Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class • Hacker News Board

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#51

Post by virmundi » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

cbd1984 wrote: post #47

virmundi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define cultured? Say you're an average European. Hop into your (rented) car and drive 4 hours in any linear direction? Who are you going to see? Chances are someone from a different culture and history and probably one who once warred with you. I jump in my car and drive 4 hours, I'm at my state capital. I drive another 4 hours, I'm in Georgia. America is a huge country. We were the EU before unioning was cool. The "…

> Nothing but Sun Glass Huts and McDonalds coast to coast. This is so amazingly wrong I don't know where to begin.

The point is that we have, at a macro level, a common, homogenous culture. We have a common language, shared history, and shared cultural context.

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#52

Post by CWuestefeld » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #43

ajcarpy2005 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US citizens may be less cultured.

Define cultured? Say you're an average European. Hop into your (rented) car and drive 4 hours in any linear direction? Who are you going to see? Chances are someone from a different culture and history and probably one who once warred with you. I jump in my car and drive 4 hours, I'm at my state capital. I drive another 4 hours, I'm in Georgia. America is a huge country. We were the EU before unioning was cool. The "…

I take your point. Last fall we drove for 8 hours, from Austin, TX to Big Bend National Park. We'd have to drive several more hours before leaving the state.

On the other hand, there are many subcultures in America. Just going from an urban environment to the countryside will yield a big difference in the perspective of those living there.

And having just recently moved to TX from the East Coast, I also now realize a marked tendency of those on the coast to ignore the fact that the country covers 4 time zones. Today I'm booked in meetings from 12-2, as east coasters overlook the fact that my lunch schedule is an hour off their own.

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#53

Post by goodcanadian » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

I have little doubt that (some of) the students were childish assholes. I also have little doubt that the professor handled it poorly. Probably, he treated them like children. This is incredibly insulting to the majority of students that do care, and it does not solve the problem. I have seen that play out in university classes. In the end, rather than telling the assholes to get the fuck out, he throws a temper tantrum. No one is in the right here.

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#54

Post by VLM » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #45

Horwitz, who has taught management for two decades... What exactly did he teach? It doesn't appear he learned very much about "management". Imagine a manager firing all 30 of his direct reports. What would you suspect was the problem, the manager or the workers? Same thing here. Perhaps Professor Horwitz should get a real management job. Then he'd learn how easy he'd had it for the past two decades.

Thats covered in the article by a quote:

“The administration is all about passing these kids through and making as much money as possible,” he said.

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#55

Post by JadeNB » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

    Horwitz acknowledged that “a few” of the best performers might not deserve an F. But the school wouldn’t let him teach just those students, so he had no choice but to flunk everyone and leave the course, he said.

Wow—as a teacher myself, I went to this story all prepared to root for this guy, but can't. "[T]he school wouldn't let him teach just those students, so he had no choice but to flunk everyone"? Who knows what's going on inside the classroom that we don't know—but, whatever happened, regardless of the provocation, comments like this [0] are a stain on the profession of teaching. It is our (teachers') job to deal with our students professionally, and that professionalism on our part becomes more, not less, important when it is not demonstrated by our students.

[0] Assuming that it is an accurate representation of what he said. I was once the subject of a friendly story in my local paper, and, even with the best of intentions on the reporter's part, I was amazed at how different what she wrote was from what I meant (and, I believe, said).

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#56

Post by fluidcruft » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:08 PM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #42

Casseres wrote: post #34

I graduated from the college in question - Texas A&M University at Galveston (TAMUG). Off the bat, I don't know that professor or any of those students (I was in a different major, and had great professors). The problem I have with this story is that someone went to the media with rather than dealing with the school administration. Based on KPRC's online video of the report, it was probably John R Shaw Jr. The video…

> The problem I have with this story is that someone went to the media with rather than dealing with the school administration. "...he added that the university wasn't responding to his complaints about their behavior, pushing him to take this drastic step."

That quote is from the professor (Horwitz). John R Shaw Jr is apparently one of the students.

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#57

Post by slayed0 » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:08 PM UTC

joshaidan wrote: post #35

aaron695 wrote: post #15

This really is a pointless article of he said, they said. There is nothing at all to be gained in reading it. There's no actual evidence of who was in the wrong or what the real story is. (You could easily argue after 20 years in the game he fully knew all the students wouldn't actually get a F, even this is unknown)

I wish this article reached out to the students and tried to tell their side of the story. Good journalism usually tries to hear from both sides of the story--or at the very least give an explanation as to why they couldn't get comment from the students.

At least one of Horwitz’s students, senior John Shaw, disagreed with the professor.

“Just ridiculous. I had never had a problem in the class. I thought I had done pretty well, done pretty well on the first test, and then I get an e-mail saying I am going to get an F in the class. It was overwhelming,” Shaw told KPRC.

I don't blame you for not finishing the article but they did get a comment from at least one student.

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#58

Post by VLM » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:10 PM UTC

oddevan wrote: post #38

Kenji wrote: post #6

Seems like he just had a nervous breakdown. He should probably take some time off, recover, and maybe take a job that requires less social interaction. Being a good teacher (no matter the age of the student) is draining and requires a lot of patience and emotional intuition.

I'll agree with you with the caveat that "just a nervous breakdown" might be a little dismissive. Does he need a sabbatical? Absolutely. It sounds like after one-too-many classes of willfully unteachable students (as in students that refuse to learn, not students that are unable to learn), enough was enough and he had had it with these motherf%$&ing students in this motherf%$&ing school. I think a lot of us here on H…

"I hope he can get the help he needs."

That appears highly unlikely given past experience:

"Speaking with the Houston Chronicle, he added that the university wasn’t responding to his complaints about their behavior"

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#59

Post by fluidcruft » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:18 PM UTC

ejcx wrote: post #20

hn_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A syllabus is not a contract. It can be changed unilaterally at any time and is no way legally enforceable. "The court finds no legal support for treating a course syllabus as a contract. The few courts that have considered the issue have concluded that a syllabus does not constitute a contract....Indeed, a valid contract requires several elements, including mutual agreement and valuable consideration....A course syl…

That's crazy interesting and now I have some reading to do. I still view the grading scale as a something that should not change, however. I'm not surprised a syllabus is not a contract but I do think that most universities, when presented with a situation like this, have it in their interest to honor the syllabus.

Professors are often advised to pretend the syllabus is a contract because doing so sets expectations and can avoid annoying petty hassles at the end of the term when students that feel slighted and desperate start abusing administrative procedures (i.e. it reduces perfunctory pointless busy work that will waste the professor's time because admin will always find a way to fall for egregious student bullshit).

Generally, professors should try to find a balance that sets the syllabus to be difficult but still doable--difficult enough that students don't blow off the work, but also not so difficult as to frighten them away and cause them to drop in the first few weeks. Plus you can always move the grading scale down later which makes the students quite happy later in the term. Failing someone because they didn't muster up to this sort of syllabus is more "difficult" for the administration to roll over.

"Difficult" in the sense that admin will maybe, possibly sense a vague pang of internal conflict and disease (assuming they still have any sense of agency whatsoever) while rubberstamping the override.

Re: Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class

#60

Post by wahsd » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #55

Horwitz acknowledged that “a few” of the best performers might not deserve an F. But the school wouldn’t let him teach just those students, so he had no choice but to flunk everyone and leave the course, he said. Wow—as a teacher myself, I went to this story all prepared to root for this guy, but can't. "[T]he school wouldn't let him teach just those students, so he had no choice but to flunk everyone"? Who knows wha…

I am not sure that it really is a teacher, let alone professor's professional responsibility to have to deal with the student's lack of basic human decency. I don't know what happened in that class and I also don't know if his statement about "a few" not deserving being flunked is accurate, but it does not change the fact of the matter that a teacher / professor / lecturer's only job is to teach and educate. Their job is not crowd control or behavior modification therapy.

I don't see any way how A&M is not negligent in performing their duty to assure an environment to allow him to perform his contractual obligation to teach the students that are there to learn. Especially if he requested that the disruptive students leave and / or be removed from the class, he and the affected students that were possibly not contributing to the disruption should really be suing the university for contract non-performance. If you go to a university and expect education and instruction and the school does not perform it's duty to assure that happens, they are in breach of contract. There doesn't seem to be any real difference from any other service contract.