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University Overrules Professor Who Failed Entire Management Class
McGruber writes: After a semester of disrespect, backstabbing, lying, and cheating, Texas A&M Galveston Professor Irwin Horwitz had all he could take. He "sent a lengthy email to his Strategic Management class explaining that they would all be failing the course. He said the students proved to be incompetent and lack the maturity level to enter the workforce." Professor Horwitz's email cited examples of students cheating, telling him to "chill out," and inappropriate conduct. He said students spread untrue rumors about him online, and he said at one point he even felt the need to have police protection in class. "I was dealing with cheating, dealing with individuals swearing at me both in and out of class, it got to the point that the school had to put security guards at that class and another class," said Horowitz.
However, Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Patrick Louchouarn made it very clear that the failing grades won't stick. The department head will take over the class until the end of the semester, according to school officials.
However, Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Patrick Louchouarn made it very clear that the failing grades won't stick. The department head will take over the class until the end of the semester, according to school officials.
Everyone is a precious snowflake and everyone passes, always.
From the articles I've read about it, the prof even admits that some of the class were honest, hard working, and doing well academically in the class. He threw a temper tantrum because some of the other students were mean to him, and failed all of them, good and bad.
Also, at least one of his cheating allegations was investigated and overturned by their university's administration. This sounds mostly like sour grapes.
I taught at a university for about ten years before moving off to private industry (sessional prof jobs pay poorly) and I've run into almost every behavior he complained about in the article and more, but never even once would I have considered punishing the students who were actually showing up and doing the work for the behavior of the ones who don't.
This guy picked the wrong way to deal with his problems, and the university administration is right to overturn his grading. Especially since he even admits that not all of the students deserved it. The USA is full of lawyer-happy lawsuit maniacs, and this is a situation where the university would be absolutely buried in litigation, which it would rightfully lose, if they didn't overturn it and assign grades based on academic performance.
I've seen a lot of whining about special snowflakes always needing passing grades, but in this case I think the overrule was the correct call. From the Inside Higher Ed write up on it, this is the section that gets me:
Instead of failing just the students that deserved it and giving appropriate grades to the rest of the students, he decided to fail everyone because the school wouldn't let him quit the course. So several students are doing the work and paying the tuition only to get a failing grade on their transcript because the professor wants to make a point. That's why it's getting justifiably overruled.
I can sympathize with number 1, and partially with number 4, but 2 and 3 hold no water at all. They should not be the concern of the professor. These undergraduates are supposedly a subset of adults.
Your immediate reaction is to ask: "How did the teacher fail these students?" Sadly, your reaction is endemic; and, moreover, indicative of the problem at every level of U.S. education.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
As found by another Slashdot user, the following article gives a much more complete picture.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
He was a sessional lecturer in his first semester at Galveston. He had made multiple attempts to deal with the bad actors in the class, and the university hadn't supported him. In addition to his love letter to the students, he wrote one to the department telling them what he thought of them and saying: The students are "your problem now." While burning that particular bridge may have seemed worthwhile to him, I doubt he's happy to have made the news. He probably would have liked to remain hireable as an instructor.
At least where I work, the administration in the past has sent a clear signal that -- while we officially do have such a disciplinary board -- they really don't want anyone invoking those procedures. Partly this is because now students are entitled to legal representation in those proceedings, and the whole process gets overwhelmingly complicated and expensive. The current recommended policy is "get the student to privately agree to a failing mark on that test", because that doesn't trigger the legal representation.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
It's the American way, we bail you out
The guy's a temporary adjunct (as most college instructors are nowadays). He probably gets paid about $3000 for all the work all semester for this course. He may not even know 6 other people at the college, never mind have any way of getting them to work for him as proctors. Is all the extra work and re-design worth the $1K left in the semester? Just walking away seems at least arguably better for one's mental health.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The "coming entitlement generation" has been on its way since at least the late 1980s when it was supposedly my cohort...and probably much, much longer.
Those articles started to appear in the 1880's. Every upcoming generation has been described as some sort of variant of entitled, lazy or "me first". It's the "get off my lawn" version of a newspaper editorial.
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” - Socrates
I was a lecturer at a university in Melbourne (AU) for over 3 years. I quit after being told I could not fail students whose work was way below par, as well as finding them directly plagiarizing (copypasting) work from the Internet. This was a design school, and the students they would not let me fail were all overseas students. The problem is that if these students get below a certain score they are "sent home" and the massive amounts of money they pay the university is gone. The thing that really horrifies me is that the universities are more tied to the money they get than what the degree they give stands for!
misattributed to Socrates.
a paraphrase of a quote from Aristophanes' Clouds, (see w:The Clouds,) a comedic play known for its caricature of Socrates.
From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Y...
This article suggests the most likely source for the quote commonly attributed to Socrates was actually crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907.
Looking at the digital copy of the dissertation linked in the above article, it looks like the source for the Socrates quote is a combination of two sections of text on page 74 of the disertation.
Socrates quote from grandparent:
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
Quote noted as misattributed to Socrates and suggested as paraphrased from Aristophanes at end of wiki link from parent:
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Excerpt from Kenneth John Freeman's 1907 dissertation:
[Lines 5-7] "The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. [Lines 19-21] Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters."
Paying tuition does not mean a University or college never prevents anyone from failing out of school. Full paying students fail out of school quite frequently and are not "bailed out" in an effort to create future alumni. So your statement is patently false and offered with no proof. In this particular case I am sure there were some students who passed the required tests without cheating but ended up being punished because of a bunch of immature morons causing all the trouble. By providing security for this professor the university evidently took the threats of violence claims seriously. The University was correct in preventing the whole class from failing and now they should try and make an effort to prove which students were cheating.