Too bad I didn’t say anything about Democrats, then. That shoots your thesis right to hell. To repeat: I illustrated that we have different perspectives because we came from different parts of the world, and that has shaded our opinions. I don’t begrudge him his opinions. I just disagree with most of them.
Actually, it’s a 3.0. Underestimated once again. But you are right, I don’t care. I’m achieving my degree on my terms and for my own reasons, of which pretty much all of them are economic. If I could get paid college money right now I’d quit school tomorrow. Would you rather I lied to you?
Actually, no, it doesn’t. Just because you’re not specifically talking about Democrats doesn’t mean that your petty rant doesn’t fit into the ever-growing group of “I’m oppressed because my teachers are Democrats!” rants, which are all pretty much the same if you replace “Democrats” with any other bunch of generally left-leaning people, like “Oregonians”, “pot smokers”, “Canadians”, “jazz musicians”, “lawyers”, “environmentalists”, whatever.
Really? Because in the OP, you sure sound like you think he’s a terrible teacher for thinking about including that question in the final.
Good for you! Want a cookie?
I see you still haven’t responded to my research or to:
Are they too challenging, or is it just that I’m oppressing you by asking these questions in a public forum?
**Airman’**s the one trying to start a fight here? I agree with what most everyone is saying in this thread but the tone is pretty insufferable and the biggest waves of hostility are coming off you, Hostile Dialect.
That’s your interpretation, and you’re entitled to it.
No, I thought it was a terrible question. Not only did I give him top marks on his evaluation, I told his department chair that he was an excellent teacher.
No thanks, but I appreciate the offer.
Every country has their own challenges to overcome. That does not warrant a question like that.
You don’t oppress me at all. I didn’t expect people to agree with me necessarily, but I certainly didn’t expect overt hostility. I probably should have.
After stepping back and re-reading some of my posts, I must concede that I have been more hostile than is necessary or, perhaps, productive. These rants are a major pet peeve of mine, precisely because they belie another pet peeve of mine: careerism in college. I suppose it’s not my place to begrudge someone getting an education solely for the betterment of their careers, but it’s my perception (and I’m not the only one) that the massive waves of careerists crashing into every major college and university every year have an effect on the educational experience which is detrimental for those of us who think of college as a place to be challenged, to be questioned, and to challenge and question others. (I also tend to write in gigantic run-on sentences when I get a little het up. Can you tell?) And I don’t get why you couldn’t answer the question with something like, “I don’t believe that the United States suffers from worse social problems than other advanced industrialized nations, and here’s my proof.” As Shagnasty noted, it’s a matter of perspective, and it’s just as easy to prove your opinion as it is to prove the opinion implied in the question.
Color me disappointed at you for your approach to the whole thing, and at myself for losing my cool.
I’m sorry to keep badgering - but I suppose I’m wondering about specifics.
I was lucky in that even in my most hated classes, there was usually something interesting - or at least a new perspective (even if I thought the perspective was stupid, it was new.) Even now, I take classes from time to time, and while I have found out that I’m not really interested in the subject and have no wish to explore it further, I do usually get to find out something new. I’m sorry you haven’t had such a good experience.
Had that been my experience I would be totally on board with you. Unfortunately, to this point it hasn’t been.
That’s exactly what I did, my knee-jerk reaction as illustrated in the OP notwithstanding.
Don’t worry about it. It happens to me all the time. As far as disappointment, you should see it from my end. I tried to be optimistic, I really did. Now I’m merely disillusioned and ready to get on with life.
My “Aha!” moments never occur in class. They occur when I have some time to go shoot the breeze with my teachers. They enjoy it when I stop by their office, and that’s where the learning gets done. Not in the classroom. In most of my classes I might as well be alone for all the participation that the teacher gets. And it’s not fair to others that I monopolize the time, so I ask my question and let the teacher get on with it so the others don’t feel cheated, even though they’re cheating themselves.
Like I said, disillusioned. If we could ditch the classes and condense this into two years of debating so we could get down to the nitty gritty I’d be loving it. Instead I feel like I’m showing up to punch the ticket. That is NOT what it is supposed to be, but it is what it is. More’s the pity.
It is a mistake to get into an argument with someone who can drop your grade.
My experience is that some university professors will grade you lower if you don’t repeat back what you are supposed to, and this includes political ideas.
If you really wanted to argue, you could mention that the US measures some of these things differently - the poverty rate in Japan is lower, but poor people in the US have more living space. But it is at least as likely that you will get a lower grade than you would otherwise if you presented a equally tight argument that the US sux, and it is all the fault of the Republicans, and so forth, as a higher one. If you want to argue that some social problems in the US are worse and some are better, keep in mind that the professor is going to get the last word, regardless.
FriarTed’s point is a good one, but it may not help.
I would agree with this. The way I see it, Airman is concerned because he doesn’t agree with the premises that the question is based on. As far as this this thread goes, it doesn’t really matter what those premises are, or whether or not the rest of us agree with the professor, or agree with Airman. As far as I can tell, his concern is that his choice is either to tacitly agree with the professor by answering the question as though he accepts the premises, or to disagree with the professor by challenging the premises. The first option annoys him because he doesn’t feel as though he should have to pander to the professor’s biases, and the second option makes him nervous because he doesn’t know if this guy is the type who will hold it against him. I don’t blame him for being annoyed by it. I think a question like that clearly shows bias, and doesn’t really help train critical thinking, as a college course should. A much better way to ask such a question would be like this:
*Do you believe the United States have more severe social problems (such as more poverty, worse health care, more violence, more pollution, worse education) than other advanced industrialized nations? Why or why not? *
It’s not exactly the same question, but it could still be used to show that the student understands the course material, and it also gives an opportunity for the student to offer an opinion, and defend it with facts and logic.
I say this with all due respect: When discussing your collegiate career, you tend to come across as if you think there’s very little you don’t already know.
I’ve had my share of I defy you to teach me something new! seminar participants. They make me really tired.
I would start along the lines that we are a far more racially and ethnically heterogenius nation than most of our European and Asian peers. Also, a significant number of those ethnically heterogenius people were brought over here as slave labor, the repercussions we are still dealing with today to a certain extent. Many of the problems we have today are the result of friction between various ethic groups and with the assimillation of those groups into our culture. In fact, that is one of the things that does make our nation great, compared to many of the European and Asian nations - that we do attempt to integrate so many cultures and nationalities.
What are you insulted by? The insinuation that the US of A may not be the greatest damn nation ever? By many objective measurements, we do do fall behind other industrialized nations in terms of education, health care, crime and standard of living. That is not to say we aren’t up there.
While I don’t really agree with the OP regarding the merit of that particular test question, I do more or less agree with his larger point, which is that higher education has come to be an exercise in checkmarking, not in actually learning anything. You can blame Doors for it, but it’s only his fault insofar as he’s chosen a career that makes a college degree a way station to advancement. But try to find me a career where that isn’t the case.
I don’t really know where the culprit is. It isn’t the Republicans, I know that. I think it’s just that a general rigidity has crept in in America’s hiring departments, where no one has the courage to take a candidate who doesn’t have the right credentials on paper. And it’s actually gotten worse. Where a BA used to be good enough, now an MBA is considered an entry-level requirement in many fields. So are all these millions of people getting MBA degrees actually interested in management as a field of intellectual inquiry? Of course not – they’re just punching a ticket. And the schools are complicit – they know the score. So you end up with indifferent courses offered to indifferent students. There’s higher education for you. I don’t see that anybody’s the winner.
For me, this would be a dream question, because there ISN’T a hard factual answer that you have to reach through all kinds of complex formulas and processes. You can say anything you want, and so long as you have some facts that support your position, your opinion is as valid as anyone else’s
And that’s essentially what the prof is answering for – your opinion, and evidence of your reasoning. It’s almost win-win.
Shows bias? Surely. In fact, it reeks of it. But I think that it can actually be a great tool for training critical thinking, used right. See how much productive debate it has sparked in this thread, caterwauling aside? I think we’ve seen good arguments for both sides. I think that if I were a college professor, I might very well use a question like that to pick out the critical thinkers from the sheep. That doesn’t mean that people would be graded on whether or not they agree with me. This response:
would get a much different grade than this:
Which sounds like an A answer to me. For all the hubbub about college professors grading people on their opinions, I’ve been in college for almost four years and I have only seen it once, in a pretty inconsequential class. I’ve had lively, even heated, debates with many professors, who universally respected me more for disagreeing with them cogently and graded me accordingly. I believe I even deeply offended a Jazz History teacher by telling him that Thelonius Monk seemed “perpetually fried” to me (which, FTR, was not intended as an insult) and arguing that heroin helped Charlie Parker’s career, and I’m getting straight A’s in that class. He loves my work so much that I’m pretty sure if there were three letter grades higher than A, I would get the highest one–and a lot of that is because I’m not afraid to disagree with him.
Plumbing, HVAC, entrepeneurship, sales, welding, mechanical repair (which Air Force experience is a fine credential for, in many cases), just to name a few off the top of my head.
One presumes that if you get an MBA, you are interested in working in the business world as some sort of manager or executive.
I don’t know of any fields where an MBA is required for an entry level position. The classic ticket-punch industries for MBAs are usually management consulting or investment banking ( or related fields like venture capital, private equity, etc ). And the career path is usually 2 years as an Analyst out of undergrad, then a top business school, then Associate.
I suppose it’s the freedom to pay less in taxes. The rest of the industrialized world’s citizens generally pay a lot more taxes, and get better social safety nets and transportation systems in return, although the transportation thing–i.e. all those wonderful trains–is at least partly due to geography and demographic density.
I can’t think of any other freedoms that we have more of. Europe and the UK seem to have much more social and cultural freedom than we do.
Our freedom and liberty make more choices means we have the greater ability to make wrong choices. Choices that harms others, choices that others have to pay for. Are we comfortable with the present equilibrium for the perks vs the price?
Then why did you major in Sociology? Seriously, you took the easiest major in the history of the world and now you’re complaining it’s too easy. If you wanted to learn something you should have taken a real major.
I didn’t. This was one of my required gen-eds. I wouldn’t have taken it on purpose except that it fit in my schedule and the other options were, in my opinion, worse.