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I'm an evil, heartless bastard. My student told me so...
- Thread starter dreamtheatervt
- Start date
I was making a point that some other people here were also trying to express. That college students (and high school as well) need to be challenged. Challenged like the real world challenges them. If the teacher says read the questions and the students don't read the questions and give half assed answers, than that's a real problem. Most of the schools compensate for the spoon fed teachings that they give these students but, not raising the teaching difficulty and challenging the students, but by dumbing down the material.Hot Canuck said:
This only accents the problem and futhur propetuates the dumbing down of America. The people that attended the event are THE DIRECT RESULT of this problem that we have in our schools. Yes, TV, music, and the rest of society plays an important part in it, but for the majority it IS the education that is way subpar that are producing these idiots.
I grew up with these people and these teacher. I saw first hand how the books that they were reading out of had ideas that were well over 10 years out of data. AND I WENT TO A PRIVATE SCHOOL ALL MY LIFE! I stopped lettign the teacher "teach" me and did the minimal to pass each grade after I figured out what was going on (which luckally was in the 3rd grade). Ya want to know what I did? I went to the library. I picked up every book I could and scowered the internet and taught myself. UP TO DATE knowledge that I didn't get and was not going to get in school becase only (from grade 1-the end of high school) three teachers actually cared to have me after class and teach me stuff outside of the books they were fFORCED to teach us. The ideals they were FORCED to teach us in fear that if they didn't, they would be fired.
I count myself lucky that I am NOT one of the resultant morons that don't have enough sense to realise that there is a presentation going on in the room that I had decided to just walk into and start eating. It gives me hope that SOME teachers are actually being hard on their students and making them think. Why are they egtting mad? Because their brains are so atrafied that it is making them angray that they have to work. Hell, it probably hurts them to use their mind at this point.
So, in closing, I am sorry for any spelling and gramatical error outside of my usual norm. I typed that in a fit of streaming concesness and I hope it issustrates my point in much more detail than my previous post.
Nope, I don't like soggy stuff, and a la mode tends to get that way.Pam said:
I think I love you now........swooooooon.Pam said:
Chocholate beers are my favorite. My all time favorite is Bison Breweries' Chocholate Stout.....
Pam said:
um, not really. i have had some monumentally bad profs in my time (actually, they were all lenient ones too...) but how well they teach the subject matter should not affect a students' ability to read a question and know whether they should cross out the wrong option or circle the right one.
besides that, good or bad i have never, ever had a prof not encourage, nay, *beg* students to come by office hours if they don't understand something (even if it's something they should have learned before the course) i once even had a prof give out his cell phone number because he was going to be away the weekend before the exam. a handfull of students go to ask questions, same ones every week.
now, we had something like a watered down no child left behind here in ontario and i managed to get out of it ok, so why can't we expect the same of other university students? if they can't think on their own past memorizing facts maybe they shouldn't be in university. community college is not the worst place in the world.
imaguitargod said:
You're conflating all kinds subjects and debates that have little to nothing to do with the original question. I'll say again, manners have nothing to do with education, and that's as far as I'm going on the subject.
On the original subject, I don't think anyone is suggesting that Captain Capsicum should dumb down his class. We're saying that the students that object to his style of testing have a legitimate gripe. They weren't tested on organic chemistry, they were tested -and graded- on test taking skills. If Captain Capsicum wants to test them on test taking skills, as their teacher, he should, at the very least, delineate the skills he expects them to have. There's a huge difference in challenging your students and baffling them.
Honestly, if you've never had to take a class as difficult as most people find a college level organic chemistry class, don't be so quick to judge. The stress can be excruciating. I used to get so stressed I would vomit after exams. After having an instructor yell at me to quit trying to understand it and just do the problems, I quit. I never passed the second semester because it just wasn't worth putting myself through that stress. And none of my instructors pulled trick questions on us, or failed to make clear what was expected.
you need to ask questions that are not straight forward to differentiate between the people who are just regurgitating memorized information and the people who actually process the info. i don't think it's a test taking skill to correct a false statement, i think it's a thinking exercise.Pam said:
Pam said:
i've taken some damn hard classes, and i have a couple hard ones to come. i've been under pukey stress. it's school, your job for four years is to do this. and for this privilege you pay through the nose. the instructor that yelled at you was a bad teacher, but i'm telling you that i sit out there everyday with some bad students. they ask me for 'help' all the time and some fake like they're asking questions just to get a good look at my assignment but some just ask me to photocopy my work for them. they're lazy, and they're gonna have the same degree as me. so when you get audited cuz your accountant is one of these kids and he says the form wasn't straight-forward is the IRS going to listen to him?
Pam said:
While I don't doubt the hardships that a collage student, especially of a subject as hard as organic chemistry is (and I've sat in on many of such corses at John Carrol University) there is the little hings that teachers do to challenge students that I find is the subject of this debate (forgive me if I am missinterperting it).
I do belive manners have alot to do with education but since you are not willing to go down that avenue (which I respect and say ok) then we will continue with you origianl subject (I always love how we all get off on rants and subjects that don't have to do 100% with the orginal subject matter, it's what makes this site great).
I do agree that we didn't state that he was dumbing down his class. I was stating that he was trying to do the exaxt opposit of that. From what I gathered is he was not only testing them on the subject but was also testing them on their ability to...hmmm...how can I phrase this...throwing another situation at them in which for them to use their knowledge in a more reality based area on the aplication of addapting the knowledge they have learned plus using the intellengence that they should have at this level to understanding the question asked of them in the fullest extent.
You wouldn't want your doctor just skimming your chart and giving you the wrong meds for what ails you. Just as if I wouldn't want someone who's supposed to have a degree in organic chemiestry teaching my child (oh god, me...have a child...that's a scary idea right there) who had just skimmed test questions and wasn't challeneged.
Now, if he was asking them trick questions such as "If a person dies on a plane and the plane was on the boarder of California and Navada, where would he be burried", then I would have a problem with that. But it doesn't seem like he was asking a trick question or asking too much. It seems like he was asking lagitimate questions that were not outside of the range that one would ascribe a collage student.
GrumpyBear said:
Isn't it, by your logic, my responsibility to make sure I have a competent accountant? Or doctor? Or mechanic or whatever? Aren't I supposed to be able to make these assessments, and if I'm not, too bad, I deserve whatever happens to me? I'll learn by my mistakes, correct?
Look, I'm really sorry the education system has left you so bitter and twisted and scarred. My experiences in training students and taking classes are clearly very different than yours. I've never looked on the people I have to train as the enemy; annoyances sometimes, but not the enemy. I also left school with an associate degree rather than face another semester of organic chemistry. It was the only class between me and a BS in Biology and a minor in Anthropology, but I crapped out. So, I guess I became one of those people you dismiss as only worthy of community college, and I'm guessing we really don't have any common ground to discuss this further.
Pam said:
that's really not what i meant at all... i was saying that we need to be able to trust that people with degrees have the knowledge associated with that degree because we have no other way to assess their competence.
also i'm sorry if you felt i was regarding community college as less worthy, i wouldn't call any level of education less worthy then another, but they are different. i think it's time to agree to disagree...
If it was an english class and not organic chemistry I would understand but trying to teach other skills that you find important is not what you are there for. I voted for Evil, but not heartless. You need a heart to live. On the other side, it must be annoying having students that can't follow simple instructions but give them a scare not a failing grade if they know there stuff.
dreamtheatervt said:As some of you know, I teach organic chemistry at Virginia Tech. My exams are known for their difficulty, which I tell them day one, and most of them also learn from talking to my former students. But I'm kind of like Bob Knight in a way, many of them come back and tell me they appriciate (in hind sight) the way I run things.
Well, this week I gave them their first quiz. Before I give it out, my I always give the advice, "READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY". That said, I've encountered the following mistakes:
The question states, "Choose a replacement solvent to rectify the following problems and explain your choice:
Student gives no explanation, and receives no credit. Then calls me "unfair and unreasonable".
For a series of true/false questions, I state, "If the statement is false, change it to make it true." Several students quit reading at "true or false" in the previous sentence.
Another question states in the middle of the question "The apparatus is calibrated correctly." Four students give an answer of "The melting point apparatus was not correctly calibrated" (or something along those lines). COLLEGE SOPHMORES AND JUNIORS!
I saved the best for last...the directions for a word choice series of questions stated, "cross out the incorrect word or phrase in the parenthesis to make the statement correct." Seven of them decided to circle the correct word or phrase. I gave them no credit. One student decided to make a case out of it. I told them that if your boss told you to do something, and you did it differently, you would not be in their good graces. I explained that reading carefully was an important life skill and that jumping to conclusions can lead to serious problems since we work potentially dangerous chemicals on a regular basis. After a 15 minute argument that this student realized they weren't going to win ensued, they told me, "You're an evil, heartless bastard."
I took it as a compliment.
Dude, have you ever considered being a drill sargeant?
You know as an avid reader of Socrates & Plato, a Taoist, an advocate of Chaos Theory and a cryptic crossword addict I can tell you with all certainty, the answer is always within the question.
If you understand the question fully the answer will be obvious.
.
I probably should post this in the ' f@#$ it im drinking' thread
If you understand the question fully the answer will be obvious.
.
I probably should post this in the ' f@#$ it im drinking
' threadSickmont said:
When I was in HS, the army tried really hard to get me to join because I aced this test that the army had our school give us (did this happen to anybody else? That would have been 1994-6ish). Even if I was interested in a military career at that time, I don't think I could have passed a physical. I really screwed up my shoulder when I was in Little League, and I had to sign a bunch of waivers to play HS football that said the school wasn't responsible for any shoulder injury.
Getting back to my evilness...I also require any student who gets below 70% on a quiz to take a retake, and they get an average of the two scores. It gives them a chance to bring up their score, and more importantly, learn the material.
I was talking to another professor about this, and they likened it to reading the fine print of a contract. If you sign something without reading/understanding it, you're still responsible, so I got support from where I need it the most. I was just really frustrated when I originally posted because I had spent so much time the last two days grading them and I needed to vent. I was expecting a more light-hearted discussion, but it was nice to see some thought-out responses.
Well, as an avid reader of Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker and Berkeley Breathed, the first three authors force me to appreciate the insideousness of his misdirections, while the last one makes me wonder if he shouldn't be finding a more humanitarian way to spread his knowledge. Less preacher, more teacher???
No insults meant DT - professors have always had my respect ( except those who teach English - if you weren't with Shakespeare, Poe, Shaw Or Vonnegut when they wrote their tales, how can you state with 100% assurance that YOU know exactly what they meant...) . But you did ask the question, and I think that by asking, you had probably figured it out for yourself.
I'm with Bent though - I'm playing hookie and am off to the pub...a pint of Smithwicks barkeep!!!
No insults meant DT - professors have always had my respect ( except those who teach English - if you weren't with Shakespeare, Poe, Shaw Or Vonnegut when they wrote their tales, how can you state with 100% assurance that YOU know exactly what they meant...) . But you did ask the question, and I think that by asking, you had probably figured it out for yourself.
I'm with Bent though - I'm playing hookie and am off to the pub...a pint of Smithwicks barkeep!!!
THIS THREAD HAS THE LONGEST MOTHER LOVING POSTS I HAVE EVER SEEN.
Hahaha, yes, I did notice that.cheezydemon said:
I'm at that area right mow....mmm....beer....JayT said:
AlabamaJack
eXtreme
you guys are a bad influence on me...it's Defcon 1 bloody mary time...
Hmmmm...wonder how some of BBs Naga concentrate in the bloody mary would be...yup, gonna have to try it....Defcon 1 and Naga Concentrate....heaven...
Just made it and all I can say is WOW...I found a new use for BBs Naga Concentrate...just dipped a table spoon in the sauce and stirred my bloody mary with it....
Hmmmm...wonder how some of BBs Naga concentrate in the bloody mary would be...yup, gonna have to try it....Defcon 1 and Naga Concentrate....heaven...
Just made it and all I can say is WOW...I found a new use for BBs Naga Concentrate...just dipped a table spoon in the sauce and stirred my bloody mary with it....
I've watched this thread from the get go & its funny some would say you're to harsh on the students, I say BS! like you said you're dealing with dangerous chemicals & another comparison would you want a doctor working on you that floated through med school ? no thanks!
come on you are taking a TEST! READ the question before you answer, plain & simple in my book. you dont read half of a question & then answer it do you on a test ? because if you dont read the whole question how can you really answer it ? if they do how in the hell did they ever get to college ? I suppose that leave no child behind BS
if you're stupid it just wasnt meant to be
if you're told to color in the circle & not X it, how hard is that ? simple test computer scoring test, which this type of test isnt difficult. but for some reason your question to X out the incorrect word is difficult to understand
then they circle the word is questionable because did they circle the word that makes it correct or did the circle the word that makes it the wrong word ? again READ THE QUESTION! if they're to stupid that they cant do that why are they in college ?
to figure the question is just true or false & ignore all those other words after that which is part of the question, how stupid are they ? how can you miss those eleven words after "true or false" ? & consider it a simple true/false question.
dreamtheater - dont change. college was not meant to be easy, & dealing with dangerous chemicals fine print can make a difference between life or death! if they dont want to take the time to read a question during a test what makes you think they'd take the time to read something & do the correct procedure when dealing with chemicals ?
come on you are taking a TEST! READ the question before you answer, plain & simple in my book. you dont read half of a question & then answer it do you on a test ? because if you dont read the whole question how can you really answer it ? if they do how in the hell did they ever get to college ? I suppose that leave no child behind BS
if you're stupid it just wasnt meant to be if you're told to color in the circle & not X it, how hard is that ? simple test computer scoring test, which this type of test isnt difficult. but for some reason your question to X out the incorrect word is difficult to understand
then they circle the word is questionable because did they circle the word that makes it correct or did the circle the word that makes it the wrong word ? again READ THE QUESTION! if they're to stupid that they cant do that why are they in college ?
to figure the question is just true or false & ignore all those other words after that which is part of the question, how stupid are they ? how can you miss those eleven words after "true or false" ? & consider it a simple true/false question.
dreamtheater - dont change. college was not meant to be easy, & dealing with dangerous chemicals fine print can make a difference between life or death! if they dont want to take the time to read a question during a test what makes you think they'd take the time to read something & do the correct procedure when dealing with chemicals ?