No, I read what you said. I just think you are looking at your own teaching situation and saying its the same at every college. Do you work in California? Do you have a powerful union backing you up?
Again, I have NO IDEA what a “mark on their record” means. I dont know what a “warning” is.
I have NO IDEA what goes on behind closed doors of academia especially in California where the professor is backed up by lawyers of the most powerful union and political machine in the state.
I will go back to my original statement that yes, I believe a student should be able to record what happens in a classroom IF that recording is evidence of misbehavior of persons in that classroom. Which could be a nutjob professor or that could be fellow students being idiots (which I have seen). Now if that professor sticks to the curriculum and doesnt go off on rants they have nothing to worry about.
Going back to my own college years at the University of Kansas 25 years ago, I mostly took science courses. Professors had a tight schedule and had NO TIME to go on personal rants like this. They walked in and the notes and lecture started flying and all a student could do was just hang on. Now in the other courses like history and english that was different and they often did go off on personal tangents or made personal jabs at students (although not as bad as that nutjob).
I’m genuinely curious what union you think the profs are a part of. Forgive me if I missed it in the article and thread (and I did look), but it’s generally not THE teachers union. My previous union was SEIU (service workers). Maybe it’s the AAUP.
But it’s not the teachers’ union machine that covers k-12
You don’t expect him to start basing his arguments on actual research and critical analysis now, do you? Not when preconceptions and generalizations have worked so well in this thread so far.
For those who are interested, the union representing the instructor discussed in the OP is the Coast Federation of Educators (CFE), which is Local 1911 of the American Federation of Teachers. So, in one respect it is part of a teachers’ organization, but not the main union of California teachers, which is the California Teachers Association.
If you click on the link i’ve provided, you’ll see that the CFE has posted a statement about this incident. While i understand their viewpoint, and i don’t believe that this particular incident means that the teacher in question needs to be fired or even disciplined, i think they are too supportive of her statements here, and i disagree with their assertion that the statements she made are merely part of an attempt to have an open discussion about the election.
As a general principle, i agree with this portion of the statement. I discussed the election results with my history classes, and made connections between the election results and some of the historical material we studied in our course.
But i don’t believe that calling Trump’s election an “act of terrorism” is a good way to encourage a “rich, respectful dialog,” and nor does it really create a “safe and respectful setting” for students who might be Trump supporters. The instructor’s use of “we” and “us” in describing those who oppose Trump also makes very clear which side she’s on, and might serve to discourage or alienate students who feel differently.
As i’ve suggested already, this isn’t the end of the world, but it’s not something that should be dismissed out of hand either.
For what it’s worth, when I’m grading, I try not to even look at the names at all until I’ve completely marked up the paper, just as a hedge against unconscious bias. Which wouldn’t even be nearly as big an issue for me as for (say) a history professor, anyway, since there’s not as much subjectivity in physics as in the liberal arts.
But even though I personally believe that I can treat students impartially, I also believe that I should still put safeguards in place against partiality, and that I should also maintain the appearance of impartiality with the students as much as possible. After all, everyone believes that they’re impartial, even though we know well that some aren’t, and so if relying on one’s own estimation of impartiality were enough, we’d have no protection.
What do you all think of the professors who gave students the day off after the election so they could have time to mourn? Also given play doh and coloring books. LINK
I almost gave up after the second example when I noted that the “cry-in” was clearly made by a few students and not setup by a teacher. I’m pointing there at the third example from “The Daily Haze” an outfit that does in reality is a blog disguised as a news outfit. A lot of the article is based on a Pajamas Media one and a Wall Street Journal opinion piece too. PM is a right wing opinion site.
As for the Play-do, I doubt that because it is more likely to be clay and when there are coloring books for adults that are all the rage nowadays I have to suspect that what we have there is just spin that is designed to launch hate to a teacher of ethnic studies. Just about the target the Trump people will like to aim their well oiled hate machine to work against it.
Frankly, on any given day professors are canceling their classes for all sorts of reasons, trivial or not. Professors know their students pretty well and can gauge if it would be appropriate or not.
Honestly- I had an exam scheduled the day after the election and I contemplated moving it since I knew lots of people were going to be up late watching the returns. I decided not to since I know many of my students work and had probably scheduled time off prior to the exam to study, and I didn’t want to mess up their personal work schedules. As it was, they all looked shell shocked and the average was lower than I expected.
When I was in college, your essay books were graded by your student ID number. No name on the thing at all - until the professor went into the grade book to assign the grade - and the act of recording grades often went to a department assistant or TA.
Papers had your name on them.
It is possible that by my Senior year my advising professor who I had almost every semester in college for a class could recognize my handwriting - I doubt it.
Well now the story is taking on a new twist. It seems the professor received so much hate mail she has basically disappeared.LINK
The above article goes further. It also mentions that she asked students who voted for Trump to stand up and identify themselves . A student said “She tried to get everyone who voted for Donald Trump to stand up and show the rest of the class who to watch out for and protect yourself from,” said Tanner Webb, 21, of Huntington Beach.
Here is another LINK from students in her class who also mentioned being singled out and asked to stand if they voted for trump. They said they were afraid of speaking up because they didnt want a bad grade.
Is this proper behavior for a teacher? To single out and target students for their beliefs?
HERE is a video of the student who actually did the recording. He discusses why he did it and also mentions behaviors of other teachers at that college and their reactions to Trumps win. For example at 1:58 he tells of an english teacher who was crying in class and then cancelled the class.
If it is shown that she did that, no it is not proper if it can be shown, Did the tape showed that? But she deserved then a warning from the faculty, not death threats from others. Releasing the tape under the circumstances does sound as if wanting to get the mob involved, not the chain of command.
Interesting how the same events can be skewed in completely different ways. From your linked article:
Another example of such skewing is referring to Prof. Cox’s words as a “rant.” I’ve listened to the video, and it’s not something I’d think to describe as a “rant.” She’s offering her opinion very calmly.
For those who’d rather read her words than watch a video, they’re given in this article, which also notes that
So her comments may well have been an answer to a student’s question.
But apparently we now live in a society where each side has their own truth.
You don’t think that the OP is going to consider contrary evidence, do you? As i said, this whole thread is a rant disguised as a debate.
I notice also that, from his own link, he can’t spare a few words of condemnation for the threats she has faced in the wake of this incident, such as the one suggesting that she go to Cuba if she didn’t want a bullet in her face.
Because i teach US history, my classes inevitably deal with a lot of political issues, and the material we study covers a range of incredibly significant social and economic and political controversies that have shaped America over the past centuries.
I get asked by students, multiple times every semester, what my own politics are, who i vote for, whether i like a particular law or policy or court ruling. I generally deflect the personal aspect of such questions, telling my students that my own preferences are not really the point. I try to connect the issue to the bigger historical picture that we’re studying in class.
So, for example, instead of giving my own opinion about what policy the United States should adopt regarding immigration, i will point out that many of the issues currently being raised in the national immigration debate have significant historical precedent, and that America’s attitudes to immigration in general, and to particular groups or races or ethnicities of immigrants, have shifted back and forth quite a few times over the last hundred years or so.
I will point them to immigration issues that we’ve discussed in class, such as hostile attitudes to Catholics (Irish, Italians, and later Mexicans), anti-Chinese sentiment and Chinese exclusion, restrictions on land ownership in California (affecting especially immigrants like the Japanese), changing attitudes to European immigration in the early 20th century (“new” vs “old” immigrants), concerns about labor competition in the wake of WWI, the new immigration restriction or quota laws of the 1920s, repatriation of Mexicans in the Depression, the Bracero program that began during WWII, the new immigration policies of the 1960s, etc., etc., etc.
We talk about all of those things in class, and having the students make historical connections and understand how the issues have changed (or not changed) over time is more important to me, as in instructor, than talking to them about my own particular preferences.
But despite all of that, i don’t think that i would be sacrificing my professional integrity or violating my professional responsibilities if i actually answered my students’ questions and told them which policies i liked and disliked, or which party i would vote for. I firmly believe that good teaching and professional, objective scholarship are both completely compatible with strong political commitments. Teachers and scholars do not need to be “empty vessels,” devoid of their own political opinions, in order to do their jobs properly. The fact that some people seem to believe otherwise is an indictment of their own level of understanding of what teaching and scholarship are.
The teachers being criticized, and the more I see here the more I think they were criticized unfairly, is that both the teacher in the recording case and the “coloring book” case are minorities.
The reaction I see from the extremists has IMHO a lot more to do with pogrom wishes from the right wing news spinners rather than a valid complaint.
And I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with that. Your a history teacher.
THIS professor teaches human sexuality.
Best of all you dont call the election of a new president a “terrorist act” and you dont ask students that voted for him to stand up so other students can “watch out and protect yourself from”. That is targeting and singling out students. The very behavior she says she is against.
You know, I think you make a great point in that an event can be skewed by different interpretations.
But that gets back to my original point. If the class isnt recorded, then how do we know the truth? Heck anyone can say “I never said that” or “you took that out of context”.
Well that is the problem of our new age of social media. Things go out on the web and anyone can then Google a person and find out their addresses, phone numbers, emails, and all kinds of personal information.
This happens also from the left. Consider the 2007 Duke lacrosse case where the players and coaches had threatening emails, phone calls, vandalism of their property, and hate signs placed in their yards. SOURCE
Also the SJW’s on campus took it upon themselves to go after the young men LINK.
Of course, lets consider then that with today’s cases the teachers are likely to be innocent of a lot of what that *antisocial *media is telling us now.
