Professor Flunks entire class.

[Aragarthiel]

In high school, I had a chemistry teacher who the students quickly grew to dread having as their last class of the day. Every single time a student was disruptive or interrupted the class in any way, the teacher would delay the class's dismissal by a minute or two. It was not uncommon for the class to wind up leaving 20 minutes or more past the school's regular dismissal time.

Would he have personally driven home the students who missed their buses? I rode a bus all through high school and had nobody who could come pick me up until four hours after school let out, so I would have been stranded 20 miles from home. He wouldn't have gotten away with it at all, the parents (and probably the media) would have had his head.

[Rageaholic]

Apparently, there were some students who would approach him at the start of his class and say things like, "I can't stay late today, I have a doctor's appointment," or some such. He told the class, "I don't keep anybody late. You keep yourselves late when you don't pay attention or you disrupt my teaching."

Two things I hate in teachers.

1. The idea that their class time is more important than anything else on earth.

2. Blame shifting. "You punish yourself when you break my rules". Okay then I won't punish myself. What's that? You're writing me up? So you ARE the one punishing me.

[Lindsay B.]

And since they didn't know who did it, they had to address everybody.

So why didn't they address everybody? Why did the principal let the girls go on time, and only keep the boys after school for her lecture? Was there some reason to think that it couldn't have been a girl who pulled this prank?

It was a Playboy magazine. So what? The teacher was a man. If a student is going to leave an adult magazine under a teacher's desk as a prank, wouldn't the student choose the magazine based on the teacher's gender, rather than the student's? Wouldn't it be kind of counterintuitive for a Playgirl magazine to be found under a male teacher's desk? Assuming, of course, that the teacher isn't gay.

It just doesn't seem reasonable to me for the administration to assume that the culprit had to be a boy.

[Anthony K. S.]

In the specific case of extending class due to a disruption, though, if a student's disruption causes a teacher to lose a minute of class time, I can see how he feels it's only appropriate to extend the class by a minute. In that case it's not a punishment per se but a consequence of having to make up lost time.

Well, not quite.

My chemistry teacher would actually add the minute to the class time immediately upon any student disrupting or interrupting at all. And if that didn't make the student stop right away, he would add another minute, and so on.

So, more often than not, a minute or two would get added to the class time even though the actual disruption only lasted five or ten seconds.

If the teacher ran out of material before the extended class time ran out, he would just move on to material from his next lesson plan, or tell the students to begin their homework for the remainder of the class period.

But, in general, I do understand what you're saying.

[Blue Ginger]

She is complaining of the competence of the incoming students more every year. It is against provincial education standards to fail students at the grade and high school levels. Each year coming in is less prepared to deal with university than the year before. ............. Even the students at the top of the class are getting less training and competence, because the university is basically dumbing down the classes for a hope that enough students can keep up.

I can understand an entire class being too incompetent to pass a reasonably well taught class, if they are coming in lacking the foundation to understand the subjects taught.

This is a major part of the problem. It is probably part of the problem faced by this professor.

In both Primary and High School, I was learning things at a much fast rate than my peers. Basically, I would learn a new concept in 20 minutes that would take the a majority of my class 1 hour and the stragglers might finally understand after 3 hours over several days. This meant that we could only go as fast as the stragglers.

Out of 30 students, at least 6 would be tantrum throwing 'it's sssooooooo hard' kids. I fully believe a few of these kids would have done a lot better being held back for a year or having an aide in the classroom to help them keep up. If they had been helped early, it would have been a lot better in the long run for everyone.

I'm betting that this professor got more than the average amount of the 'it's sssooooo hard' students and he just snapped.

Dumbing down the course work doesn't help anyone, not the smart kids and not the slowest. It just makes it that much harder when you eventually finish and start trying to make it in the real world.

And don't get me started on group punishments.

[Anthony K. S.]

Was there some reason to think that it couldn't have been a girl who pulled this prank?

As far as I've ever been able to figure ... No.

From the start of the school day until dismissal, our class pretty much moved as a single unit from one classroom to the next. There were also times, in the mornings and afternoons, when students could go into classrooms (if they needed to retrieve a book or something) when nobody was around.

Whatever point at which a male student could have slipped something under a teacher's desk unnoticed, a female student could have done it just as easily.

Much as we'd probably like to think otherwise, it actually does appear that the teacher and principal really did just make a snap judgment that whoever pulled this "prank" had to be a boy.

In all fairness, the girls in our school were generally better-behaved than the boys. I couldn't think of any girl in that class who I would suspect of doing something like this, but I remember several boys who I wouldn't have been at all surprised to learn was the culprit.

I would say that it was very likely a boy - maybe a 95% probability, in my opinion - but, admittedly, not a certainty.

That's not really what this is about, though. When I mentioned this incident, I wasn't thinking of it as a gender issue, but an example of a group punishment.

[Lindsay B.]

Anthony K. S. to Lindsay B. (Via Private Message) :

Lindsay, please, don't go there. I understand and respect that this is the kind of thing that hits close to home for you, but the thread isn't about gender equality. It's about education, and in a related subject, group punishments.

Point taken. Although, I will say that in that particular case, it was more like punishing half of a group, when there was no real evidence that the culprit was actually in the half that was punished rather than the half that was let off scot-free.

[Anthony K. S.]

Point taken. Although, I will say that in that particular case, it was more like punishing half of a group, when there was no real evidence that the culprit was actually in the half that was punished rather than the half that was let off scot-free.

Understood. Now, let it go.

[Aragarthiel]

Out of 30 students, at least 6 would be tantrum throwing 'it's sssooooooo hard' kids. I fully believe a few of these kids would have done a lot better being held back for a year or having an aide in the classroom to help them keep up. If they had been helped early, it would have been a lot better in the long run for everyone.

This, and eliminate the ability for kids to drop out so easily, and take away the age requirement that high schools have (AFAIK, you can't be enrolled in high school if you're over 21, unless you're a Special Ed student). And give the smarter students the option to skip grades. I took first grade for less than three weeks before I was moved to second, and the only thing I had trouble with as a result was that I had to take a crash course in counting by 25.

[s_stabeler]

yeah, actual group pounishments are
onyl ever appropiate in two situations: 1. the military during basic training- which is where teachers got the idea from, i suspect. Even then, there is a limit. 2. when the entire group did, in fact, do it.

[Panacea]

Wow

I don't know what to think about this. On one hand, it's very possible that he got a bunch of lousy students who deserved the failing grade. But he also comes across as cocky and sanctimonious. And I have a hard time believing that every single student was so bad as to deserve a failing grade.

Yeah, I read about this. The professor was completely 100% wrong.

I get his frustration. I really do. I've been there. I once graded an entire class's papers in an online program I teach in part time. These were students about to graduate with their BSNs. Their work was horrible. Didn't follow the directions, horrible citation (APA), total lack of citation, discussion of the actual topic horrible.

Ugh. It took me a solid week to grade them all, and it was painful. When I posted the grade I posted an announcement to the entire class expressing my displeasure.

It wasn't the best way to handle it (though I didn't get in trouble with my boss) because it just alienated the class.

What this guy did was worse because he failed both the students who did well as well as the ones who did poorly. In my case the few students who did A work got their As because they earned them. He failed everyone. That isn't just, it isn't fair, and it doesn't follow the syllabus, which is a contract between professor and student. The grades were bound to have been appealed, and were.

He'll be lucky not to be fired, tenure or no tenure.

I know where you're coming from. In the schools I attended, it was a common practice to punish an entire class if any students misbehaved.

I went through this once. It was the last day of the school year, 7th grade. The kids were throwing their note books and school supplies out of the bus windows as they pulled out of the school. They did this every year. Well, our bus drive got a bug up his ass about it, told the kids to stop. I wasn't participating; I knew it was wrong because someone would have to clean it up.

When the kids didn't stop, the bus driver turned around and went back to the school. The driver ordered us off the bus and told the principal he'd told us to stop or he'd turn around. The principal told everyone that no one was going home until every scrap of paper was picked up. Grumbling the kids started the clean up.

I got back on the bus.

The principal boarded the bus and asked why I wasn't helping clean up.

Me: Because I didn't throw any trash. I didn't do anything wrong, and you can't punish me.

Principal: I'll call your mother.

Me: Call her. (this was one of the few times I defied authority as a child. But I knew Mom would back up me and she did).

Two other kids who lived on my street actually walked home rather than clean up. But I had no sympathy for them: they contributed to the mess.

yeah, actual group pounishments are
onyl ever appropiate in two situations: 1. the military during basic training- which is where teachers got the idea from, i suspect. Even then, there is a limit. 2. when the entire group did, in fact, do it.

The point of group punishment is to establish group cohesion. That works in the military. It works in sports. It doesn't work when the group is essentially a collection of individuals.

[HYHYBT]

Group punishment is NEVER appropriate unless the entire group is known without a doubt to be involved. "It works" or "it provides cohesion" or whatever is completely and utterly irrelevant; those can be accomplished equally well in other ways and do not in the least bit counteract "it's unjust."

[protege]

1. The idea that their class time is more important than anything else on earth.

My grade-school music teacher was like that. We had his class one day a week, and to him, it was the most important thing ever. So important, that he'd keep us *late* every damn day. That might have not been important if we were in say, 1st or 2nd period...but closer to lunch or at the end of the day? You'd either get to lunch late you barely had time to eat, or you'd have to chase the bus as it pulled away.

Same guy would hold up band students, and try to prevent them from leaving his class. At the time, band had an odd schedule, which didn't correspond to other classes. Most teachers were understanding if we suddenly needed to leave. Not this guy. As some of us were leaving for band, he thought he'd block the door...only to be told to fuck off and get shoved out of the way. Oddly, we never got into trouble for that.

While I like classical music, I really didn't give a shit about it as much as he did. In fact, nobody really did, mostly because it was boring as hell. Reading about the same composer or piece for weeks on end simply sucked.

Then there was the homework. He'd actually try to assign homework...but wouldn't let us take the books out of the room. Now how the hell does that work? Naturally, nobody did it...and when threatened with detention or "being written up" we were all "good luck with that."

[Andara Bledin]

That isn't just, it isn't fair, and it doesn't follow the syllabus, which is a contract between professor and student. The grades were bound to have been appealed, and were.

What gets me about this case is this:

He's the teacher. He's the one in charge. He's the one with the power.

If they were being unruly, he should have stopped it. He could have nipped this shit in the bud, and he didn't. Instead, he let it grow to the point where it was utterly unmanageable.

That's on him more than on the students, themselves. They were guilty of pushing boundaries, but he was guilty of letting them get away with it.

[Shangri-laschild]

This, and eliminate the ability for kids to drop out so easily, and take away the age requirement that high schools have (AFAIK, you can't be enrolled in high school if you're over 21, unless you're a Special Ed student). And give the smarter students the option to skip grades. I took first grade for less than three weeks before I was moved to second, and the only thing I had trouble with as a result was that I had to take a crash course in counting by 25.

I almost wonder if a new method should be found other than how the grades are set up now. In college, and to some extent in high school or middles school at least with Math, you aren't stuck in one overall grade exactly. I mean technically yes but you take the classes at the level you are at. What if you're awesome at English but need more help at Math? Especially in elementary school. You can't mix and match which classes work best for the student by advancing them to the next level in the subjects they understand but not in the subjects they don't. There has to be some better way of doing things.