If the class is required to graduate, I don’t have to downplay anything at all.
Or she would have attempted to have the school rectify the situation without having to resort to legal action.
Your questions in your next posting are completely irrelevant to the discussion.
That’s not the issue, though. The issue is whether the professor was requiring students to do something that violated that student’s rights.
On thinking it over, it sounds to me as though he was. I’ll let them duke it out in the courts before coming to any definite conclusions on this particular case, but I do know that in general, it’s not sufficient to object to a policy just because it violates your beliefs. What matters is whether or not your individual civil rights in that situation entitle you to uphold your beliefs in defiance of the policy.
Sorry, Kimstu. I meant that he was violating her rights (by forcing her to take a political position which violated her beliefs).
Perhaps she wanted to learn more about the course content? Perhaps the course is a required class? Perhaps the course was useful for the career she was trying to pursue?
Having her do the letter as an exercise is fine. Demanding that she sign it is way over the top. What he was going to do with the signed letters is not addressed in the article; that concerns me.
I agree.
Our Biology department occasionally get students to write an essay in favour of creationism. Arguing against scientific principles (or anything else) can help you understand them better.
But forcing people to sign something that goes outside the school is wrong. In an extreme case, that could be used in a dirty tricks campaign decades later.
Why exactly is this “garbage, utter and complete”? You first criticize assignments with political messaging, but analyzing gender issues is an issue of sociology, not politics. Do you think that men’s magazines are off-limits for analysis? Or that students can study men’s magazines, but must ignore what they say about women? Or that students can study gender issues in men’s magazines as long as they conclude that an article about how to film your girlfriend masturbating and posting it on the internet is actually uplifting to women?
(Please don’t interpret this as an attack. I’m honestly curious as to what makes this assignment unacceptable.)
I would say the healthier and more appropriate assignment, would be in terms of whether or not it’s demeaning to women, not requiring them to take an a priori stance on it, and defend it thusly.
What did your friend do? Did she complain? Did she sue? Did she knuckle under & follow orders?
Why didn’t she go through the men’s magazine & write a paper on how the publication was *not * demeaning to women? I really doubt that a teacher would reject a truly well-written piece. If the teacher had, that might have been grounds for complaint. Of course, “well written” is the important phrase.
IMHO, freshman comp is all about how to write. Content is irrelevant. Forcing the kids to write something in support of some PC Prof’s political views is a no value added layer of bullshit. If you’re going to do assigned topics, let the kids pick pro or con. The grade is supposed to be based on the quality of the writing, not the position taken.
I disagree. As glee noted earlier, I think writing an affirmative position of a stand with which you disagree is a valid and useful exercise. Extorting you to sign your name to it, though, is an abuse of power.
You seem to have the sequence off.
1 Teacher assigns bad grade based on personal conflict
2 Student successfully appeals bad grade (indicating that some portion of the college administration agreed with her assessment that the grade was unfair)
3 Student compelled to take course from same teacher (who is already angry that she beat his first discriminatory action)
4 Teacher assigns utterly indefensible (and stupid) task (signing letter)
5 Teacher then files complaint against student using apparently spurious charges (tardiness)
6 School (or some select group of teachers, possibly friendly to teacher) finds for the teacher and validates complaint, jeopardizing student’s ability to find work
7 Student sues
Regardless how one feels about homosexuality, this appears to be an egregious assault on the student, justifying the lawsuit. A recommendation that the student find a line of social work that does not handle adoptions (or employment with a religious adoption group that will not accept homosexual applications) would prevent any conflict between her relgious views and her requirement to carry out her employment without prejudice. Filing a teacher-on-student grievance is not necessary. (And while I think the student’s beliefs regarding homosexuality are wrong-headed, no one should carry away the mistaken impression that this will stop discrimination by the many other students of similar beliefs who simply kept their heads down and went along with the program with their fingers crossed.)
So, shouldn’t the assignment have been for each student to defend the position he or she did not agree with? If I do find it demeaning to women, I should have to argue that it is not, and vice versa? Otherwise, it’s a different exercise for different members of the class, some are defending a POV they do not hold, and some (probably most) are defending a POV they do hold (making it a much easier assignment for these folks, I’m sure). Or, have each student write a piece defending each side of the issue, for that matter…then you can be sure that each student is defending an idea they don’t agree with.
I think it goes even deeper than that, Kimstu. I would argue that your original argument is more fundamentally flawed. Even if the school clearly had a policy requiring her to hold certain views in order to be admitted or to be awarded a degree without negative qualifiers, such a rule is unconstitutional, because it amounts to a government agency demanding that a student accept certain beliefs. It’s a violation of the First Amendment.
I would agree (although IANAL so I don’t necessarily know what I’m talking about) in the case of a state school like MSU.
Except that I’m not quite sure if a policy requiring students to officially advocate a particular political position is really the same thing as a policy requiring them personally to hold a particular belief. I mean, it wouldn’t violate my First Amendment rights as a (hypothetical) business owner if the gummint made me post a statement in my workplace that my policies are opposed to sexual harassment, would it? Even if I personally happened to believe that sexual harassment is just fine and dandy?
Point well taken. However, I was trying to point out that while arguing for a POV you disagree with *can *have merits, I see absolutely no justification for forcing someone to sign their name to that stand. I agree with Brooker’s attorney when he (she?) argues:
First of all, you can’t have serious writing without content. Writing becomes more of a challenge if the topic is worth caring about.
Second, women’s studies is a particularly important topic to be covered in college because most students have never encountered it before. High school teachers are typically forbidden from bringing up topics of gender roles and sexuality (by law, in some cases) so there’s a gap in the students’ education that needs to be filled.
Thirdly, there’s no indication that any “political views” were at work here. Based on the description Tristan gave us (which was only a second-hand account of someone else’s assignmernt) it was a topic in sociology or possibly media studies . No one mentioned politics.
If it was an assignment for sociology or something similar, I’d have no problem with the assignment. There’s no reason to get into that subject matter in a freshman comp class. Any topic will do for the purpose of learning how to write.
Shouldn’t that gap be filled in a sociology or women’s studies course, and not in a basic english composition course? It seems likely to me that the lesson that’s supposed to be conveyed (how to write an essay) is likely to be lost in the indignation and controversy generated by the subject matter. It’s also unlikely that the students are going to have the knowledge or vocabulary necessary to even argue the point: such an assignment coming in the middle of a class about representations of women in the popular media and the harmful effects it can have on society is fine. The students will have read relevant texts on the subjected, listened to lectures, and kicked the issue around with the teacher and other students during in-class discussions. This probably has not happened in a basic composition course, unless the teacher is seriously derelicting her duties. A much better lesson plan would be to let the students choose their own topic for their essay, subject to the teacher’s approval. An essay about the designated hitter rule can teach a student as much about composition as an essay on sexually demeaning imagery in men’s magazines, with the advantage of not getting bogged down in controversy or throwing the student into the deep end of a subject with which he has little-to-no first hand experience.
I agree that arguing a POV you disagree with has merits…people on debate teams do it all the time, through random assignment of topics and sides drawn. But this just doesn’t seem like that kind of situation…everyone was required to argue the same side (and I won’t even get into the signature thing, since everyone seems to pretty much agree that this is crossing the line).