Well, technically, I didn’t have any real sympathy for the student in the first place (that is to say, I have sympathy for someone afflicted with a stutter, but not for one who makes a public spectacle of his disability being treated less than lovingly). But if I’d had sympathy, that statement would have killled it.
Hmm. I actually learned that in a university class.
So you have sympathy for her?
Yeah, that’s not dramatic or anything.
He’s sixteen. He’s in college. He’s excited. This is an adjunct professor teaching a bunch of freshman and I’m sure she has a head a bit too big for her shoulders. There is a thing called diplomacy, you know.
The kids who tend to monopolize my time aren’t allowed to, but I appreciate that they are excited and want to participate. Imho, the dean telling the kid to take another professor’s class was also in the wrong. Switching a kid because a professor can’t handle a pretty simple situation is poor form. It’s so much better to work it out.
I’ve seen teachers that were labeled amazing for one thing or the other make some really dick moves. My old history prof (who was a school teacher and Teacher of the Year) would talk about ‘the Zionists’ or ‘the Jews’ and their crimes on occasion…she was the person in charge of teaching us ‘how to teach history’ and how to be good teachers. So, yeah.
Little bit, yeah.
As I suspected, the prof’s story differs from that of the student’s. It seems to me that Philip was a challenging student (not because of his stutter but more due to his conduct in class - wanting to answer every question, holding his hand up for over an hour, for example). I don’t think this situation was handled well by the prof, but it seems unusual that a story like this would end up in the NYT. Philip must be quite well connected…
I also suspect his age and inexperience in classrooms additionally complicated matters. I mean, this prof has taught almost 40 years. I would think she’s had other students with disabilities who have needed accommodations before. She’s also won awards for her teaching… I think she cares about her craft and I can imagine how frustrating it must be if you’re falling behind because of one student’s constant questioning.
Did Philip take advantage of office hours to ask questions, if he truly had queries that weren’t covered in class? Someone who dominates class time, especially in a lecture format class, can impinge on other students’ learning experience. The stutter may have exacerbated this issue but it sounds as if it’s more about the amount of airtime he was getting and the fact that the instructor wasn’t able to get through her lectures.
And I’d say its about as douchy a move for him to sit there with his hand up the whole time too. He was just goading the teacher and probably distracting the other students with that protest at that point. Not every social/civil injustice (if there is even one here) needs to be turned into Selma, Alabama. And, btw I had to take some speech therapy when I was younger, had a mild stuttering problem (that became more significant when “public speaking”), was very shy and smart enough to know I didn’t really know anything so was rather unconfident to boot.
From the new article:
Yea, I’m putting my money down on “kerfluffle created by a student with NYT connections and a raging sense of entitlement.”
Why should he get special attention in class over the others who want to participate? So he knew the answers, so what? It was someone elses turn to participate. He can take his special snowflakiness and fuck right off.
Implicit in my response was the question why this statement would have put you over the edge. It seems rather inoffensive to me.
Did anyone doubt that their stories would be different? Of course she sees it differently. That doesn’t mean that the student’s perspective is entirely wrong here.
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Is it possible for everyone to know for sure that any particular moment is not Selma? Especially if your 16, home-schooled, naive, with a disability, etc.?
We have statements from fellow members of class that his participation in class was not a problem.
While there are different sides of the story to take into account, I think this particular way of phrasing one’s perspective is really offensive. Come on, “special snowflakiness”? So far as we know, he is doing what he thinks he’s supposed to be doing in a class. He’s young and inexperienced. It’s part of the mission of a school to make people more experienced, not to tell them to “fuck right off.”
And, you know what? Some people do need some special attention, especially when they’re in school.
I spoke to my dad about this issue. He was a college professor for 30 years and he is also a stutterer. He thinks that this whole thing was handled very badly. At the very least, when you see a guy stick up his hand for a long time, you call on him and if the question or statement isn’t immediately pertinent you say something to the effect of “I’d be happy to talk to you or anyone else who has questions after class, but in this particular class, we have a lot of material to cover and I would like all of you to just sit back and listen until I’m finished.”
Do those special factors somehow make him more right than he otherwise would be? If he did that hand raising business AFTER the teacher told him his options (and especially if it happened after he blew off a possible meeting with the Dean) he WAS IMO being a whinny prick. Yeah, 16 year olds often are so thats nothing new. But you don’t cave to their demands either. Kid doesn’t like it? Go the head of the department or the Dean first. Not the NYTs.
Oh, so his offense is that he bypassed the chain of command? Is he in the marines?
I agree with this, and this is what i would have done in the classroom. Just ignoring him while his hand is up is a silly thing to do.
Still, to keep your hand up for 75 straight minutes (if that’s what he did) shows a level of obliviousness that borders on the unbelievable, and suggests that the student might have been more intent on making a point than on asking a question.
It is not entitlement for someone with a disability to expect to be treated like every other person. If you do not understand this statement, then there is no point in discussing anything.
It also is 100% irrelevant what you think of the student’s personality or actions. They have nothing to do with whether or not the teacher’s actions are correct or not. Last I checked, you didn’t lose, say, your right to vote because you were “uppity.”
The only argument that works is a practical argument that the stutterer was depriving the other students by his questions. This is proven false by the fact that he’s in the same class by another professor, and does not have the restriction there. This is proof that his questions were not long enough to actually slow down the class, just as the students in her class affirmed The teacher just didn’t want to have to listen to someone who stuttered.
That is just plain bigotry. And yes, a college student is entitled not to be treated with bigotry by his teacher.
And the fact that the dean dealt with this by telling him to change classes rather than telling the teacher that her bigotry is unacceptable is 100% information that needs to be put out in the press. Again, it’s not whininess, and it’s not entitlement. It’s what’s supposed to happen.
Now maybe there are some facts that I am aware of that would change my opinion. But when students are afraid to even point out that a professor did something without hiding behind anonymity, I don’t tend to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt. As given in this thread, I believe the teacher is at least unintentionally bigoted, and deserves what she gets.
Because it’s important that everybody be able to participate and I think it’s also worthwhile that the school not ostractize people because of disabilities. I don’t think the possibility that the students’ time is being wasted is a major concern.
Come to think of it, I also had one or two professors in college whose accents were so thick I could hardly understand them.
That being said, having heard from the professor I suspect the truth falls somewhere in between their stories and it’s hard to know who to believe. I think Philip comes off as a little clueless about how college works and maybe predisposed to think people are always judging him based on the stutter when they could be responding to anything else. I think that at the least, the professor probably didn’t make clear to him what the issue was and may have let her annoyance with his eagerness color her response.
As far as why the story got into the Times, it’s probably because fairly or not, it appears to touch on a hot-button issue of discrimination and involves a precocious kid. The New York Times isn’t going to run an article because the kid has “connections,” and I’m skeptical that a homeschooled 16-year-old going to college in New Jersey has connections to anybody at the New York Times anyway. You’d struggle to get an article into a local paper with that kind of “connection,” nevermind a national newspaper.
Other students don’t get to waste the teacher’s time in class.
I have sympathy for the kid and I don’t believe he shouldn’t be allowed to communicate at all, but if the disability proves obstructive, then a method needs to be found to negate the disability, not simply put up with it.
We don’t let a blind man stumble around an unfamiliar place; we make sure he has a guide of some kind to help him along. We don’t let someone with a broken foot or bad leg limp and hobble his way along, we provide him with a crutch or wheelchair. We don’t let someone with reduced hearing sit in class only able to pick up one word in ten nor do we require the teacher to shout at the entire class; we give them a hearing aid or else lean harder on text communication.
In the same way, we shouldn’t let someone with a heavy stutter spend minutes struggling to get a simple question out, particularly when it cuts into ostensibly productive time; some other solution should be found. I’m highly partial to finding a willing classmate to sit next to him who can read out notes, or IM to the teacher’s computer if feasible, but failing that office hours and email should suffice.
The problem with these comparisons is that those disabilities primarily inconvenience the disabled person (although, yes, if you were stuck behind somebody with a broken leg, you would also be slowed) and the ‘stuttering wastes time’ issue is primarily an inconvenience to other people, not the stutterer. Providing a guy who is hard of hearing with a hearing aid doesn’t reduce his ability to participate in the class, it increases it. You can’t give somebody with a stutter a device that lets him speak faster. Allowing him to submit his questions in writing or email is closer, but it does still stop him from engaging in discussions with other students and you’re still telling him not to do something, which is going to be discouraging. All of which is intended to be taken as a theoretical discussion, not a comment on the Morris College situation.
I’m terribly afraid I must call “bullshit” on this assertion.
He is being treated like a person who takes up too much time in class.
He is also notice that he is being treated like an adult who only tells part of the story to a relatively minor problem to the NYT and on youtube. We don’t have an inalienable right to waste other people’s time and money.
The other professor may be a bad or novice teacher. If bad, I might suspect that he/she just does not care about the student’s education on the entire subject. If novice, and I know from experience, it is easy for a student to walk all over a teacher. It’s best to ask all the regularly attending students from the rest of the class.
This is not bigotry. This is people from all walks of life, with lots of individual differences, trying to get ahead by paying for an education. One role of the professor is to help guarantee this with classroom management. She offered many opportunities for this student to use alternative methods.
Yes, this professor’s reputation should suffer a permanent scar with no recourse and no chance to defend herself until well after the initial damage is done.
The dean’s role is to advocate for students. They seem react to any spurious, unsubstantiated charge made by students. Of course they are going to do something.
The student was not afraid of anything and since I know what he looks like I guess he doesn’t feel the need for anonymity.
A person with a stutter needs a speaking aid when they are having particularly bad days. There are means to solve that problem.
Expecting that students will learn how to deal with differences around them and to put them in situations in which, for example, they have to be patient and accommodate the weaknesses of people around them, is not unproductive. In fact, it is probably equally as important as the substantive subject matter of any class.
There are indirect means, but not direct means like a hearing aid or glasses or even a seeing-eye dog. Unfortunately those means have the side effect of denying a person who is able to speak - just not quickly - the ability to speak at all, and it’s not hard to see where a student might find that degrading or discouraging. If he was taking up a disproportionate amount of time (which is in dispute), a more sensitive way to handle this situation might have involved pulling him aside after a class where it was clear he was having difficulty and offering him the option of submitting questions in writing or by email, and phrasing it in a way that made it clear the suggestion was being made to help Philip as opposed to making it sound like he was a burden on everybody else. That would have been a lot more supportive. The specifics aren’t clear, but it doesn’t sound like that’s how the option was presented here.