I don’t see that the Dope has weighed in on this, although it has been popping up on social media lately.
In short, a university student in Oklahoma was assigned to respond to a reading assignment regarding bullying and gender identity. Her reply - which was clearly reflecting a dogmatic Christian viewpoint of traditional gender roles- received 0 points and a failing grade.
The student brought this to the attention of Turning Point USA (the Charlie Kirk people), and it became an issue of “religious persecution”:
What makes this interesting is that the essay has been published in its entirety, along with the teacher’s response.
I’d be interested in the Dope’s thoughts.
(Note that I don’t have the original reading material , but can share the failing assignment and the teacher’s explanation of the grade)
Here is the offending essay (formatting is not original to the essay; it’s a cut and paste by me):
In normal times and under normal circumstances, I would expect the teacher to prevail easily. Now, though, when people wield their ignorance as a weapon, who the hell knows?
You’ll note that the article you linked leaves out the fact that the teacher who gave the assignment is themselves transgender. This whole thing reeks of an organized setup to target a trans person and get them fired.
The situation has been mentioned in a couple of omnibus “terrible conservative behavior” threads in the Pit, but hasn’t had its own topic, AFAIK.
It sure feels that way to me, too. Specifically, it seems like the paragraph in which the instructor criticized use of the word “demonic” has been called out by the student’s supporters. On the one hand, I wonder if, had the instructor stuck to “you didn’t follow the assignment at all,” in the first three paragraphs, without bringing that in, if reactions would have been different. On the other hand, I think that it probably wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.
I agree with what other people online said no matter how badly written it was a 0 was just asking for trouble no matter who wrote it.
Every college class I’ve ever been to you’d only get a 0 for either not turning it in or turning in the wrong assignment. Giving them a 10% would have sufficed.
As an undergraduate (history), during class discussions my professors would routinely ask students to justify their positions. It wasn’t good enough to just have an opinion, you had to explain why you had that opinion. Obviously in a paper we had to cite our sources and we had to make sure they were supporting our interpretation of the past.
It does seem like a setup. Though I’ll admit it could just be a stupid student who happened to get lucky by touching on several hot button issues at once.
Grading rubrics are tedious, yet making them available beforehand as a self-check list is helpful in this kind of situation. Something like this makes it clear what the grading criteria are and demonstrate that the instructor is applying these standards even if they don’t like the content:
Evidence of spelling check: 5%
Follows 5-paragraph essay structure: 25%
Responds to prompt/question: 20%
Style, creativity, interest (or something less subjective): 10%
Includes assigned readings: 15%
Includes 3-5 well-integrated citations of empirical studies: 15%
Includes accurate citation list for all works cited: 10%, with 5% penalty for each work included that has not been cited in your paper.
Follows [MLA or whatever] language guidelines: criterion (failure to do so = No Pass with opportunity to revise by x date for a grade of no higher than 90%)
The problem with that is, what was the 10% for? The instructor needs to have a rationale fot those points, too. I dislike these mechanical grade rubrics, but was always relieved to be able to show where the grade came from, and that the same standards had been applied across the class consistently.
The rubric is posted in the Fox article linked in the OP. 10 points for relevance to the scholarly article, 10 points for thoughtful opinions, and 5 points for clarity of writing. I don’t know how you best apply that rubric here, but the obvious failing of her essay is that it makes no effort to address the content of the article. It’s the most superficial of takes.
10 percent seems appropriate. But I would also explain to a pre-med student that she’s signing up to help people, not pass judgment on them. She’s not in the right career if this is going to be her attitude to scientific articles about things that hurt her fee fees.
The paper she was supposed to be responding to is “Relations Among Gender Typicality, Peer Relations, and Mental Health During Early Adolescence.”. It seems to be paywalled everywhere, but here’s the abstract:
The current study examines whether being high in gender typicality is associated with popularity, whether being low in gender typicality is associated with rejection/teasing, and whether the teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association with negative mental health. Middle-school children (34 boys and 50 girls) described hypothetical popular and rejected/teased peers and completed self-report measures about their own gender typicality, experiences with gender-based teasing, depressive symptoms, anxiety, self-esteem, and body image. Participants also completed measures about their peers’ gender typicality, popularity, and likeability. Results indicated that popular youth were described as more gender typical than rejected/teased youth. Further, being typical for one’s gender significantly predicted being rated as popular by peers, and this relationship was moderated by gender. Finally, low gender typicality predicted more negative mental health outcomes for boys. These relationships were, at times, mediated by experiences with gender-based teasing, suggesting negative mental health outcomes may be a result of the social repercussions of being low in gender typicality rather than a direct result of low typicality.
And of course her response was that bullying is good because The Bible.
I think the essay was garbage but I also think the teacher hung themself by writing such a long and obviously emotional explanation. It deserved some token credit since it was technically an essay, but a very low grade and something like - "the rubric clearly states this paper should support its claims with scientific evidence, " etc. or “doesn’t respond to the assigned question.” I agree a rubric up front would have helped. The moment the teacher invoked the student’s personal beliefs, they were screwed.
So that right there earns her nul points IMO. Saying that bullying kids, who don’t confirm to gender norms, is OK is not a reasonable point of view to espose in an opinion essay. It’s a really hateful offensive thing to say. This has nothing to do with Christian beliefs I would expect a similar response if this was from an essay in a Christian theology college.
Also is misspelling necessarilv also in the original essay ? In this day and age where you have to go out if your way to misspell something, that’s a bunch of points off too. She’s lucky she didn’t get a negative score
I can see how it can be difficult to allow views very much opposed to yours to pass in a class…especially when hateful.
I wonder if the better route would be for the professor to choose two essays (or more) from those turned in and display them for the class to read and then have the class discuss them?
Do NOT identify the authors of the essays and certainly enforce some decorum in the classroom during discussion but let the student’s peers put the pressure on to not be awful.
Seems there could be a teaching moment here (IANATeacher).
And, of course, impose whatever markdowns there are for bad grammar and whatever same as happens to any submitted coursework.
I have mixed feelings about the post I quote above.
The essay was garbage.
The fundamental problem is that she is addressing science with the Bible. And once the professor says that, tied to the rubric or not, it is going to offend. I like tact, but I do not see how the professor could have been both tactful and true to the subject matter.
One question in my mind is whether it was possible to write a subtly but definitely offensive anti-trans response and still fairly gotten, say, a B. Without doing most of the student’s work for her, I do not know for sure. But, probably, yes. You would tear down the assigned reading on the basis of not proving its thesis. This could be done by setting up some standard of proof, involving randomization and controls, that sounds superficially plausible, even if it is impractical. Also, maybe there is some kind of conservative psychology journal somewhere that proports to be scientific, and never mentions the Bible, and has anti-trans articles with properly formatted footnotes. Cite that. This might be more work than doing the assignment in a fair-minded manner. But I think it is possible. Opposing science with the Bible is not an acceptable way to be a nasty SOB here.
To get an A, when I went to school, you generally had to make some allowance for the possibility of your being wrong. That’s why I say the mythical paper I describe in the paragraph immediately above is a B. Maybe with grade inflation it is an A, but I hope not.
The university had to decide if it was a science-respecting university, or a Bible school. Apparently they are a Bible school.
