stretch of the imagination. I would probably, however, be mildly irritated by the ruse for a few reasons.
Let’s say I was a first semester freshman student of yours:
Depending upon what I said (either muttering to myself or to classmates), I might have a concern that you’d ‘have it in for me’. I think that that as the professor keeps (or should keep) his opinions of his students private, the students should have the same privilege.
Then there’s the “professorial amusement” factor. If you were to do another, ‘straight’ experiment, I, as a student, might not get ticked. What would annoy me is the idea that you weren’t just conducting an experiment; you were toying with my classmates & I in part because you found it funny.
Then again, I’m someone who’s had my time wasted by one professor who really _didn’t_ show up several times during the course of the semester (& wasted our time during many of the classes during which he was present) as well as at least one other who was habitually ten minutes late.
IOW, I may be overrreacting. Although I allow that as a possibility, my opinion stands.
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### Author:  [@Cosmopolitan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cosmopolitan)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/39 "2003-08-27T02:55:50Z")
Crap. I meant to add that I’d probably be less irritated by the prank & more able to see the underlying point if I had more experience as a college student (if I were a first semester sophomore, maybe).
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### Author:  [@Beryl\_Mooncalf\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beryl_Mooncalf_1)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2003, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-evil-for-playing-this-trick-on-my-students/197798/40 "2003-08-27T03:50:57Z")
I remember the first meeting of one of my class, in fact, that meeting is still vivid in my mind. The professor introduced himself, and offered a brief synopsis of the semester’s work, as well as his grading policy. He picked up a stack of papers, and proceeded to a sit in with the class. There he explained that he would go through the class roster, and when your name was called, you were to stand, introduce yourself, and explain what it was you expected to get from his class. I remember sitting there with sweat dripping, knees knocking, completely oblivious to what anyone else said, waiting the humiliation that was coming my way.
Oh, by the way, that class was public speaking. What an introduction.
Professor Phlosphr, I can’t imagine anyone complaining about your introduction, if they do, suggest they take speech next semester .
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