So long as students are not graded on ideological grounds and faculty members encourage multiple points of view, and are open about their own, that's good education.
Well, sure, if you accept the notion that being invested with tenure and a chair somehow means that the recipient loses all bias and that he will not favor the suckup student who regurgitates what he hears while giving good grades to a student who cites material from sources with which this pure-as-driven-snow scholar violently disagrees.
Sure. This is not the way the world works.
I had a law school professor with whom I constantly clashed. He never gave me a decent grade even though the test papers were anonymous and I know I knew the stuff as well as anyone. Since I am not a poor writer, I naturally suspected that he somehow learned which test paper was mine so that he could bomb me.
He used an objective test in one course so that there was no room for fudging, and I think I got the second or third best grade in the class.
His final retort to me during my senior year was an embarrassing explosion: "Don't give me that crap, Mr. C2!!" He had asked for the basis of decision of a particular case and I replied "principles of pure jurisprudence," a statement which brought down the house. However, in absolute point of fact, that was the language used in the opinion, which I found tremendously funny, but which he did not appreciate being used in the way I did. At that point, I didn't care since I knew he was going to bomb me like he always did. And he did.
I prepared better for his classes than I did any others. He still screwed me.
I absolutely, positively do not agree with the notion that the student who is not somehow ideologically or personally or academically in tune with the professor will be treated the same as others. I think probably all of us have had an experience similar to mine. |
