NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading • Hacker News Board

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#101

Post by forgetbook » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #94

cafard wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn near fifty years ago, I had a multivariate calculus teacher who thought it was amusing to provide tests where the curve peaked about 49%. I was lazy and neglectful of doing the homework problems, so I don't blame him for my own performance. But it didn't seem like a good way to run a class. I should say that he did not curve on 50% and grade on 90%: I think that a 50% was probably a B- or a C. But it was a while…

"provide tests where the curve peaked about 49%" Fucking smart Alec, he'd have deserved it if students had let his tires down. The only possible saving grace would have been if he'd demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that multivariate calculus would provide the means to get such precision, ipso facto the class results (complete with workings out). Even then, it's a ratshit idea of the worst order.

It is/can be entertaining to be a smart Alec. Many people in higher education roles view themselves as researchers, and teaching (not just students, but the work of teaching itself), as beneath them.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#102

Post by forgetbook » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

nh23423fefe wrote: post #91

forgetbook wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think I confuse necessary and sufficient?

There are lots of necessary tasks entailed in a job, and I could test someone on one of those tasks (if it were suitable in an interview context). But there are other things I could ask someone and their performance on that task would be sufficient to hire them. The retort that only necessary skills should be interviewed against isn't a great argument.

Thank you. I meant to address relevant vs irrelevant tasks (soldering =/= roofing, organic synthesis =/= medical diagnosis or performing procedures), but yours is a good point.

(edit: typo) To bring this back to organic chem as a questionably relevant prereq to med school, there are obviously specialties where chem is more or less relevant. I care very much if my pharmacist and anesthesiologist understand chemistry, and less so if my orthopedic surgeons do. To the extent that performance on an unnecessary task is sufficient to hire, the USMLE is a better gate into practicing than an individual med school course grade, and the MCAT is a better gate into med school than organic chemistry. I'm clearly lost in the sauce, both those gates occur after and include concepts from/building on organic chemistry.

That said, organic chemistry is uniquely known as a gatekeeper to med school, more than biology, physics, math, anatomy, and other prereqs. Why concentrate difficulty and training on that component in particular?

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#103

Post by hintymad » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 11:21 PM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #21

"And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway?" Heaven forbid, it should be as hard as is necessary to achieve the stated outcome. If someone does a course in organic synthesis and graduates from that course then a company hiring the person expects him or her to be able to synthesize chemicals to the extent or level that the course coverd. Graduates need to know what they're taught and companies expect their prosp…

> "And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway?"

For christ's sake, Organic Chemistry has a mechanism that's solidly based on theory of chemical bond and structural chemistry(chirality and what not). And for the empirical part? We've got more than a hundred years of experience. How the fuck hard could it be for an undergrad-level course? What's wrong with the students?

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#104

Post by hilbert42 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #103

hilbert42 wrote: post #21

"And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway?" Heaven forbid, it should be as hard as is necessary to achieve the stated outcome. If someone does a course in organic synthesis and graduates from that course then a company hiring the person expects him or her to be able to synthesize chemicals to the extent or level that the course coverd. Graduates need to know what they're taught and companies expect their prosp…

> "And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway?" For christ's sake, Organic Chemistry has a mechanism that's solidly based on theory of chemical bond and structural chemistry(chirality and what not). And for the empirical part? We've got more than a hundred years of experience. How the fuck hard could it be for an undergrad-level course? What's wrong with the students?

That's how it was (and things were) when I was doing organic chemistry.

To answer your last question I could suggest some answers but they'd only be inflammatory. Here, the real problem is that it's not that my answers would be inflammatory but why they'd be considered such (as opposed to being just options or ideas, whether right or wrong, in a much wider rational debate).

The real issue is that illogical, unfounded and ill-informed opinion has stifled rational debate, it having the loudest voice—and that nowadays there's no longer any moderating mechanism that's able to pull it back into line.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#105

Post by hilbert42 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:50 PM UTC

forgetbook wrote: post #100

hilbert42 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've really no issue with students, essentially they're the same as they have always been. My criticism is with the era, things have gotten a lot rougher and less certain for students since my time. The fixes are obvious, but then I'm not in possession of Aladdin's lamp.

I think students (demographically) have changed as well as the conditions they operate in. As you've pointed out, even attending a higher ed is much more common. There are not only more students, but also more students from different backgrounds. Motivationally there is likely similarity to how they have always been, but the challenge of training a student population of increasing size and diversity remains.

"...as well as the conditions they operate in."

I'm in no doubt that's true. I'd only add that I'm glad I went through the education system when I did even though it wasn't perfect.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#106

Post by hilbert42 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 10:56 PM UTC

forgetbook wrote: post #97

hilbert42 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've really no issue with students, essentially they're the same as they have always been. My criticism is with the era, things have gotten a lot rougher and less certain for students since my time. The fixes are obvious, but then I'm not in possession of Aladdin's lamp.

It did occur to me that my ask is being delivered to someone in no position to say yes. Thank you for helping me organize my thoughts though.

That's why I favor rational ongoing debate, it helps organize ones thinking. I couldn't guess how may times I've changed my opinion after listening both sides of an argument.

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#107

Post by hilbert42 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

forgetbook wrote: post #99

fsckboy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your comment incorporates so much ... fail > It is trivially simple for an educator to write a test that while it is not trivial to write any test, it is trivial to have the test cover the material that was taught and not the material that wasn't, and that's how tests are written > every student fails, curve the grades into a normal distribution, then the bulk of students didn't fail under the normal meaning of gradi…

I'll imply numbering: 1] Tests are written in many different ways. There is no regulatory body controlling pedagogy across institution at the college level. At best you can assume an invisible hand of the market for hiring graduates influencing student enrollment decisions, and you'll be introducing too many confounding variables to continue a productive discussion of individual tests. 2] I mean the bulk of students…

"At best you can assume an invisible hand of the market for hiring graduates influencing student enrollment decisions"

Yes it's done that and more. For instance, in many universities humanities courses have taken a hit because they're not as lucrative financially in either students numbers or in other ways. My profession is technical but I'm not in favor of nuking the humanities (especially so core subjects, history, philosophy, languages etc.).

What's really been lost from university education is the once-important notion of learning for its own sake—and of student life—the spirit of Gaudeamus igitur. Those notions were there but dying during my time quite some decades ago, today they've been completely subsumed or swallowed up by financial considerations. That, I think, is a shame.

In an era where financial considerations dominate, the whole issue of grades, passing examinations is crucially important because it's coupled more tightly than ever to one's livelihood than in the past. Hence, it's little wonder we're now seeing these issues looming much larger in students' minds than ever they've done in the past.

(In my time student protested and demonstrated and often did so violently (anti-Vietnam war rallies, 1968 student riots etc.) but from my recollection there was none of the angst about courses/grades that there is here today (except of course for usual level of time immemorial complaints that have always been part of the background noise of universities.)

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#108

Post by hilbert42 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

forgetbook wrote: post #101

hilbert42 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"provide tests where the curve peaked about 49%" Fucking smart Alec, he'd have deserved it if students had let his tires down. The only possible saving grace would have been if he'd demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that multivariate calculus would provide the means to get such precision, ipso facto the class results (complete with workings out). Even then, it's a ratshit idea of the worst order.

It is/can be entertaining to be a smart Alec. Many people in higher education roles view themselves as researchers, and teaching (not just students, but the work of teaching itself), as beneath them.

"...work of teaching itself), as beneath them."

Smart Alec yes—so long as no one's hurt. It's easy to understand how teaching is considered beneath them as it's distraction. It seems to me that a possible (or partial) way of ameliorating the problem would be to teach students from the outset that the principal role of a university is educate and that if they which to do research under the auspices of a university then they must expect disruption as routine.

Whilst I understand that being disrupted is irritating, the fact that they consider teaching beneath them seems shortsighted. I am not a teacher but on ocassions I've had to teach and I quickly discovered that there's nothing to hone one's own knowledge more than to teach. When teaching in front of a class, 'knowledge' that one's thinks one's clear about in one's mind quickly distills into either actual knowledge or embarrassing garbage.

One wonders then why teaching isn't more highly valued with this lot (whenever I've had to teach I've considered it a privilege and it boosted my ego to boot—especially when in debate with intelligent students who ask interesting questions—some of which yours truly couldn't answer).

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#109

Post by forgetbook » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 8:58 PM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #107

forgetbook wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll imply numbering: 1] Tests are written in many different ways. There is no regulatory body controlling pedagogy across institution at the college level. At best you can assume an invisible hand of the market for hiring graduates influencing student enrollment decisions, and you'll be introducing too many confounding variables to continue a productive discussion of individual tests. 2] I mean the bulk of students…

"At best you can assume an invisible hand of the market for hiring graduates influencing student enrollment decisions" Yes it's done that and more. For instance, in many universities humanities courses have taken a hit because they're not as lucrative financially in either students numbers or in other ways. My profession is technical but I'm not in favor of nuking the humanities (especially so core subjects, history,…

Forgive me for being suspicious of any invisible hand based argument.

I hope you'll be glad to hear that in my time, learning for its own sake is/was still seen as important, in humanities as much as any other area.

Freedom from the domination of financial considerations may be based more on individual conditions than systemic ones. There were certainly students worried about money in the 70's--it sounds like many of them are more accurately described as would-be students who simply didn't have the opportunity to attend at all. I do not fault today's would-be students who do have that opportunity for seeing their performance as tightly coupled to their livelihood.

(edit: to clarify, suspicion of an invisible hand argument means "if we can't articulate the cause, how are we purporting to know the effect?")

Re: NYU organic chemistry professor terminated for tough grading

#110

Post by hilbert42 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 6:13 AM UTC

forgetbook wrote: post #109

hilbert42 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At best you can assume an invisible hand of the market for hiring graduates influencing student enrollment decisions" Yes it's done that and more. For instance, in many universities humanities courses have taken a hit because they're not as lucrative financially in either students numbers or in other ways. My profession is technical but I'm not in favor of nuking the humanities (especially so core subjects, history,…

Forgive me for being suspicious of any invisible hand based argument. I hope you'll be glad to hear that in my time, learning for its own sake is/was still seen as important, in humanities as much as any other area. Freedom from the domination of financial considerations may be based more on individual conditions than systemic ones. There were certainly students worried about money in the 70's--it sounds like many of…

"Forgive me for being suspicious of any invisible hand based argument."

So am I, it's generally wheeled out in the absence of any other sufficiently-developed argument or alternatively as shorthand for one that's too hard to articulate. You're right, if we can't articulate the cause then we've little hope of moving forward.

I also don't fault today's students who consider their studies tightly coupled to their llivelihood, especially so in fields such as engineering.

Whilst I'm glad to hear that learning for its own sake is still seen as important the demise of humanities subjects at many universities in recent years doesn't overfill me with confidence that it will remain so.