Opinionated Professors

[Rageaholic]

Why can't professors keep their goddamn opinions to themselves? I mean, I understand you're passionate about the topic and feel like you have some insight. BUT when long tangents about health care and how we can't afford it become the norm, you're only putting people to sleep. Especially when you end up taking the whole class time (3 long torturous hours) and still don't get through all the powerpoint slides you wanted to.

I know I'm not the only one who's glad to be out of that class.

[firecat88]

Oh gosh, my calculus professor was exactly like this! He spent more time talking sports, politics, and farming than he did actually lecturing about math.

[Rageaholic]

Calculus? Wow that's even worse.

Mine was econ so at least he had an excuse to go on political tangents, but you'd have to try pretty damn hard to find a way to tie in politics to calculus.

[HYHYBT]

I'm glad the only economics class I've had to take was a "hybrid" course, mostly online and so meeting only once a week, mainly for questions and (student) presentations. It was still pretty clear which way he went politically (which it seems to me would be hard to hide completely if teaching that subject) but it wasn't a big deal or a major part of the class. There simply wasn't *time* for it to be, whether he'd wanted it to be that way or not.

[guywithashovel]

I had a few profs who had defined political opinions and weren't bashful about letting them out in class. One of my history profs was a staunch Conservative Republican (yeah, a right wing professor, imagine that), and he would often make snide remarks about Democrats and liberals in class. One time, we had Ted Strickland for the commencement speaker, and he never stopped talking about how he boycotted that commencement ceremony because of it. Ted Strickland is a former US Representative from Ohio, and the former Governor of Ohio, too. He's also a Democrat.

I had another history professor who was a Marxist, and he had no problem telling that to anyone who would listen. He was actually a pretty cool guy overall, though. One time in class, he actually made a passionate defense of professional athletes' salaries, saying that they get paid that kind of money because they have a special intelligence that most other people don't have.

Overall, I found it best to try to take professors' opinions with a grain of salt and just do the best I could in class. Even with the really opinionated ones, I never had problems, and it was because I used this approach.

[MadMike]

Oh gosh, my calculus professor was exactly like this! He spent more time talking sports, politics, and farming than he did actually lecturing about math.

Damn, is it just math teachers that do that? My algebra teacher was really bad with that. He'd spend the first half of the class rambling about all kinds of bullshit, then he'd finally try to actually teach, and then spend the last few minutes of the class complaining that the class periods were too short to really teach anything.

[BlaqueKatt]

my husband had a hardcore vegan teacher(who made it her mission to convert her students) for his english comp, forced the students to watch what were actually faked or out of date propaganda films and comment.

He gave me the names of the films, and I tracked, the date filmed, who financed it, where it was filmed, and anything that countered the claims(some of them were "contraband" because the filmmakers had been successfully sued for slander/libel). She was not happy with my husband, especially because the other students lost quite a bit of respect for her, and felt pretty dumb.

[Jaden]

I had a weird variation of this.

I had a teacher who routinely spent half the class having a largely student-driven discussion - not forcing her beliefs on us - about various social/political issues that were prevalent at the moment. She'd bring something up and keep an open-minded discussion going with us for literally half the class almost routinely. The discussions, in and of themselves, were enjoyable and insightful.

Sounds great for a government or philosophy class, right? Well, there's the catch - it was an ancient mythology class.

Needless to say, we fell reeeeeally far behind our schedule.

[Slytovhand]

So, why aren't people going above their heads and making complaints to the dean of the faculty?

I mean, who is paying for this 'education'? In the US, you pay bucketloads of cash, get into debt for decades - and for what??? To hear crap that has nothing to do with what you chose to spend you hard-to-be earned cash....

Go to the top, make your complaints. (probably smart to record some of these 'lectures' as well... )

[Rageaholic]

Fortunately, it's over, but I will let him have it on the student eval (I'm sure others have).

[bex1218]

My history teacher did this to a degree in college. I fell asleep.

[AdminAssistant]

I always start discussions off with something light...current events type stuff. So, we may spend 5-10 minutes talking about football or the Oscars or whatever (I try to avoid religion or politics). But, I have found that having that 'warm-up' period gets students more eager to discuss the topic at hand, especially with morning classes.

[Jaden]

I always start discussions off with something light...current events type stuff. So, we may spend 5-10 minutes talking about football or the Oscars or whatever (I try to avoid religion or politics). But, I have found that having that 'warm-up' period gets students more eager to discuss the topic at hand, especially with morning classes.

I have no problem with this. And like I said, on their own, the discussions were quite enjoyable and enlightening, perfect for other classes that are more focused on things like that. It's just that, in my case, it would routinely take up half of a 50-minute class period. Once or twice, it took up all but 5-10 minutes.

[firecat88]

I always start discussions off with something light...current events type stuff. So, we may spend 5-10 minutes talking about football or the Oscars or whatever (I try to avoid religion or politics). But, I have found that having that 'warm-up' period gets students more eager to discuss the topic at hand, especially with morning classes.

5-10 minutes is no big deal. When the conversations push 20 minutes of a 50 minute class, though, is when it gets annoying. I'm convinced, though, that several other people in the class (the ones who didn't drop. I swear, there were like 10 of us at the end and the class started with 30) intentionally got him going on it.

Between the incessant talk of cows, baseball, why he should be president, and his habit of going over one section in the chapter and promptly flipping to the review questions and having us do questions we hadn't even discussed how to do, it's a wonder anyone passed. Myself included.

[Racket_Man]

Oh gosh, my calculus professor was exactly like this! He spent more time talking sports, politics, and farming than he did actually lecturing about math.

Try having a GRADE school nun do the same thing but wander FAR off of math and into the realms of religion almost EVERY single class. and people wonder why I am not so great at math. YEAH got real turned off during the critical learnin years.