Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 190 posts

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#101

Post by balabaster »

ColinWright wrote: post #82
Lafcadio wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think it's just a common mistake, and I corrected them because it's a pet peeve of mine, not because I think it is a big deal. Your line of thinking is not new to me though, and if "could care less" is sarcastic then I would argue it is particularly ineffective sarcasm (see: http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html ).

It's no longer a common mistake, it's now become an idiom in some dialectic variations. As such it cannot be broken down into its constituent parts and analyzed for meaning, it has to be understood as an atomic utterance. It's a little like "The proof is in the pudding." The original was "The proof (test) of the pudding is in the eating," but it got shortened, possibly by mistake, possibly by laziness. And so it is w…

The more you study language, the more you realize that none of it makes sense. It's a wonder how any of us English speakers understand what each other are talking about. I think the trick is to only look deep enough to gauge the sentiment of the presenter and no further. If you look too deeply, the whole thing falls to pieces.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#102

Post by chrisbennet »

ohfunkyeah wrote: post #88
dagw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my experience at University great teachers who push and challenge students are generally disliked by the large group of students that don't particularly want to be pushed or challenged.

But why wouldn't they want to be pushed and challenged? The only thing universities offer is the chance to learn more and be pushed or challenged. AFAIK they could not possibly be there for any other reason than to learn deeply. I think it would be interesting to know if professors who push and challenge within a non-dgree open online course would face the similar wrath? I'd bet not.

"The only thing universities offer is the chance to learn more and be pushed or challenged."

Um, have you been to a university? ;-)

When you think about it, the professors aren't (necessarily) there to teach either. They are there primarily for the opportunity to do research though that may be changing as many professors are part time minimum wage contractors.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#103

Post by mnarayan01 »

ColinWright wrote: post #82
Lafcadio wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think it's just a common mistake, and I corrected them because it's a pet peeve of mine, not because I think it is a big deal. Your line of thinking is not new to me though, and if "could care less" is sarcastic then I would argue it is particularly ineffective sarcasm (see: http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html ).

It's no longer a common mistake, it's now become an idiom in some dialectic variations. As such it cannot be broken down into its constituent parts and analyzed for meaning, it has to be understood as an atomic utterance. It's a little like "The proof is in the pudding." The original was "The proof (test) of the pudding is in the eating," but it got shortened, possibly by mistake, possibly by laziness. And so it is w…

Generally I agree with this approach, but this case seems similar (though obviously not in the safety aspects) to "flammable" versus "inflammable". Obviously you can't really stop actual usage, but I know this used to always confuse me when I was younger, so I'm disinclined to criticize people who yell "Stop!".

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#104

Post by ohfunkyeah »

evanpw wrote: post #85
ColinWright wrote: post #2

Here's the take-away quotation for me: The better the professors were, as measured by their students' grades in later classes, the lower their ratings from students. "If you make your students do well in their academic career, you get worse evaluations from your students," Pellizzari said. Students, by and large, don't enjoy learning from a taskmaster, even if it does them some good.

A lot of students are there to get a degree, not to learn something. Employers don't know or care how much freshman chemistry you remember (unless you're a chemist), but they do care if you didn't finish your degree because you couldn't pass some requirement. I wonder if the the same relationship is true in fields where there is a licensing exam at the end of your degree (like engineering). Or maybe something like a…

I'd argue that most employers don't really care. They want to use degree, university, and sometimes grades as a first-round filter for screening applicants. Do they actually care if you took the challenging Philosophy course from the good professor, or the easy-A from the Roman History professor? Hell no. So if the primary thing you want is a job, why would you ever take the challenging class? If a professor is significantly and knowingly more challenging than their peers and they don't adequately convey that up front why shouldn't they deserve a bad review. Part of the job is conveying expectations, and in my experience it seems like plenty of professors who will challenge and push know they are like this beforehand but really don't do anything they convey this until after a student is committed.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#105

Post by dghughes »

Lafcadio wrote: post #63
cantankerous wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True in theory, but not true in practice. Terrible lecturers find ways to rationalize the poor grades of their students (i.e. externalize the blame) and curve grades to get kids to pass the class. Especially bad lecturers will give the bulk of students high grades to preclude complaints. For their part, poor students could care less about what they learn, instead focusing on passing or getting a good letter grade. In…

Couldn't care less* <3

I'd like to start a new saying "I quantum state care".

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#106

Post by Someone1234 »

ColinWright wrote: post #82
Lafcadio wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think it's just a common mistake, and I corrected them because it's a pet peeve of mine, not because I think it is a big deal. Your line of thinking is not new to me though, and if "could care less" is sarcastic then I would argue it is particularly ineffective sarcasm (see: http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html ).

It's no longer a common mistake, it's now become an idiom in some dialectic variations. As such it cannot be broken down into its constituent parts and analyzed for meaning, it has to be understood as an atomic utterance. It's a little like "The proof is in the pudding." The original was "The proof (test) of the pudding is in the eating," but it got shortened, possibly by mistake, possibly by laziness. And so it is w…

The other thing that people often overlook, is that "could care less" and "couldn't care less" mean exactly the same thing IF the person saying "could care less" was intending to be sarcastic.

As in:

"I couldn't care less about this test." (literal)

"I could care less about this test." (sarcastic)

Yes, the actual expression is "couldn't care less" but I can easily see how people think it is "could care less" (in a sarcastic tone).

Same as "by the waist side" instead of "by the wayside." The term "wayside" is so rarely used now that people mishear it and rationalise the alternative definition that does make sense.

There are other examples too (correct on the right):

- Nip it in the butt vs. Nip it in the bud

- One in the same vs. One and the same

- You’ve got another thing coming vs. You’ve got another think coming

- Each one worse than the next vs. Each one worse than the last

- On accident vs. By accident

- For all intensive purposes vs. For all intents and purposes

- Extract revenge vs. Exact revenge

- etc

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#107

Post by crazy1van »

"And therein lies the paradox. Yes, students are paying, often handsomely, for their degree. But they're not exactly customers, either. They're participants in an experience — one that is meant to be challenging, even grueling."

If that's "not exactly" the definition of a customer, I'm not sure what is. The students are customers. The real paradox is if they vote for easier teachers, the product they are buying loses its value.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#108

Post by ColinWright »

crazy1van wrote: post #107

"And therein lies the paradox. Yes, students are paying, often handsomely, for their degree. But they're not exactly customers, either. They're participants in an experience — one that is meant to be challenging, even grueling." If that's "not exactly" the definition of a customer, I'm not sure what is. The students are customers. The real paradox is if they vote for easier teachers, the product they are buying loses…

Perhaps the problem is that the customer thinks they're buying one thing, the professors think they're selling something different. There's no clear statement as to what the product actually is.

Is the product an education, or a degree?

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#109

Post by chasing »

Students and professors are not peers.

A professor has to be able to force a student to do something they don't want to. "You don't understand this." "You're not doing this right." "You're not working hard enough to learn what you need to learn in the limited amount of time we have, here." Etc. A student might find this unpleasant, embarrassing, or whatever. But that doesn't mean the professor is wrong. Or bad at their job.

Student evaluations are valuable, of course, but the idea of using them alone to decide a professor's fate seems incredibly unfair.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#110

Post by s_baby »

kazinator wrote: post #96
amyjess wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had terrible professors who were ridiculously easy, though. Like one guy I didn't learn a thing from, because he constantly mumbled and wrote in really tiny print on the whiteboard... yet the class before each test, he'd discuss every single test question in detail and tell us the answers. A friend of mine had him for something else, and at one point after delivering a graded test, he said "if you didn't like yo…

That's awful. The right way to do it is "if you don't agree with your grade, give me your paper and I will look at it more carefully. Of course I'm not just going to look at the question you're contending, but all of them. Your grade may go up, but it also may go down. Do you wish to wager?" A very good high school math teacher of mine did this. I think he did not get very many takers; the students were never confide…

What's so great about this strategy? When a teacher does this to me I assume he/she is more interested in doing his research instead of leading a class.
Post reply on HN