"90% of the power..."

Dogwood said:
It's possible that this instructor is just messing with your class in order to provoke reactions. (Live action troll)

In my limited experience, Sociologists live for this kind of stuff. He may even be writing a paper and using you all as a sample group.
Click to expand...

Oh no, I highly doubt that. The guy isn't trying to bait us at all. He's preaching it as if it's true, and got really mad at me (he even said he was OFFENDED) when I challenged him on the stuff he expected us to just swallow.

He has said numerous times that the goal in the classroom is to reveal the truth... but more and more it's seeming like he wants to reveal HIS truth to us, instead of having any truth revealed to him. He has said that he welcomes being questioned, but I think it's only in the sense that he wants us to question what he says so he can make sure we have it clear exactly what he's telling us, rather than questioning him so as to refute what he's saying.
 
EagleEye said:
I wonder if I could go through the list of US Senators and determine their ethnicity by family name. Johnson would be English, for example.
Click to expand...
Maybe. But what if Senator Johnson's mother was 100% Japanese and his father Hungarian on his mother's side and English on his father's?
 
Sounds like a post-modernist doofus.

Ask him to hold a big rock out in front of him, directly above his big toe joint, and ask him to let go of the rock.

When he won't, point out that he's just validated the scientific method. :)

Better yet, be quiet, pass the class, and rip this dweeb into itty-bitty shreds in evaluation, perhaps even take it up with the department head, faculty-student committee, etc, if this is a technical university.

Things can be done, sometimes.

Ask me about the marxist "world history" teacher I had in college. He got uninvited, eventually. Bearing in mind that I'm very opposed to red scares and red baiting, yes, I did complain vigorously about the "facts" he taught. It all comes down to proving that he's misteaching, if you have to go that far. Keep records of the mistakes to fact, the misrepresentations, etc, and make sure that they can't be defended as the socratic method or some kind of negative teaching method.
 
Dogwood said:
In my limited experience, Sociologists live for this kind of stuff. He may even be writing a paper and using you all as a sample group.
Click to expand...


If you think that might be the case, look him in the eye and say "I wish to be clear that I am entirely unwilling to be part of an experiment or research based on the way you are teaching this class".
 
Ugh, this is one of the things that disturbed me most about college -- the "captive audience" idea. The wacky professors think classes are about indoctrinating you, and you can't protest, because your grade depends on them. I had a couple of classes like that, although not as bad as yours.

I'd love to give you advice, but I don't want you to be punished (failed) because of it. All I did in my classes like that was keep my head down, learn what important things I could, and move on. That probably sounds weak to a lot of people, but I wasn't willing to risk my grade.

The really sad part is, sociology is very interesting. (I thought it was, anyway.) If you can get around your wacky professor, you might find a worthwhile subject.

So, good luck, whatever you choose to do.

BlackCat
 
Keeping your head down and just doing what's necessary to pass is merely enabling people like this to continue their abuse of their position.

I have class in 30 minutes... I'll let all you know how things go.
 
EagleEye said:
Keeping your head down and just doing what's necessary to pass is merely enabling people like this to continue their abuse of their position.
Click to expand...
Ok, let me elaborate.

All I did in my classes like that was keep my head down, learn what important things I could, and move on. That probably sounds weak to a lot of people, but I wasn't willing to risk my grade. I should note how tremendously guilty I felt about doing this, because I knew it wouldn't change a thing. However, I didn't know any way in which to proceed that wouldn't potentially destroy my grade, because these were not throw-away classes for me.

BlackCat
 
Humans have no instincts at all. EVERYTHING we do is learned behavior.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a behaviorist taking B. F. Skinner to extremes.

As Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser said about behaviorists, "their problem is that they think one shouldn't anthrophomorphize people".
 
Perhaps you can take a slightly different tact. I would bet that the Psychology, Physics, Chemistry and Biology departments would like to know that your Sociology Professor is saying they are worthless. Faculty can be nasty when aroused.

If you really want to piss him off, show him this:

Sokal Affair
 
Ohmer said:
Perhaps you can take a slightly different tact. I would bet that the Psychology, Physics, Chemistry and Biology departments would like to know that your Sociology Professor is saying they are worthless. Faculty can be nasty when aroused.

If you really want to piss him off, show him this:

Sokal Affair
Click to expand...

Yet Gary Schwartz is still at the UofA...so, getting other academics to protest/hold accountable seems unlikely.

Suck-up to him. Do what he says. Get the best grade you can possibly get. Take notes and record his lectures and start a web-site at your university AFTER you've got your grade, that let's other students know what kind of crap this guy is spewing....
 
I just got home from class. Today's gem included a nice lecture on how capitalism is nothing more than powerful people enslaving the lower classes for their own profit, while socialism/communism is the ideal political and economic structure.

Every time he mentioned capitalism, he mentioned slavery in some way. Every time he mentioned communism, he said something to make it sound appealing.
 
EagleEye said:
I just got home from class. Today's gem included a nice lecture on how capitalism is nothing more than powerful people enslaving the lower classes for their own profit, while socialism/communism is the ideal political and economic structure.

Every time he mentioned capitalism, he mentioned slavery in some way. Every time he mentioned communism, he said something to make it sound appealing.
Click to expand...


So did somebody ask him why it's better for "equality" to mean that "everyone is a slave" rather than "equality" to mean "some people are more enslaved than others"?

Perhaps ask him if Communism is a religion that holds as its core dogma that people will continue to work even when not rewarded in kind, and ask him also if unrestricted capitalism might be a religion that holds as dogma that the tragedy of the commons isn't really a tragedy? :p
 
Guys like this prof bug me. It's both unprofessional behavior and an abuse of power to behave that way. However if you complain about it, in addition to risking a bad grade, you're going to face "You're taking away his academic freedom." "Academic freedom" unfortunately sometimes equates with "I can say anything I want while I'm teaching and if you object then you're oppressing me." It's sad but that's the way it is.

People should just teach the course they're hired to teach instead of using their position to force their personal views on a captive audience that isn't in a position to stronlgly object.
 
headscratcher4 said:
Yet Gary Schwartz is still at the UofA...so, getting other academics to protest/hold accountable seems unlikely.
Click to expand...
Good point. However, Schwartz is not attacking them directly. Having a loony fringe theory is a bit different that saying your entire field of study is worthless. It is hard to tell how faculty will react.

I do feel for you EagleEye. You are in a tough spot. Good luck.
 
EagleEye said:
I just got home from class. Today's gem included a nice lecture on how capitalism is nothing more than powerful people enslaving the lower classes for their own profit, while socialism/communism is the ideal political and economic structure.

Every time he mentioned capitalism, he mentioned slavery in some way. Every time he mentioned communism, he said something to make it sound appealing.
Click to expand...

Yes, for some curious reason neither he, nor any other campus Marxist, have ever actually emigrated to the paradise of the workers from those opressive capitalist slave-pens.

By the way, this proves how (as I said before) the right overstates its case about how college "indoctrinates" kids to left thinking. To listen to the right, ALL professors are like this. Yet you notice this guy as an exception, which shows he's a relatively rare case.
 
Skeptic said:
By the way, this proves how (as I said before) the right overstates its case about how college "indoctrinates" kids to left thinking. To listen to the right, ALL professors are like this. Yet you notice this guy as an exception, which shows he's a relatively rare case.
Click to expand...

And, consider, how many people from any side are supporting this dweebasarus, anyhow?

I had one like that, too, and I had several of the extreme-right type. Interestingly enough, the extreme-right type did nag me about my 2.5' of hair (yes, I had hair then), the way I dressed, and my bad attitude toward homework, but they did respect the work I did. I never did achieve my goal of getting my history teacher and my circuits teacher into the same room...

Nowdays, though, the right is more dependent on appearance than the left. Pathetic to both, I think.

Anyhow, don't screw up your grade, please, but don't let this doofus just walk, either.
 
EagleEye said:
Keeping your head down and just doing what's necessary to pass is merely enabling people like this to continue their abuse of their position.
Click to expand...

Nah. You haven't lived through enough academia yet.

You keep your head down and parrot all the crap. You keep notes. Then you write a paper as an ethnography of the experience and ruin his career. Which isn't much of a career, since he's at a community college.
 
epepke said:
Nah. You haven't lived through enough academia yet.

You keep your head down and parrot all the crap. You keep notes. Then you write a paper as an ethnography of the experience and ruin his career. Which isn't much of a career, since he's at a community college.
Click to expand...

True enough...

Some of the other students were talking while on break today... they were wondering aloud if this guy is for real or not. He claims to have been a prof at BYU... if that's the case, either he got canned for the same sort of political stuff he's doing here, or he is lying. :) Seriously, why give up a career at BYU, other than the obvious ties to the Mormon church...

And if he's going to leave a real well-known and well-respected full-fledged university, why not make it a move UP instead of DOWN?

He came to the US after converting to being Mormon, but is no longer affiliated with the church.
 
OH! HOLY CRAP, I ALMOST FORGOT!

He also is spewing the same old bullsh*t about how it's IMPOSSIBLE and IRRATIONAL to be an ATHEIST! Why? Because (multiple choice question here)

A) Atheism is a belief system... it's a faith just like any other religious belief.
B) Atheists believe there is no god... as in: they make the affirmative claim that god DOES NOT exist, and that's a claim that is just as unprovable as a claim that god DOES exist.
C) How can you look at the beauty of the world and not believe that an intelligent being created it all?

He used at least one of these reasons... Guess which one...
 
For the record:
WASP=
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant


Anyway, I had a few courses with idgets like this. I had an ENGLISH LIT course where the Porf wanted us to make up jingles and sing in front of the class.

I told him I found the exercise degrading and walked out. At the nearest touch-tone phone I dropped the class like a hot potato. Then I called the dean.

Maybe if you passed out copies of the studies debunking his wilder claims to the class....


Too bad you're not closer. I'd take this guy's course just to play with what little brain he has.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom