“Punching up vs. punching down” is an inane, stupid standard for behavior. Power in human affairs is not found along a simple ordinal scale, but exists in all manner of dimensions. Power relations are irreducibly complex, not a matter of simplistic binaries pre-tuned for culture war.
"“Unless you appreciate these transformations at the molecular level,” he said, “I don’t think you can be a good physician, and I don’t want you treating patients.”"
but this isn't right IMO. o-chem is really a memorization-loaded IQ test. this reality gets elided often...you WANT to weed
Part of me hopes the anti-rigor crowd gets strong enough that employers stop requiring degrees and you no longer need four years and 100k of debt to make spreadsheets
I will always remember that lady who landed from her transcontinental flight to discover she has become the Main Character of Twitter and the posters got her fired from her job.
This had a hint of "wait until the real world..." that Citations Needed made a bit of fun of on their last podcast. Perhaps also a little "get off my lawn" and "back in my day." Organic chemistry gets forgotten by most practicing physicians. It's an undergrad weed-out course. Not that he should be fired. That sounds stupid.
Is there any rational objection to school-dictated grade distributions? At least for 100+ person lecture-hall sized classes? I appreciate that maybe you should not have this in small classes (you could have school-guided/suggested distributions, acknowledging that actual distributions may vary from year to year for these classes). I just think there is something pernicious about the fact that certain disciplines plainly have different grade distirbutions and think it actually does impact which courses students take.
I did read the story and it did concern me because I too want my future Doctors to be smart enough to overcome the hurdle that is organic chemistry. I have a kid who was pre-med and o-chem was really hard for him and he is a kid with near perfect SAT scores who never received a B in high school despite taking almost every AP class offered and getting 5s on all of his APs including physics and bio. But I think that it was interesting that the kids didn't expect to get him fired, they just wanted better grades -- they felt that they could complain and fix their problem without causing any others. This entitlement to be free from consequences seems very of the moment and not great. I appreciate that the pendulum maybe swings too far towards focusing on resilience but clearly we have massively overcorrected and we need to remind kids that hard work is of value and that you can survive a bad grade in organic chemistry -- it will make it harder to be a Doctor -- but that's because we want our Doctors to be smarter and more focused than most people.
This kind of thing is one reason that people are getting dumber and dumber. Flynn effect has reversed even within families pointing to an environmental cause. Not being intellectually challenged has reduced the "drive" in the population. In a few generations we won't know how to build airplanes anymore
"“Unless you appreciate these transformations at the molecular level,” he said, “I don’t think you can be a good physician, and I don’t want you treating patients.”"
but this isn't right IMO. o-chem is really a memorization-loaded IQ test. this reality gets elided often...you WANT to weed
NYT piece is paywalled but I can assume the students had some argument against the guy beyond “he was a rigorous grader”
I suggest you revise this piece and lengthen it to actually explore the topic. As it stands it is a short rant and nothing insightful.
Part of me hopes the anti-rigor crowd gets strong enough that employers stop requiring degrees and you no longer need four years and 100k of debt to make spreadsheets
I will always remember that lady who landed from her transcontinental flight to discover she has become the Main Character of Twitter and the posters got her fired from her job.
I don't see what this has to do with "wokies" or "culture wars". It is totally believable that either:
- Jones is 84 years old and is no longer able to teach as effectively as he did when he was younger
- Jones might have been a fine teacher when classes were in person, but was unable to adapt to the changes that hybrid/remote teaching entailed.
Demanding rigor is good and important, but a teacher can only demand rigor if they're teaching the material effectively.
This had a hint of "wait until the real world..." that Citations Needed made a bit of fun of on their last podcast. Perhaps also a little "get off my lawn" and "back in my day." Organic chemistry gets forgotten by most practicing physicians. It's an undergrad weed-out course. Not that he should be fired. That sounds stupid.
Lol $100k?
No Freddie, no. Charming anachronism. Cost of NYU full freight is now several times that.
Is there any rational objection to school-dictated grade distributions? At least for 100+ person lecture-hall sized classes? I appreciate that maybe you should not have this in small classes (you could have school-guided/suggested distributions, acknowledging that actual distributions may vary from year to year for these classes). I just think there is something pernicious about the fact that certain disciplines plainly have different grade distirbutions and think it actually does impact which courses students take.
It has been said that "academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."
Perhaps a new corollary would be "academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics because the stakes are inverse to the offense."
Nice job, Freddie. nice job. Too many self-evident ways to label oneself an un-woke fogey here. So I won't.
I did read the story and it did concern me because I too want my future Doctors to be smart enough to overcome the hurdle that is organic chemistry. I have a kid who was pre-med and o-chem was really hard for him and he is a kid with near perfect SAT scores who never received a B in high school despite taking almost every AP class offered and getting 5s on all of his APs including physics and bio. But I think that it was interesting that the kids didn't expect to get him fired, they just wanted better grades -- they felt that they could complain and fix their problem without causing any others. This entitlement to be free from consequences seems very of the moment and not great. I appreciate that the pendulum maybe swings too far towards focusing on resilience but clearly we have massively overcorrected and we need to remind kids that hard work is of value and that you can survive a bad grade in organic chemistry -- it will make it harder to be a Doctor -- but that's because we want our Doctors to be smarter and more focused than most people.
This kind of thing is one reason that people are getting dumber and dumber. Flynn effect has reversed even within families pointing to an environmental cause. Not being intellectually challenged has reduced the "drive" in the population. In a few generations we won't know how to build airplanes anymore
Could you summarize the facts of the case? Article is behind a paywall and I couldn't find a free alternative.