# World's Dumbest University Prof? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 10, 2010, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126 "2010-11-10T01:12:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/21 "2010-11-10T19:04:55Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Also, I rather doubt whether _To Kill a Mockingbird_ is quite so well known outside the United States as it is inside. (And this professor is in Canada.) I certainly never learned about it at school in the U.K., and although I have read lots of novels in my time, including many American ones, this is not one of them. It may be that it is on most American high school curricula (presumably because it is - so I have heard - concerned with some uniquely American social problems), but that is not the case elsewhere. It’s a well-known novel in Canada - it was on our Grade 11 English curriculum when I went to school, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/22 "2010-11-10T19:10:33Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > It’s a well-known novel in Canada - it was on our Grade 11 English curriculum when I went to school, for example. Yep. About the same in Ontario when I went to school. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/23 "2010-11-10T20:10:49Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Did you make a quote from “To Kill A Mockingbird” the centerpeice of the title page of a major presentation to your students? No, but your OP did not tell us that is how it was. Incidentally, are you sure the quotation is not from a speech made by the character Atticus Finch? If so, the error is no more than a typo. > [@Sattua](#): > > Really? At Purdue a professor who is teaching a class really does write his/her own syllabus and exams. Writes it in the sense of composes it, yes, but that does not mean that they physically type out the fair copy for duplication. The prof might very well just have told the minion “Oh, and put in this quotation from TKAM” (points at highlighted section in book). > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > It’s a well-known novel in Canada - it was on our Grade 11 English curriculum when I went to school, for example. OK. But Wiki tells me that TKAM was not published until 1960. It will have taken several more years for it to become common on U.S. high school syllabi, and almost certainly longer for Canada. Do we know how long ago this professor went to high school? ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/24 "2010-11-10T20:13:58Z")
I apologize for all the mistakes I have made: for past mistakes, mistakes I’m making right now, and all the mistakes I will be making in the future. [bow] [exit] ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/25 "2010-11-10T20:31:34Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > No, but your OP did not tell us that is how it was. > > Incidentally, are you sure the quotation is not from a speech made by the character Atticus Finch? If so, the error is no more than a typo. It might well have been. Regrettably, the presentation actually reads “Abicus Finch, Author, To Kill A Mockingbird.” > [@](#): > > OK. But Wiki tells me that TKAM was not published until 1960. It will have taken several more years for it to become common on U.S. high school syllabi, and almost certainly longer for Canada. Do we know how long ago this professor went to high school? He is about 40-45 years old, and so would have gone to school at more or less the same time as I did. And indeed, TKAM was on the syllabus when I attended school. It’s the go-to novel for that age group. I just wanted to provide people to opportunity to tell funny stories, but if you want to seriously investigate this claim, really, there’s no excuse. The error was egregious. He did the PowerPoint himself, he’s young enough to be aware of the novel and educated enough to know he should check on such things, and the presentation is rife with errors, typos, and things that are just flat out incoherent, so frankly it’s indicative of either his remarkable (for his position)( lack of brainpower or his cavalier attitude towards his work. Let’s get back to funny stories about hilarious errors made by college profs. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/26 "2010-11-10T21:00:54Z")
It’s extremely well known in the UK too. Harper Lee won a Pulitzer for the damn thing. That sort of thing is basic general knowledge for the educated, IMO. What subject does the prof teach? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/27 "2010-11-10T21:05:09Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > All professors are supposed to know everything about everything are they? I guess it is a good thing \all professors are banned from appearing on _Jeopardy_\, or it would get very boring indeed, what with everyone always knowing every answer all the time. > > I have been a university professor (sort of), and I can’t think, off the top of my head, who wrote _To Kill a Mockingbird_ (although I do recall that Atticus Finch is a central character). Nobody expects a professor to know everything. But we expect them to know the subject of the course they are teaching. ---
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/28 "2010-11-11T13:54:05Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > All professors are supposed to know everything about everything are they? I guess it is a good thing \all professors are banned from appearing on _Jeopardy_\, or it would get very boring indeed, what with everyone always knowing every answer all the time. > > I have been a university professor (sort of), and I can’t think, off the top of my head, who wrote _To Kill a Mockingbird_ (although I do recall that Atticus Finch is a central character). > > In fact, outside their area of specialization, there is really no reason to expect professors to be any more knowledgeable than any other reasonably intelligent person. > > Have you never encountered the stereotype of the absent minded professor, who knows everything about their own subject but nothing about anything else? We have not been told that this is a professor of English Literature (if it is, then I will agree to to mildly shocked at their brain fart). > > Also, I rather doubt whether _To Kill a Mockingbird_ is quite so well known outside the United States as it is inside. (And this professor is in Canada.) I certainly never learned about it at school in the U.K., and although I have read lots of novels in my time, including many American ones, this is not one of them. It may be that it is on most American high school curricula (presumably because it is - so I have heard - concerned with some uniquely American social problems), but that is not the case elsewhere. I don’t expect every professor to know about everything, they’re supposed to set the example. When your professor makes spelling and grammar errors, it is detrimental the students’ faith in him or her. And geez, even if you’re not a professor, if you’re going to quote something from a book, at least get the character’s name right! That goes for anyone. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/29 "2010-11-11T14:17:15Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Nobody expects a professor to know everything. But we expect them to know the subject of the course they are teaching. Well, that is the thing really. It is not at all apparent from **RickJay** ’s OP that TKAM is the subject, or even a large part of the subject of the course that is being taught. If that is in fact the case then this is something a lot worse than than the “dumb” and funny mistake that **RickJay** presented it as. It is evidence of serious professional incompetence or dereliction, and, to me, no laughing matter at all. (And I doubt that the cause of problem is dumbness: it seems much more likely to be arrogance or extreme laziness.) If this guy is teaching a course on TKAM, and he does not know or care who wrote it, he is cheating his students and deserves to be fired. Even if the immediate responsibility for introducing the error belongs to a typist (perhaps working from dictation or notes) the professor has still been very negligent in letting the error slip through, and I do not think it is funny. However, since **RickJay** apparently introduced this as something humorous (and he reaffirms that that was his intention in post #25), I inferred that the reference to TKAM was in the nature of an aside or an epigraph, a semi-serious sidelight on course material that was really concerned with something quite different: race relations, or American history, or psychology, or even possibly chemistry or mechanical engineering, or, indeed, almost anything apart from 20th century American literature. Professors sometimes do put asides like that into syllabus material to try to lighten the mood a bit, and I can see how certain sorts of errors in material like that might sometimes be taken as humorously “dumb.” If, for instance, a middle aged professor tries to seem “with it” by making a reference to contemporary pop culture, but gets something that is very well known to his students quite wrong, that might well be funny. However, I do not really see not knowing the author of TKAM as falling into that sort of category. To me it just seems like an everyday, boring sort of error, like someone getting a _Jeopardy_ question wrong, but YMMV I guess. I agree with **Agent Foxtrot** that it is bad form, lazy and disrespectful to the students, to get something like that wrong on a course handout, but I don’t see it as funny or as particularly “dumb.” But, to repeat, if this is indeed for a course largely about TKAM, or about 20th century American literature, or literature at all really, then, if the error is entirely the professor’s fault, the error is not dumb or funny, it is scandalous; if the error was introduced by a typist, it is just sad that the prof was too lazy to check the typists work (and did not instruct them clearly enough). ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/30 "2010-11-11T14:18:29Z")
I had a freshman-level Sociology professor who was a pretty big dope. After class one day, a student asked him what was the specific name of [the Supreme Court case that we’d been discussing that day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education). He fumbled a bit, then rallied and responded confidently: “Brown vs. the Supreme Court.” Ok, he really should know the name of the case, but, whatever, I’d be willing to give him a pass; we all have forgetful days and curious gaps in our knowledge. But “versus the Supreme Court”? That suggests he has basically no idea how the Court (or any court) functions, despite being a professor of sociology. This same professor also tried to impress us on the first day of class by telling [this story](http://snopes.com/college/exam/flattire.asp), in the first person. If I’d known at the time that he was lying I just would have dropped the course… ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126/31 "2010-11-11T18:01:02Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > If that is in fact the case then this is something a lot worse than than the “dumb” and funny mistake that **RickJay** presented it as. It is evidence of serious professional incompetence or dereliction, and, to me, no laughing matter at all. This is pretty much how I see it. The OP made it clear that the subject didn’t just happen to come up. It wasn’t a chemistry class where some student raised his hand and asked the professor a question about _To Kill a Mockingbird_. It appeared on a handout that the professor had prepared before the class started. This was something he came up with with full foreknowledge of what he was saying. So not only was he ignorant, he was apparently overconfident enough that he didn’t bother checking to see if he was ignorant. And in my opinion, that makes him even stupider than somebody who just doesn’t know the facts. A person who doesn’t know something is at least aware of his ignorance. A person who’s sure he knows something that he doesn’t isn’t even aware of his own ignorance. The former can attempt to fix the problem; the latter isn’t aware the problem exists. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worlds-dumbest-university-prof/560126.md?page=1)