In essence, in order to pay for a service, government must charge a fee, collect a tax, get a loan, convince people to make a contribution or volunteer money, get people to gamble, force the provider to sell at a fixed price, or inflate the currency.
Fees can be set to fund a specific service, used to raise money for other services, to encourage an activity or to discourage an activity. Toll both fees on tunnels and bridges are suppose to fund highways construction and road maintenance. In other places, they are used to subsidize mass transit. Some fees you can avoid. If you don’t have a car, you will never pay a tunnel toll unless you use a taxi. Others, you cannot avoid. You must pay your water fees or our water will be shut off. The city I live in is now vigorously enforcing fees to encourage water conservation. Also, an estimated 20% of the people have not paid these fees so other people are paying for them. I don’t feel this directly because I see no water bill when I pay my monthly maintenance. Some states raise money for specific activities through innovative ways. In Florida or North Carolina, depending upon the type of license play you buy, additional money will go to support the environment.
Taxes can be dedicated to fund a specific activity or go to the general fund. Automobile drivers like taxes going to build new highways but hate that it is used to fund other activities. Taxes on tobacco products are high because they are suppose to discourage smoking but in reality the government would lose money if people were to quit. If taxes become too high, an underground economy develops or people and businesses go elsewhere to avoid paying them. One economically illiterate candidate for mayor in NYC in 2005 proposed bring backing the stock transaction tax that New York City and New York State had abolished. He argued rich stockbrokers and investors could pay the taxes. The only problem was that in the age of Internet, people would go elsewhere to trade their stocks and bonds.
Government can borrow money. Some argue that capital projects that benefit many generations should be financed this way. Some governments borrow money to avoid cutting the budget or increasing taxes which would anger the voters. In the short run, this is a popular short-gap measure but too often is used to avoid making hard decisions. At some point, interest rates increase as people fear that the government carries too much debt and cannot pay it back. Orange County, California went bankrupt and then sued the bond brokers who helped the politicians that practice that chicanery. In the city I live in money, money was raised twice on various bond issues to build a subway line but the transit authority simply used it for other projects or to subsidize costs.
There are check-offs on state and federal income taxes to support the environment or publicly financing campaigns. Both McCain and Obama have gamed the public finance system when it has suited their advantage. McCain was able to borrow and raise money on the basis that he was going to apply to be publicly financed. Of course, someone is suing him that benefited from the public finance even though he did not a public dollar at that point in time. Obama who said he would use the public finance system, like all politicians, changed his mind when he could do better raising money privately rather than rely upon the public system.
States and local governments are in the lottery and casino business to raise money. They piously declare that the money raised will go to help education to get the public to approve state involvement. In reality, virtually all money raised goes to the general fund. Talk about bait and switch. In reality, it also a regressive tax on the poor plus the new gambling addicts created.
Then governments have to pay for services. In a free market, government has to compete with private businesses to pay for goods and services. However, government can create a monopoly in its own favor as a buyer. Now part of Hillarcare’s failed health legacy is flue vaccine and childhood vaccination programs. On September 19, 1993 - Pat Moynihan, speaking on Meet the Press, dismissed the economic calculations in the Clinton plan -- which has not even been formally launched -- as "fantasy numbers." When the plan was proposed in 1994, it was defeated except for its proposals to help the most vulnerable in our society – the young and the poor. There are fewer children now vaccinated against childhood disease than before Hillary’s plan. In case of flu vaccine, the Hillary health plan created problems because it made Uncle Sam the chief buyer of most of the flu vaccine at a fixed, low price. Unfortunately, flu manufacturers went of business when they could not make a profit because of legal lotto. When lawsuits occurred because of problems with the vaccine, their profit margins were not enough to cover the expenses. Instead of the 25 manufacturers of flu vaccines that this country had twenty-five years ago, we now have one!
Finally, we have inflation. Inflation when we have too much money chasing too few goods. The US went off the gold standard in 1971 when the price of gold was $35 per ounce. Today, the price of god is about $1,000 an ounce. In 1969, a Harvard College education cost $2,000 per year. Today, the cost is $50,000 per year. College inflation has been above the general inflation. Gasoline cost $.35 per gallon in 1969; today, it is $4.65 per gallon. Alexander Hamilton favored a central bank being in private hands because it would avoid inflating the currency because it would hurt their economic interests. Some economists argue that government has been inflating the currency in recent years because the price of gold greatly increased. I will say, Bernard Baruch always thought war bonds were consumer fraud because of inflation.
As you can see, there is no magic way of raising the money. It is all a pain no matter how it is raised.
Monday, June 30, 2008
33 Pignomics
33 Pignomics
We are now in the silly season known as American politics. I have coined a new term to describe a new social science when politics meets economics. You have the pig representing the pork the politicians want to give the public in order to get votes. I originally thought of saying pignomics stood for economically ignorant or illiterate politicians. They are not ignorant and they are not stupid but are simply trying to get advantage of the gullible public’s desire to get something for nothing.
Economics is simply the allocation of limited resources against competing unlimited wants or needs whether is not through tradition (which parent stayed home when you got ill), force (tax, regulation, fine, law) and market (free choice). The politicians are in the business of promising benefits while simultaneously reducing taxes.
Anything you want has to be paid for or people go out of business. The state government of Massachusetts made a plea for pharmacists to dispense medicines even though its program did not cover all the costs so that pharmacists were losing money. . Eventually, when you have a loss instead of a profit, you go out of business. You can provide the service or goods for free only as long as people are willing to contribute their goods and services. The only problem is my shoemaker wants to get paid now because he cannot count on the benevolence of others.
The best example of apolitical mindset out at work when I read in the Daily News when I was a child, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who liked to increase taxes, vetoed a tax on cigarettes to give Korean War veterans a bonus. He declared, “You don’t bribe taxpayers with their own money.” In essence, he defined the political bait and switch game of taxes and benefits. People love benefits but are loath to pay taxes.
We are now in the silly season known as American politics. I have coined a new term to describe a new social science when politics meets economics. You have the pig representing the pork the politicians want to give the public in order to get votes. I originally thought of saying pignomics stood for economically ignorant or illiterate politicians. They are not ignorant and they are not stupid but are simply trying to get advantage of the gullible public’s desire to get something for nothing.
Economics is simply the allocation of limited resources against competing unlimited wants or needs whether is not through tradition (which parent stayed home when you got ill), force (tax, regulation, fine, law) and market (free choice). The politicians are in the business of promising benefits while simultaneously reducing taxes.
Anything you want has to be paid for or people go out of business. The state government of Massachusetts made a plea for pharmacists to dispense medicines even though its program did not cover all the costs so that pharmacists were losing money. . Eventually, when you have a loss instead of a profit, you go out of business. You can provide the service or goods for free only as long as people are willing to contribute their goods and services. The only problem is my shoemaker wants to get paid now because he cannot count on the benevolence of others.
The best example of apolitical mindset out at work when I read in the Daily News when I was a child, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who liked to increase taxes, vetoed a tax on cigarettes to give Korean War veterans a bonus. He declared, “You don’t bribe taxpayers with their own money.” In essence, he defined the political bait and switch game of taxes and benefits. People love benefits but are loath to pay taxes.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
32 Open Admissions plus no willingness equals disaster
I graduated a senor college that embraced the philosophy of open admission. Unlike other colleges that long had the policy, the students were not flunked out after one or two semesters. Many state universities have had the policy of admitting anyone for the past hundred years. They maintained standards and flunked out the students that could not meet them. The students had the opportunity of going onward and upward but they had to meet standards. Those that could not pass after one or two terms got the message to do something else.
The college I graduated embrace d the philosophy that the college could change the student into a better person. This theory might have worked if adequate tutoring and remediation was provided from the get go but instead the students changed the colleges to a lesser level. The students went on strike to demand credit for their remediation courses –stuff they were suppose to know from their high school classes. Absenteeism, lateness, inability to study or to read became characteristic of these colleges. Instead of the college diploma guaranteeing the student knew something; it just became another worthless high school diploma.
Standards were so low that one of our newspapers complained something was wrong when over half the students were on the honor role but still could not graduate because they could not pass the exit competency tests. One senior college solved the problem that students could not pass competency tests to take non-remediation courses by lowering the passing standards. It made the students happy but they still couldn’t do passing work.
There is a place for remediation and tutorial assistance but the students have to be willing to embrace this.
The college I graduated embrace d the philosophy that the college could change the student into a better person. This theory might have worked if adequate tutoring and remediation was provided from the get go but instead the students changed the colleges to a lesser level. The students went on strike to demand credit for their remediation courses –stuff they were suppose to know from their high school classes. Absenteeism, lateness, inability to study or to read became characteristic of these colleges. Instead of the college diploma guaranteeing the student knew something; it just became another worthless high school diploma.
Standards were so low that one of our newspapers complained something was wrong when over half the students were on the honor role but still could not graduate because they could not pass the exit competency tests. One senior college solved the problem that students could not pass competency tests to take non-remediation courses by lowering the passing standards. It made the students happy but they still couldn’t do passing work.
There is a place for remediation and tutorial assistance but the students have to be willing to embrace this.
31 Instructing
No one taught me how to instruct. I learned by imitation. Unfortunately, imitation is not always the best form of flattery. There are various ways to teach that are appropriate under different circumstance and depending upon the subject. Colleges teach you how to do research but not how to teach. You are left to learn on your own. When I went to college, the typical professor taught five classes. Today, some colleges consider a professor to be full-time when he teaches two or three classes a semester. I use a variety of methods: lecture, discussion, small group activity or cooperative learning, slide-lecture or PowerPoint. You can show part or all of a movie or video to stimulate discussion. You can ask the students questions in class. Sadly, the best instruction in the world will not work if the student is absent or late. At a junior college that I teach at, the mat chairman harangued the adjuncts how they should employ better methods to stimulate the students in learning the various subjects. One instructor had the temerity to say it would help if the students would attend class. The department had a failure rate of 75% of the student taking the remedial courses. You can’t fuzz mathematics unlike other subjects.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
30 Cheating on Tests
I know cheating takes place. I now that I do my best to discourage it. Nevertheless, cheating goes on. The few cheaters I have caught have really been very stupid and obvious. I have gone on to YouTube and search the Internet to find the latest scams on cheating. I make sure that the examination paper I give out I get back with no pre-written essays in them. You should have multiple choice questions in different sequences to have more than one test. You should sit the students far apart. The smarter ones you sit in the back so that the cheater will have less of an opportunity glancing at another student’s paper. You should go the student when they raise their hand when they have a question. All electronic devices including watches are banned because you can communicate or conceal stuff. You may have to check pens or mechanical pencils to see if paper is concealed. You can’t have students have plastic containers because they can substitute the labels. I have attended only one college where a proctor was provided to escort a student to the bathroom...
29 Student Evaluations
When I gave the students the opportunity to evaluate me, I said it was like asking inmates of the asylum to rate the doctors. In the beginning, I thought that this was a fair means to determine who best instructors were. If you are demanding of the students, your popularity will go down. Often these measuring tools are badly designed so that you do not get specific feedback on what was good or bad. Administrator claims they use these evaluations as just one more tool but they can be used as the excuse why they will not hire you back. I taught at one college where the students loved me and the next semester they hated me. I could never figure out why since I taught the same subject class. Too many of the students feel they are entitled to an A without doing the work and God help the instructor.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
28 Labor Unions
I have to gag when the people that hire us denounce the very system that they are part of. The more they say love labor, the more they don’t practice what they preach. I inevitably find the more left wing a professor is on the issue, the more right wing he in is reality. It is the nature of the beat. The boss can never pay low enough but he wants to feel good that the worker feels happy.
Unions are dominated by full-timers who screw the part-timers in order to enhance their positions. At some colleges like NYU and Princeton, every college salary of the full-timers is individually negotiated. NYU smashed its adjunct union getting a favorable NLRB ruling that the adjuncts are merely graduate students being trained in the profession. True, they might teach for decades, but they are being trained.
Unions are dominated by full-timers who screw the part-timers in order to enhance their positions. At some colleges like NYU and Princeton, every college salary of the full-timers is individually negotiated. NYU smashed its adjunct union getting a favorable NLRB ruling that the adjuncts are merely graduate students being trained in the profession. True, they might teach for decades, but they are being trained.
27 Adjuncting--The Financial Toll
Some colleges will start paying you the sixth week of the semester. I had one college that paid me twice a semester. I still had another college processing the paperwork took three months where I had already taught there three semesters in a row. The bureaucracy took its sweet time to process the paperwork. When they overpaid me by one week, they wanted the overpayment back instantly. I told them there was no need to rush because the next week, they could simply pay me less. The pay can be laughable. I have been asked to teach classes for as little as $20 per hour. That may seem like a lot of money but you have to realize it takes time to travel to these peoples and then they want you to have office hours. I was once asked to teach Soviet diplomatic history for $600 which at the time offered was incredibly low pay. I told them I would do it if they would pay for the tolls which at the time were $.75 and gasoline was about 50 cents at the time. I was relieved when they said no because I figured I would never teach Soviet diplomatic history ever again. I refuse to teach English classes because it would be labor intensive to an honest job of critiquing the papers of the students.
Needless to say, there are little or no fringe benefits. A few progressive colleges offer health care if you teach two classes a semester for three semesters in a row. Depending upon the college, if you take a sick day you also lose the day’s pay. When I was interviewed for a position and the chairman said I should do this and do this, I told him, “Don‘t ask me to do full-work on part-time pay.”
Although some adjuncts have written article on how they have turned adjuncting into a business, it is a road to poverty. I have taught as many as twelve classes a semester and still not make it. The pay of adjuncts has not kept up. Inflation has eroded what was once a decent wage in the 1960s into very little by today. Let us face, Adjuncts are sweatshop intellectual labor.
Needless to say, there are little or no fringe benefits. A few progressive colleges offer health care if you teach two classes a semester for three semesters in a row. Depending upon the college, if you take a sick day you also lose the day’s pay. When I was interviewed for a position and the chairman said I should do this and do this, I told him, “Don‘t ask me to do full-work on part-time pay.”
Although some adjuncts have written article on how they have turned adjuncting into a business, it is a road to poverty. I have taught as many as twelve classes a semester and still not make it. The pay of adjuncts has not kept up. Inflation has eroded what was once a decent wage in the 1960s into very little by today. Let us face, Adjuncts are sweatshop intellectual labor.
26 Adjuncting--The Acadmeic Toll
Being an adjunct, should be regarded as par with being a dish washer. You get paid the same; get the same lack of respect, and same lack of job security.
When I was in college, I came across a few adjuncts who were students in graduate school or senior professors from another college teaching an unusual subject or as a guest lecturer instructing in a specialty that they were well-known for.. Today, it is routine that in any given university, it is not unusual that more than half the classes are taught by adjuncts. I realized in December 1971 that the supply of professors exceeded demand and the situation has become worse. People would flock to graduate schools in hope that they would beat the odds but failed to realize that they had to network like hell at very well-known schools. Everybody lied that there were jobs out there or a graduate degree could be used for something else because that would have meant less jobs for the professors who already had positions. The academic publications and the graduate schools still lie. Unless you go to an extremely well-known school with a professor who a major player in the field who knows the right people, you will never find a full-time job that leads to tenure.
We have the curious phenomena of tuition going up while the quality of the professor on the front line goes down. Virtually all colleges posit the fiction that they use only a few adjuncts to fill a few classes. In reality, they may be the backbones of entire departments. Even when an effort is made to limit the number of adjuncts, colleges find loopholes. New York State requires that at least half the classes be taught by full-time faculty. You just crowd the student into the adjunct classes. A federal law meant to help adjuncts required the payment of benefits if they taught more than seven classes. As a result, colleges make darn sure that you never teach more than seven classes in a year.
The advantage of an adjunct to a college is cheap labor that cannot protest. Or assign them the unpopular hours with the unpopular courses. In some place, the employment of five to ten adjuncts is the equivalent of how much you might have to pay a full-time instructor including benefits for the year.
Adjuncts can be asked to teach any number of classes that might not relate to the field they studied for. One semester I taught one lesson ahead of the students in Caribbean history. Students in turn get cheated because they have inexperienced professor or professors teaching of their fields.
People still become adjuncts because some are foolish to think that this might lead to a full-time position but actually you enter a ghetto that no college will hire a full-time from. Others have retired from various positions and find the time employed and the additional money useful. Still others getting an advanced degree in the field at least want to try their hand in what they were trained for.
If the students complain about you, or if you don’t teach class as effectively as you hoped, you might not have a second chance to improve.
You are at the mercy of the administration. Are you unpopular with the students? Is your political opinion acceptable? You can just rub somebody the wrong way. There can be any number of reasons why you might not be renewed.
Depending upon the college, you may or may not know if you will have a position for next semester or whether the summer course will go or not. A lot of places assign you classes that depend upon last minute registration.
Tough luck if you want to collect unemployment. Federal government decided because full-time teachers and professors collected unemployment during the summer to ban this for everybody because you have expectations of employment.
When I was in college, I came across a few adjuncts who were students in graduate school or senior professors from another college teaching an unusual subject or as a guest lecturer instructing in a specialty that they were well-known for.. Today, it is routine that in any given university, it is not unusual that more than half the classes are taught by adjuncts. I realized in December 1971 that the supply of professors exceeded demand and the situation has become worse. People would flock to graduate schools in hope that they would beat the odds but failed to realize that they had to network like hell at very well-known schools. Everybody lied that there were jobs out there or a graduate degree could be used for something else because that would have meant less jobs for the professors who already had positions. The academic publications and the graduate schools still lie. Unless you go to an extremely well-known school with a professor who a major player in the field who knows the right people, you will never find a full-time job that leads to tenure.
We have the curious phenomena of tuition going up while the quality of the professor on the front line goes down. Virtually all colleges posit the fiction that they use only a few adjuncts to fill a few classes. In reality, they may be the backbones of entire departments. Even when an effort is made to limit the number of adjuncts, colleges find loopholes. New York State requires that at least half the classes be taught by full-time faculty. You just crowd the student into the adjunct classes. A federal law meant to help adjuncts required the payment of benefits if they taught more than seven classes. As a result, colleges make darn sure that you never teach more than seven classes in a year.
The advantage of an adjunct to a college is cheap labor that cannot protest. Or assign them the unpopular hours with the unpopular courses. In some place, the employment of five to ten adjuncts is the equivalent of how much you might have to pay a full-time instructor including benefits for the year.
Adjuncts can be asked to teach any number of classes that might not relate to the field they studied for. One semester I taught one lesson ahead of the students in Caribbean history. Students in turn get cheated because they have inexperienced professor or professors teaching of their fields.
People still become adjuncts because some are foolish to think that this might lead to a full-time position but actually you enter a ghetto that no college will hire a full-time from. Others have retired from various positions and find the time employed and the additional money useful. Still others getting an advanced degree in the field at least want to try their hand in what they were trained for.
If the students complain about you, or if you don’t teach class as effectively as you hoped, you might not have a second chance to improve.
You are at the mercy of the administration. Are you unpopular with the students? Is your political opinion acceptable? You can just rub somebody the wrong way. There can be any number of reasons why you might not be renewed.
Depending upon the college, you may or may not know if you will have a position for next semester or whether the summer course will go or not. A lot of places assign you classes that depend upon last minute registration.
Tough luck if you want to collect unemployment. Federal government decided because full-time teachers and professors collected unemployment during the summer to ban this for everybody because you have expectations of employment.
25 Examinations
Tests are more an art than a science. It depends upon a few factors: questions on the test reflect you taught the students via lecture and text; in turn, the students are aware of what will be tested; and then the students themselves study for the test.
I learned to give examinations when they suit my convenience. I had a lesson once when I shifted the date of an examination when one third of the students found the date inconvenient and two thirds did not show up on the date in question. It also helps that that you give the makeup toward the end of the semester like the last class day; or else you will be stuck giving tests during many office hours. Somehow, not all the students can ever show up for the makeup; but they can show up on the last day of class. When you give makeups, you want them to be a little more difficult than the regular test or else students will gain an advantage by knowing what will be exactly on the test.
Choosing whether to give an essay or multiple choice type of test or fill in or asking student s to define key terms can influence the outcome of the test. One can interpret the essay in different ways to find a few extra points. Then you can add extra-credit to the test through curve.
Some professors routinely curve a test. If the student on the top gets an A, then the student at the bottom gets a F. This has its advantage when the material is extremely difficult and you don’t to flunk everybody out. On the other hand, the student does not have to work too hard either. I would add points based upon the least number wrong on the multiple choice part of the test. If the brightest student got al but one right. I would then add the one or two points to the test based on the idea that would have been the highest possible score.
On the other hand, the curve benefits the lazy students who never study. I once had a college class that it took me a month to teach them the Reformation compared to a high school class that took me a week. They were shocked when I gave them back the midterm examination results and told them I would not reward their lack of study by curving the test. This shocked them into really studying for the final examination.
I used a modified version in which I add points based upon the work done in the class. If you handed in no homework, then you have no extra points added to the examination. In short, examinations can be manipulated any way you want.
I learned to give examinations when they suit my convenience. I had a lesson once when I shifted the date of an examination when one third of the students found the date inconvenient and two thirds did not show up on the date in question. It also helps that that you give the makeup toward the end of the semester like the last class day; or else you will be stuck giving tests during many office hours. Somehow, not all the students can ever show up for the makeup; but they can show up on the last day of class. When you give makeups, you want them to be a little more difficult than the regular test or else students will gain an advantage by knowing what will be exactly on the test.
Choosing whether to give an essay or multiple choice type of test or fill in or asking student s to define key terms can influence the outcome of the test. One can interpret the essay in different ways to find a few extra points. Then you can add extra-credit to the test through curve.
Some professors routinely curve a test. If the student on the top gets an A, then the student at the bottom gets a F. This has its advantage when the material is extremely difficult and you don’t to flunk everybody out. On the other hand, the student does not have to work too hard either. I would add points based upon the least number wrong on the multiple choice part of the test. If the brightest student got al but one right. I would then add the one or two points to the test based on the idea that would have been the highest possible score.
On the other hand, the curve benefits the lazy students who never study. I once had a college class that it took me a month to teach them the Reformation compared to a high school class that took me a week. They were shocked when I gave them back the midterm examination results and told them I would not reward their lack of study by curving the test. This shocked them into really studying for the final examination.
I used a modified version in which I add points based upon the work done in the class. If you handed in no homework, then you have no extra points added to the examination. In short, examinations can be manipulated any way you want.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
24 Diploma
I don't know how much it really costs to go to college but I do know students waste their time and energy when they do not put forth their best effort or choose easy classes that do not challenge them to do their best. The real problem is that students rationalize that they will put forth their best effort in their major and what they think is their best effort falls short. As a result, some colleges become little more than high schools whose diplomas are equally meaningless.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
23 Assigned Readings
When I went to college, the typical syllabus was one or two pages. Some might have topics and have readings arranged organized around the topics. There were no questions. It was up to you to utilize the supplemental workbook. I remember one English teacher frustrated because he felt some of the students had not read the assigned portions of a novel when he wanted to discuss its contents. I remember fellow students choosing classes on which there appeared to be the least amount of required reading. A typical class required substantial reading of any where from 20 to 100 pages a week. I remember one professor who assigned over 15 books which no one protested.
Today, I find students will not even read two pages even when it is given to them, in a timely fashion. Some of my colleagues report even educational students in graduate courses that do not read the textbooks they assign. I had one class of twenty-two students where I would give handouts of one of to six pages for 3ight assignments, had they read a section of one book for 60 pages, and they had to go on the Internet to compare the Biblical creation story with another. This did not improve weven I e-mailed them the info or reminded them. The pattern emerged that one third would be absent so they would not have it, another third would claim to have handed in ahead of time and have it because they arrived late, and about half the remainder had not done it.. A substantial port of those who claimed they have handed it ahead of time simply claim they had never done it. There was one assignment of half a page and a map that only five people out of 22 of which only other two people subsequently did. They were dismayed when I told them I would put it as a question on the final examination. I tell the students that when they hand in the work lit is useless because we have already discussed it. I love it when students hand in all the homework assignments at the end of the semester that never had the time to do during the semester.
I had a colleague who suggested that I assign chapters for the students to summarize. Half the class would do this. A few went on to Internet to summarize the entire book instead of the chapter. Of course, students would come in late or be absent so chapter summaries would not be in order.
Some of the students when called upon would claim they had handed in the assignment when they had really not. I would have students that would claim they handed in various assignments during the course of the semester which they had not. If it was a case of one or two assignments out of many them got the benefit of the doubt. I had one student who I got confused with another. I asked him to bring his assignment which he was reluctant to do. I told him he was responsible adult who surely kept them in his notebook upon his return. He finally produced them. Except for a visit to a museum and a personal biography, I require the students to keep on hand duplicates of what they hand in. I tell them we live in age of Xerox and computer where we can easily keep copies and it would be foolish not to do so. I explain this way we can be friends. Students claim they hand in an entire term’s work when they have never done so. One time I misplaced a folder, told the student I would probably find it, and asked them to reconstruct what they did. When I found the folder the next day, the discrepancies were amazing. Students continue to claim they have handed in work through the e-mail or in physical mail box. I insist they give it to me in class.
This particular class I was lucky that eventually all the students did most of the assignments. I had another class were I assigned two textbooks. Students don’t buy textbooks. Students don’t go to the library to read the textbooks. One was a suggested textbook for which they could choose their own or go on the Internet. Only one student bough the textbook the week after the class came to an end. Only a quarter of the class bought the required assigned readings book of which another quarter xeroxed from them or my copy.
Today, I find students will not even read two pages even when it is given to them, in a timely fashion. Some of my colleagues report even educational students in graduate courses that do not read the textbooks they assign. I had one class of twenty-two students where I would give handouts of one of to six pages for 3ight assignments, had they read a section of one book for 60 pages, and they had to go on the Internet to compare the Biblical creation story with another. This did not improve weven I e-mailed them the info or reminded them. The pattern emerged that one third would be absent so they would not have it, another third would claim to have handed in ahead of time and have it because they arrived late, and about half the remainder had not done it.. A substantial port of those who claimed they have handed it ahead of time simply claim they had never done it. There was one assignment of half a page and a map that only five people out of 22 of which only other two people subsequently did. They were dismayed when I told them I would put it as a question on the final examination. I tell the students that when they hand in the work lit is useless because we have already discussed it. I love it when students hand in all the homework assignments at the end of the semester that never had the time to do during the semester.
I had a colleague who suggested that I assign chapters for the students to summarize. Half the class would do this. A few went on to Internet to summarize the entire book instead of the chapter. Of course, students would come in late or be absent so chapter summaries would not be in order.
Some of the students when called upon would claim they had handed in the assignment when they had really not. I would have students that would claim they handed in various assignments during the course of the semester which they had not. If it was a case of one or two assignments out of many them got the benefit of the doubt. I had one student who I got confused with another. I asked him to bring his assignment which he was reluctant to do. I told him he was responsible adult who surely kept them in his notebook upon his return. He finally produced them. Except for a visit to a museum and a personal biography, I require the students to keep on hand duplicates of what they hand in. I tell them we live in age of Xerox and computer where we can easily keep copies and it would be foolish not to do so. I explain this way we can be friends. Students claim they hand in an entire term’s work when they have never done so. One time I misplaced a folder, told the student I would probably find it, and asked them to reconstruct what they did. When I found the folder the next day, the discrepancies were amazing. Students continue to claim they have handed in work through the e-mail or in physical mail box. I insist they give it to me in class.
This particular class I was lucky that eventually all the students did most of the assignments. I had another class were I assigned two textbooks. Students don’t buy textbooks. Students don’t go to the library to read the textbooks. One was a suggested textbook for which they could choose their own or go on the Internet. Only one student bough the textbook the week after the class came to an end. Only a quarter of the class bought the required assigned readings book of which another quarter xeroxed from them or my copy.
Friday, May 16, 2008
22 Lazy
I had a student that failed his take home midterm. I wrote: “It would have helped if you had read the books.” He had used an American novel to illustrate British imperialism. In the last week of the semester, he managed to top this performance by realizing that he had passed this class before with a higher grade. His constant lateness and unwillingness to read the books was causing him to have a low grade in the class. I asked him why it took so long for him to make this realization. He responded that I taught in such a different way because I used different books he did not realize that this was the same subject class!
21 Learning Log
21 Learning Log
You will observe that I have to define what a sentence and what a paragraph is. Half the student sin the class simply refused to write a learning log on class time. A few rewrote or retyped these at home. Those handed in ranged from well-crafted summaries to incomprehensible and incomplete sentences.
Learning Log of _A Genius at Work___________________________
Entry # ----------- Date April 8, 2008--Title___How to do a Learning Log___
Theme: The mechanics of doing a learning log
Introductory or Topic Sentence _______________________________________
_____The idea of a learning log is to help you summarize what you have learned in class today in order to master the knowledge of the subject. A topic sentence introduces the main idea.
________________________________________________________________Body ____________________________________________________________ ______The next section between the introduction and conclusion consists of three to five sentences that give some basic facts and information to illustrate the main idea introduced by the introductory sentence. A sentence consists of a subject (The Romans), a verb (conquered, sometimes modified by an adverb (easily), and the complement, which is acted upon (the Greeks). Subjects or complements may be modified by adjectives (determined Romans easy-going Greeks). An indication that one has written a paragraph is to indent (skip five spaces) the beginning and to skip a space to start a new paragraph. An outline is not a substitute for a sentence or a paragraph. One sentence, a few words, or a handing in the entire set of notes you took for the class is not a substitute of writing a complete learning log of five to seven sentences (that includes introductory and concluding sentences). It is best to write the learning log right after class while the lecture is still fresh in your mind. Finally, one should hand in the learning log in a timely fashion...It helps to proofread what you write and not just rely on spell-check. Hastily scribbled notes handed in a week after they are due will not do too much to help you get a better grade in class.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Concluding or Summary Sentence ____________________________________A concluding sentence summarizes what has been learned or gives finality to the subject. This sentence may begin with the phrases: In conclusion, In summary, As a result, etc.
________________________________________________________________Those students who decide to leave early instead practicing a new skill deserve the low grades they get. They only cheat themselves. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You will observe that I have to define what a sentence and what a paragraph is. Half the student sin the class simply refused to write a learning log on class time. A few rewrote or retyped these at home. Those handed in ranged from well-crafted summaries to incomprehensible and incomplete sentences.
Learning Log of _A Genius at Work___________________________
Entry # ----------- Date April 8, 2008--Title___How to do a Learning Log___
Theme: The mechanics of doing a learning log
Introductory or Topic Sentence _______________________________________
_____The idea of a learning log is to help you summarize what you have learned in class today in order to master the knowledge of the subject. A topic sentence introduces the main idea.
________________________________________________________________Body ____________________________________________________________ ______The next section between the introduction and conclusion consists of three to five sentences that give some basic facts and information to illustrate the main idea introduced by the introductory sentence. A sentence consists of a subject (The Romans), a verb (conquered, sometimes modified by an adverb (easily), and the complement, which is acted upon (the Greeks). Subjects or complements may be modified by adjectives (determined Romans easy-going Greeks). An indication that one has written a paragraph is to indent (skip five spaces) the beginning and to skip a space to start a new paragraph. An outline is not a substitute for a sentence or a paragraph. One sentence, a few words, or a handing in the entire set of notes you took for the class is not a substitute of writing a complete learning log of five to seven sentences (that includes introductory and concluding sentences). It is best to write the learning log right after class while the lecture is still fresh in your mind. Finally, one should hand in the learning log in a timely fashion...It helps to proofread what you write and not just rely on spell-check. Hastily scribbled notes handed in a week after they are due will not do too much to help you get a better grade in class.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Concluding or Summary Sentence ____________________________________A concluding sentence summarizes what has been learned or gives finality to the subject. This sentence may begin with the phrases: In conclusion, In summary, As a result, etc.
________________________________________________________________Those students who decide to leave early instead practicing a new skill deserve the low grades they get. They only cheat themselves. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
20 Scrantrons
20 Scranttrons
The advantage a scranton is the ability to ask of lots of questions and then mark them very quickly. A drawback is the possibility that they can lost from the essay booklet or somehow seriously damaged. This can be corrected by having the students do a backup in the essay booklet. I used to make it mandatory but I just tell the students to do voluntarily. “You have the r right to learn from your own misfortune if the Scrantron sheet disappears.” Most students consider this extra precaution a waste of time.
I usually find that marking by a machine is more accurate than marking by hand. However, recently I used a scranton which incorrectly marked the sheet or did not print the score. I had to rescore everyone by hand to be sure because of widespread discrepancies.
Some scrantrons can now be written in black or blue ink as well as #2 pencils. Most of the scrantrons I use require a #2 pencil. I usually distribute the sheet 20 to 30 minutes into the test. I explain that students make mistake s or put stray marks or fail to erase completely. This cuts down on the number of errors.
Sometimes, a student may leave an answer blank when it is to his advantage to guess. Sometimes, when a student skips a question, he or she then subsequent y marks all the other answers wrong. Sometimes, I am at fault when misnumber the questions by omitting a number or having two duplicate numbers or screw upon the answers or having duplicate questions.
I usually have a free spirit in every class who insists upon using a pen. . Some students simply cross out an answer and simply pencil in another!
I tell students I will not handmark their scrantrons if they do so. I used to provide # 2 pencils for which I would charge 25 cents. Instead, I now let the students borrow a pencil from one another.
In some schools students have to buy the scrantron in the bookstore. I provide them for free, even replacement copies when they screw up.
The advantage a scranton is the ability to ask of lots of questions and then mark them very quickly. A drawback is the possibility that they can lost from the essay booklet or somehow seriously damaged. This can be corrected by having the students do a backup in the essay booklet. I used to make it mandatory but I just tell the students to do voluntarily. “You have the r right to learn from your own misfortune if the Scrantron sheet disappears.” Most students consider this extra precaution a waste of time.
I usually find that marking by a machine is more accurate than marking by hand. However, recently I used a scranton which incorrectly marked the sheet or did not print the score. I had to rescore everyone by hand to be sure because of widespread discrepancies.
Some scrantrons can now be written in black or blue ink as well as #2 pencils. Most of the scrantrons I use require a #2 pencil. I usually distribute the sheet 20 to 30 minutes into the test. I explain that students make mistake s or put stray marks or fail to erase completely. This cuts down on the number of errors.
Sometimes, a student may leave an answer blank when it is to his advantage to guess. Sometimes, when a student skips a question, he or she then subsequent y marks all the other answers wrong. Sometimes, I am at fault when misnumber the questions by omitting a number or having two duplicate numbers or screw upon the answers or having duplicate questions.
I usually have a free spirit in every class who insists upon using a pen. . Some students simply cross out an answer and simply pencil in another!
I tell students I will not handmark their scrantrons if they do so. I used to provide # 2 pencils for which I would charge 25 cents. Instead, I now let the students borrow a pencil from one another.
In some schools students have to buy the scrantron in the bookstore. I provide them for free, even replacement copies when they screw up.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
19 Deadlines
Students regard deadlines as mere suggestions. You can remind them in every class session and put it in writing. They remain deaf and dumb. “I didn’t know that.” Since they were oblivious, they expect an extension of the deadline. They are terribly shocked when you impose late penalties or refuse to accept their work after a certain date. Some try to pull the dodge of being absent on the day the assignment was due. I just tell them I will impose a late penalty regardless that they the printer or the computer stopped working at the last minute or whatever excuse they give as justification whey they cannot hand in the work on time.
Still others claim they were on time but you never received it in your mailbox or the e-mail. I get around that dodge by asking the students to give it to me in person. I also require students to keep copies of all assignments they hand in. I tell them so we can all be good friends in case the work may be “missing” – this can be pegmatite but too often it is not.
I stick to late penalties and refusing to accept work because it is unfair to those that hand in the work on time so there is a level playing field. I also want to avoid marking a ton of papers at the last minute.
I have tried two approaches. One approach is having the assignment done over a period of time with the final draft due at a certain date. Thus I collect subsets of the work three times with the final version due on a certain date. At other times, I have an early deadline such as sixth week of the semester! I tell the students since they do things at the last minute any way, they might as well do my project first and get it out of the way before they do other term projects at the last minute. I had one student that managed to hand it in the term project nine9 weeks late after such a date! She actually appeared five minutes at the end of the last class where I gave back all the assignments and final examinations! For the record, I gave her a low grade and told her to see a shrink!
I had another student that wanted to hand in learning logs for the first half of the semester 10 weeks after they were due and eight weeks after the last possible deadline extension I had given. She wanted the credit but had no explanation of why she had been unable to do these for the past three months! She felt I was being unreasonable!
Still others claim they were on time but you never received it in your mailbox or the e-mail. I get around that dodge by asking the students to give it to me in person. I also require students to keep copies of all assignments they hand in. I tell them so we can all be good friends in case the work may be “missing” – this can be pegmatite but too often it is not.
I stick to late penalties and refusing to accept work because it is unfair to those that hand in the work on time so there is a level playing field. I also want to avoid marking a ton of papers at the last minute.
I have tried two approaches. One approach is having the assignment done over a period of time with the final draft due at a certain date. Thus I collect subsets of the work three times with the final version due on a certain date. At other times, I have an early deadline such as sixth week of the semester! I tell the students since they do things at the last minute any way, they might as well do my project first and get it out of the way before they do other term projects at the last minute. I had one student that managed to hand it in the term project nine9 weeks late after such a date! She actually appeared five minutes at the end of the last class where I gave back all the assignments and final examinations! For the record, I gave her a low grade and told her to see a shrink!
I had another student that wanted to hand in learning logs for the first half of the semester 10 weeks after they were due and eight weeks after the last possible deadline extension I had given. She wanted the credit but had no explanation of why she had been unable to do these for the past three months! She felt I was being unreasonable!
18 The Lost Art of Note-Taking
Yesterday, one of my students accused me of not providing enough notes for her. In this case, handouts of what I had lectured on. Last semester, I was accused of giving too much notes because I had given out PowerPoint handouts by the dozen. You can’t win. Actually, she thought it was my responsibility to keep on hand all the handouts whether or not she got them when she was absent instead of asking her fellow students for the notes.
She thought the notes and the textbook should match one another. She argued that I concentrated too much on subjects while not going into dept h on others. Of course, as human beings we have our interests and try to share them with the students. I remember having a psychology professor who lectured extensively one chapter of the textbook while warning us the text would cover other chapters equally; and he was true to his word.
Many years ago, I took ten undergraduate classes in history and twenty-four in graduate schools in which the only thing the professor wrote on the black board was his name. The students were expected to keep up with the lecture and write down the notes. There was no slide presentation or movie shown as happened in my pre-college education days. No outline was written on the blackboard. No student ever asked any of the professors to repeat anything. The professors ranged from reading their notes in the driest and boriest monotone possible to others that brought the subject alive through the power of their words and ideas alone. No students carried on conversations, arrived late, left early, or repeatedly left the room. Some professors were still young at heart with the latest research while others while already old even though young physically because they had never updated their lecture notes in years. A few had accents that were very hard to understand. But we all soldiered on. We never complained. I remember one student who tried to take down one professor’s lecture in shorthand but gave it up and learned how to summarize. I have given permission for my students to audiotape me. If you were absent, you borrowed a fellow student’s notes to make copes on the new fangled Xerox copiers. In some colleges that big lecture halls, somebody made a business of hiring professional note-takers who would sell the product to the students.
When I first started teaching, every student tried to write down something. Today in every college I teach, note-taking is a lost art that perplexes students. You have to tell them to open up their notebooks to take notes. They make no effort to summarize the information but try to take down every possible word. They have no idea how to arrange the information. If they are absent, they ask if they missed anything important. Some of the students don’t even arrange their notes by subject in a loose-leaf notebook!
I’ve tried to solve this problem in various ways. At on e point, I thought PowerPoint was the solution. In one approach, I gave them entire contents. For some students, particularly those for whom English was a second language, benefited enormously because they could illustrations that helped them understand key concepts. They could hear the words pronounced correctly and see how these words were spelled. Unfortunately, other students failed to underline key concepts as I lectured and expounded. Still others simply saw this as no need to come to class or they could come to class late and easily catch up.
Then I tried to simplify the PowerPoint presentation and not give out copies of it. The students insisted upon copying down every word they saw. Because of their inability to summarize, I had to stop showing certain PowerPoints because they would want to copy down the entire thing instead of enjoying the presentation or summarizing it.
One colleague who observed me suggested that I give the students copies of the lectures and has them fill in the blank! She also suggested it was the responsibility of the professor to ask the students questions every five minutes to involve them in the process of learning. And here I was brought up to listen to lectures for one or two hours and it was my responsibility to ask the question if I did not understand the lecture or I was curious about something. I had a friend when he went to college that when the first day of recitation after the lecture they showed up expecting some additional information. The professor asked if they were any questions. There were none. Class dismissed. The next time the students had plenty of questions to ask.
She thought the notes and the textbook should match one another. She argued that I concentrated too much on subjects while not going into dept h on others. Of course, as human beings we have our interests and try to share them with the students. I remember having a psychology professor who lectured extensively one chapter of the textbook while warning us the text would cover other chapters equally; and he was true to his word.
Many years ago, I took ten undergraduate classes in history and twenty-four in graduate schools in which the only thing the professor wrote on the black board was his name. The students were expected to keep up with the lecture and write down the notes. There was no slide presentation or movie shown as happened in my pre-college education days. No outline was written on the blackboard. No student ever asked any of the professors to repeat anything. The professors ranged from reading their notes in the driest and boriest monotone possible to others that brought the subject alive through the power of their words and ideas alone. No students carried on conversations, arrived late, left early, or repeatedly left the room. Some professors were still young at heart with the latest research while others while already old even though young physically because they had never updated their lecture notes in years. A few had accents that were very hard to understand. But we all soldiered on. We never complained. I remember one student who tried to take down one professor’s lecture in shorthand but gave it up and learned how to summarize. I have given permission for my students to audiotape me. If you were absent, you borrowed a fellow student’s notes to make copes on the new fangled Xerox copiers. In some colleges that big lecture halls, somebody made a business of hiring professional note-takers who would sell the product to the students.
When I first started teaching, every student tried to write down something. Today in every college I teach, note-taking is a lost art that perplexes students. You have to tell them to open up their notebooks to take notes. They make no effort to summarize the information but try to take down every possible word. They have no idea how to arrange the information. If they are absent, they ask if they missed anything important. Some of the students don’t even arrange their notes by subject in a loose-leaf notebook!
I’ve tried to solve this problem in various ways. At on e point, I thought PowerPoint was the solution. In one approach, I gave them entire contents. For some students, particularly those for whom English was a second language, benefited enormously because they could illustrations that helped them understand key concepts. They could hear the words pronounced correctly and see how these words were spelled. Unfortunately, other students failed to underline key concepts as I lectured and expounded. Still others simply saw this as no need to come to class or they could come to class late and easily catch up.
Then I tried to simplify the PowerPoint presentation and not give out copies of it. The students insisted upon copying down every word they saw. Because of their inability to summarize, I had to stop showing certain PowerPoints because they would want to copy down the entire thing instead of enjoying the presentation or summarizing it.
One colleague who observed me suggested that I give the students copies of the lectures and has them fill in the blank! She also suggested it was the responsibility of the professor to ask the students questions every five minutes to involve them in the process of learning. And here I was brought up to listen to lectures for one or two hours and it was my responsibility to ask the question if I did not understand the lecture or I was curious about something. I had a friend when he went to college that when the first day of recitation after the lecture they showed up expecting some additional information. The professor asked if they were any questions. There were none. Class dismissed. The next time the students had plenty of questions to ask.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
17 Absence Excuses
Students may be absent for a variety of reasons ranging from serious to the creative and amazing but true variety.
1. Open school night which I encourage as a former school teacher.
2. Jury duty.
3. Emergency medical.
4. Child birth. I had one dedicated student who showed up with her “excuse.” She was an excellent student so I did not mind at all.
5. Female problems.
6. Asthma attack.
7. I had one student who decided to take a vacation for two weeks but had the good grace to quit when he broke his foot.
8. Another student started a new business and could not show up after the third week.
9. Another student missed 2/3 of the three one hour class week sessions for a few weeks because of a job until he realized he was not passing.
10. One student missed three class sessions because he felt too ill to come to class, not share whatever he had, but did not go to the doctor.
11. Overslept.
12. This did not happen to me but more than one professor claims receiving an e-mail that it was to nice a day to go class.
13. I had one student who never showed up because she was too busy try to make money to pay for the class she informed me by cell phone!
14. Training at work.
15. Work.
16. Illness of a child or parent.
17. Dropping someone off at the airport.
18. Automobile accident.
19. Automobile stolen.
20. Screwed up on calendar.
21. Weather.
22. Monumental traffic problem.
23. Business trip.
24. Play a music gig.
25. Change in work schedule.
26. Religious holiday. I did teach at one private college attended predominately by Catholic and evangelical students that treated Easter as a holiday that did not exist! Some of my Jewish students try to get excused from certain days but because I am also Jewish I know that these are days that not obligatory to take off and they show up.
27. Death in the family. I have had students that have gone off for six weeks in some distant country to take part in the mourning.
28. Arrest.
29. Fight a parking ticket.
30. Had to go to a child’s school to take care of a problem.
31. College competency test of some kind.
32. Had to see another professor.
33. Long test from another class or take a make-up test for another class.
34. Taking part in student government.
35. Going on out of town road trip for the school, usually athletics. Colleges are demanding that the students attend your class and have your permission to go. Most athletes that I have in my classes are excellent students.
36. Dental problems.
37. Surgery of some kind.
38. Influenza.
39. Allergy attack
40. Confused on the schedule because the school decided Monday would be a Wednesday..
1. Open school night which I encourage as a former school teacher.
2. Jury duty.
3. Emergency medical.
4. Child birth. I had one dedicated student who showed up with her “excuse.” She was an excellent student so I did not mind at all.
5. Female problems.
6. Asthma attack.
7. I had one student who decided to take a vacation for two weeks but had the good grace to quit when he broke his foot.
8. Another student started a new business and could not show up after the third week.
9. Another student missed 2/3 of the three one hour class week sessions for a few weeks because of a job until he realized he was not passing.
10. One student missed three class sessions because he felt too ill to come to class, not share whatever he had, but did not go to the doctor.
11. Overslept.
12. This did not happen to me but more than one professor claims receiving an e-mail that it was to nice a day to go class.
13. I had one student who never showed up because she was too busy try to make money to pay for the class she informed me by cell phone!
14. Training at work.
15. Work.
16. Illness of a child or parent.
17. Dropping someone off at the airport.
18. Automobile accident.
19. Automobile stolen.
20. Screwed up on calendar.
21. Weather.
22. Monumental traffic problem.
23. Business trip.
24. Play a music gig.
25. Change in work schedule.
26. Religious holiday. I did teach at one private college attended predominately by Catholic and evangelical students that treated Easter as a holiday that did not exist! Some of my Jewish students try to get excused from certain days but because I am also Jewish I know that these are days that not obligatory to take off and they show up.
27. Death in the family. I have had students that have gone off for six weeks in some distant country to take part in the mourning.
28. Arrest.
29. Fight a parking ticket.
30. Had to go to a child’s school to take care of a problem.
31. College competency test of some kind.
32. Had to see another professor.
33. Long test from another class or take a make-up test for another class.
34. Taking part in student government.
35. Going on out of town road trip for the school, usually athletics. Colleges are demanding that the students attend your class and have your permission to go. Most athletes that I have in my classes are excellent students.
36. Dental problems.
37. Surgery of some kind.
38. Influenza.
39. Allergy attack
40. Confused on the schedule because the school decided Monday would be a Wednesday..
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
16 To be or not to be in class!
Blog 16 To be or not to be in class!
Today at one class today I had perfect attendance. All 22 students showed up to take the final examination. This had never happened before in all the years that I have been teaching that I had perfect attendance except when I had a class of three students who almost always showed up.
I then went to another college where three students showed up in error because they did not have to take the make-up midterm. They had been absent the last class session and had ignored the written announcement. Attendance in this class usually averages 25 of 37 students. You have to realize about ten students show up late. If I were strict in applying any college’s regulations on attendance, I would have an enormous failure rate. Let us say that the typical college regulation states I should penalize a student for being absent 10% and many have been absent between 20% and 40% of the time.
When I take attendance, I always strive to look at who is saying present. It is not unusual to have an occasional student to say present for another. Of course, I almost never send a sheet around for the students to sign because the names are simply forged. The few times I do I double check by a roll call.
Then we have the problem of what constitutes actual physical presence. Do I mark someone present who has made a heroic effort to come to class just five minutes before the end of the class? If it is just one time, I give the student the benefit of the doubt. Then we have students that go out for extended periods to the bathroom which may constitute the entire class period. A few are bold enough to go to the cafeteria for an extended break or bring stuff back. Or they may go out of the room two or three times in a 50 minute class. Then I have students who disappear. They go the bathroom and never come back. They sneak out during a video. Or they sneak out during a small group activity and never come back. Or they just sneak out.
Then if they are physically present, are they mentally present? A student or two may be sleeping because they did not enough sleep during the day or night. A student may be reading a newspaper or doing the work of another class. Students may be chatting, texting or playing games on the cell-phone. I have no idea whether or not they are taking notes on the laptop or playing video games. Or they may simply be chatting as if they were in Starbucks. Their fellow students strain to hear the presentation instead of telling them to be quiet. Unfortunately, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head to try to control such rudeness.
Now if I were in high school. I would suppose to be demonstrating good class management skills. But these are adults paying to be there. If this was a movie theater, none of this would be tolerated for a second.
Then I have students who ask for the missing handouts. What I usually do is save handouts for the next class session and then I throw them out. I explain to the students I teach too many classes to save the handouts or have the space to do so. In order to miss handouts, this means they had to miss two class sessions in a row. The dilemma with handouts is that they may actually student absences or inattention because they feel they don’t have to take notes.
Then of course the students claim they are present because you made a mistake in attendance. This is easily exposed by simply asking for the day’s notes for which some uncountable reason they don’t have. Or point out their name is missing from the group activity signup sheet of the day. I had one student who insisted she had been “too shy” to come forward after class to say she was present because she had been “late.” I told her she was too intelligent not to be noticed. I had to be PC on this because she was one beautiful black female, the only one in the class. I had anther student today who insisted he had been present the last three class sessions. The only problem was that I was trying to hand back an assignment for him to correct. Failure to correct this in a timely fashion meant a low grade.
And of course, they ask, did they miss anything important!
Today at one class today I had perfect attendance. All 22 students showed up to take the final examination. This had never happened before in all the years that I have been teaching that I had perfect attendance except when I had a class of three students who almost always showed up.
I then went to another college where three students showed up in error because they did not have to take the make-up midterm. They had been absent the last class session and had ignored the written announcement. Attendance in this class usually averages 25 of 37 students. You have to realize about ten students show up late. If I were strict in applying any college’s regulations on attendance, I would have an enormous failure rate. Let us say that the typical college regulation states I should penalize a student for being absent 10% and many have been absent between 20% and 40% of the time.
When I take attendance, I always strive to look at who is saying present. It is not unusual to have an occasional student to say present for another. Of course, I almost never send a sheet around for the students to sign because the names are simply forged. The few times I do I double check by a roll call.
Then we have the problem of what constitutes actual physical presence. Do I mark someone present who has made a heroic effort to come to class just five minutes before the end of the class? If it is just one time, I give the student the benefit of the doubt. Then we have students that go out for extended periods to the bathroom which may constitute the entire class period. A few are bold enough to go to the cafeteria for an extended break or bring stuff back. Or they may go out of the room two or three times in a 50 minute class. Then I have students who disappear. They go the bathroom and never come back. They sneak out during a video. Or they sneak out during a small group activity and never come back. Or they just sneak out.
Then if they are physically present, are they mentally present? A student or two may be sleeping because they did not enough sleep during the day or night. A student may be reading a newspaper or doing the work of another class. Students may be chatting, texting or playing games on the cell-phone. I have no idea whether or not they are taking notes on the laptop or playing video games. Or they may simply be chatting as if they were in Starbucks. Their fellow students strain to hear the presentation instead of telling them to be quiet. Unfortunately, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head to try to control such rudeness.
Now if I were in high school. I would suppose to be demonstrating good class management skills. But these are adults paying to be there. If this was a movie theater, none of this would be tolerated for a second.
Then I have students who ask for the missing handouts. What I usually do is save handouts for the next class session and then I throw them out. I explain to the students I teach too many classes to save the handouts or have the space to do so. In order to miss handouts, this means they had to miss two class sessions in a row. The dilemma with handouts is that they may actually student absences or inattention because they feel they don’t have to take notes.
Then of course the students claim they are present because you made a mistake in attendance. This is easily exposed by simply asking for the day’s notes for which some uncountable reason they don’t have. Or point out their name is missing from the group activity signup sheet of the day. I had one student who insisted she had been “too shy” to come forward after class to say she was present because she had been “late.” I told her she was too intelligent not to be noticed. I had to be PC on this because she was one beautiful black female, the only one in the class. I had anther student today who insisted he had been present the last three class sessions. The only problem was that I was trying to hand back an assignment for him to correct. Failure to correct this in a timely fashion meant a low grade.
And of course, they ask, did they miss anything important!
15 Second Chance Muffed
had two students who submitted plagiarized term projects. I told them to do them over again. One did; it was a terrible paper to read; but it was his; and I gave him a D. The other student approached me a few months later and asked me what grade was. He claimed that I had mixed him up with the other student. Apparently, he operated on the assumption that I would either forget or I had not kept good records. I checked. I left a message on his telephone answering machine: “You passed the midterm; you failed the final exam; and you never rewrote your plagiarized term paper; two out of three ain’t good; you fail.”
A few weeks later, he approached me if he could resubmit his paper. I said yes. He did. I Googled it and found it to be completely plagiarized. This time I emailed him that I would fail him on two grounds: plagiarism again; and failure to follow direction which added up to a zero.
A week later, he spotted me in the cafeteria and asked me why I had failed him. I told him. He said he had meant to hand in the paper to English class but had forget to edit it. I told him if I had been his English teacher, I would fail him for plagiarism. He then asked if he could try again. I told him he would not a third chance to bat. He asked if I could take my class again. I told him, if he did I would triple check to make sure his work was original.
A few weeks later, he approached me if he could resubmit his paper. I said yes. He did. I Googled it and found it to be completely plagiarized. This time I emailed him that I would fail him on two grounds: plagiarism again; and failure to follow direction which added up to a zero.
A week later, he spotted me in the cafeteria and asked me why I had failed him. I told him. He said he had meant to hand in the paper to English class but had forget to edit it. I told him if I had been his English teacher, I would fail him for plagiarism. He then asked if he could try again. I told him he would not a third chance to bat. He asked if I could take my class again. I told him, if he did I would triple check to make sure his work was original.
Monday, May 12, 2008
14 No Application of Knowledge
I have students have taken English or public speaking but apparently these skills do not transfer over to other subjects where applicable. I had one student who submitted his term project three times. Each time I took two points either for spelling or capitalization errors until I lowered his term project’s grade to 60 each time.. I told him I was not his proofreader.
He complained in one e-mail: : “Why did you take 10 points for my failure to capitalize proper nouns? This is not English class.”
He complained in one e-mail: : “Why did you take 10 points for my failure to capitalize proper nouns? This is not English class.”
13 Term Paper Countdown for Dr. Weisenheimer’s Class.
Please check the following to explain why you don’t have your term project today.*
1. ______ I need more time to complete my project.
2. ______The computer or the printer died.
3. ______The diskette that had the report was stolen, destroyed or mislaid.
4. ______ I left the report at home.
5. ______ I left the report at the office.
6. ______ I haven’t had time to do the project.
7. ______ I need time to download somebody’s research paper from the House of Cheat.
8. ______ I have had a family emergency.
9.______ I have had a death in the family.
10. _____ I have a medical emergency.
11._____ I spilled coffee all over my work.
12. _____Some other excuse --
*Guess what, you will still lose 10 points on your term project. If a completed term project is not handed in at our last class session, May 2, between 9:30 AM and 10 AM, you will lose 20 points on your term project. You can hand in your term project between 12:45 PM and 1 PM on Thursday, May 8 in front of room 204 where I will be. After that an uncompleted term project will receive the grade of zero and be computed in your class average accordingly.
1. ______ I need more time to complete my project.
2. ______The computer or the printer died.
3. ______The diskette that had the report was stolen, destroyed or mislaid.
4. ______ I left the report at home.
5. ______ I left the report at the office.
6. ______ I haven’t had time to do the project.
7. ______ I need time to download somebody’s research paper from the House of Cheat.
8. ______ I have had a family emergency.
9.______ I have had a death in the family.
10. _____ I have a medical emergency.
11._____ I spilled coffee all over my work.
12. _____Some other excuse --
*Guess what, you will still lose 10 points on your term project. If a completed term project is not handed in at our last class session, May 2, between 9:30 AM and 10 AM, you will lose 20 points on your term project. You can hand in your term project between 12:45 PM and 1 PM on Thursday, May 8 in front of room 204 where I will be. After that an uncompleted term project will receive the grade of zero and be computed in your class average accordingly.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
12 Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s words whether we use them in whole or paraphrase them without giving credit. I had an e-class in American Government where the students had to respond 12 assignments plus discussions. All the assignments were well-done. The last assignment did him when I began to read it. I agreed with all its opinions. I loved it. Only problem was that it was taken off my website!
I then began to Google all his other works as well which revealed extensive plagiarism. Obviously, answering homework questions involved repeating the text. The problem was the sections that the opinion questions which were suppose to reflect his personal thoughts. I began to re-evaluate the assignments which fell from getting a grade of 90% to 120% to 20% to 80%.
Amir began to frantically e-mail me as he saw his grades change to failing. He could not write a single sentence without a grammatical or spelling error. I should have realized that he was not a master of the English language because he had never taken part in a discussion question which would have required some mastery of prose writing. Unlike some well-known plagiarists who claim they forget to put in quotation marks or they incorporated dozens of pages into their epics because of some computer mix-up, he did not make such claims. Instead, he said he needed a B so that his company would pay for the course. When this did not work, he said needed a passing grade to graduate. When this did not work, he protested to my supervisor who said he could come in person to take a comprehensive test to demonstrate his mastery of the subject. Although he made several appointments, he never showed up for the examination. I guess he hoped to wear people down in passing him but this did not work. Other professors have reported students using their old journal articles or books or e-data that they claim they did original research and writing. These are truly dumb clucks not to recognize the names of professors!
I then began to Google all his other works as well which revealed extensive plagiarism. Obviously, answering homework questions involved repeating the text. The problem was the sections that the opinion questions which were suppose to reflect his personal thoughts. I began to re-evaluate the assignments which fell from getting a grade of 90% to 120% to 20% to 80%.
Amir began to frantically e-mail me as he saw his grades change to failing. He could not write a single sentence without a grammatical or spelling error. I should have realized that he was not a master of the English language because he had never taken part in a discussion question which would have required some mastery of prose writing. Unlike some well-known plagiarists who claim they forget to put in quotation marks or they incorporated dozens of pages into their epics because of some computer mix-up, he did not make such claims. Instead, he said he needed a B so that his company would pay for the course. When this did not work, he said needed a passing grade to graduate. When this did not work, he protested to my supervisor who said he could come in person to take a comprehensive test to demonstrate his mastery of the subject. Although he made several appointments, he never showed up for the examination. I guess he hoped to wear people down in passing him but this did not work. Other professors have reported students using their old journal articles or books or e-data that they claim they did original research and writing. These are truly dumb clucks not to recognize the names of professors!
11 Lateness
Today, I took a taxi to be on time for an engagement. I knew I would get there on time with the taxi. I did not want to take the risk with mass transit. I knew my client would not be pleased if I were late. I have not been without sin in this regard but I am usually on time with almost all my classes. For this semester, excluding an on-line class I taught, I was late once to one college class because a traffic jam held up my taxi and I was five minutes late; late to one college class three times where I walked to facility; and no lateness for two classes. As I tell my students to come on time, I tell them I have taught as many as 12 classes which means up to 24 times a week I had to travel to different and far flung parts of the city which I have made on time whether it was by automobile or by mass transit.
No matter what the time of day –morning, afternoon, or evening– they come in late in a steady stream. And it is always the same people coming late at the same time. About half of every class comes in late. For these students the class schedule is simply a suggestion.
I had one person who managed throughout most of the term come the last half hour of a three hour class or even come just as the class was being dismissed. He blamed mass transit for his problems though it boggled my mind on how he planned to come to class from the section of the city he was coming from in one hour although I knew from personal experience this would take at least two hours. I had one student leaving from the college where I taught and she worked to go another college where I taught and she was my student. I knew the trip took about 1 ½ hours but allowed myself two hours because this required three changes of mass transit. She allowed herself one hour to make the same trip and usually arrived about fifteen minutes before the end of class.
One student claimed every other time he was late that the drawbridge was up which held up traffic for half hour or more. I would ask students where they would come from. I would say it is strange that I had to make two changes of mast transit while you only to take the bus once and I am still here on time from whatever location they were coming from One semester I had the students write down their excuses if they wanted to be marked present. Several of them collected 10 to 15 pieces of paper which would have been higher if they were not absent. The favorite was that the bus was late. I would tell them they were practicing just-in time and they should come early on their time instead of being late on class time. I could utilize the extra time as I did to study or read or some thing else productive.
I eliminated the so-called “grace period.” I noticed the students who would come in just as the grace period came to an end could now make it on time when class was suppose to start. I have students who argue that I should not make them for being late by one minute. I tell them late is late. I have had students who feel they should not be marked late even if they are twenty minutes late.
In most of the classrooms, there is a public clock which I go by. I tell the students they should make adjustments with their wrist watches or whatever time piece they use to tell the time. When the claim the clock is “fast,” I say let us have a vote. I will start taking the attendance five minutes after the hour but that means we will end class five minutes later. The students argue I should start the class later but not end the class later. When we have a vote, the original time stays.
I mark students late whose bags on the chairs while they have “gone to the bathroom.” When they complain, I tell them, “Your books are on time but not you.”
Excuses on why students are late: The bus is late is the favorite, a few are candid enough to say they overslept, coming from a distant part of the campus (sometimes legitimate for which I would make an accommodation), dental or medixal appointments, etc. Some would say they would have to take care of a child or an elderly parent every day. The excuse would be noble but why sign up for a class you cannot make on time.
The obvious issues are that coming in late, they are lost, have to ask the teacher or fellow students where the class is, or they want to tell the teacher they should be marked present, they don’t do their fair share of the group work, miss vital parts of instruction, and are some what confused on what are the proceedings of the class.
And, of course, they come late for tests. I tell them, they will not extra time to accommodate their being late.
Other teachers I know have closed the door on student after the first ten minutes or give a surprise or announced quiz at the beginning of class that late comers cannot make up. For me, this sounds like extra work which based on past experience really does not motivate the students to come to class on time. The students show no shame in coming late to class. Of course, repeated lateness is a sign of no respect for the teacher or the subject.
I had one student who would come an hour late; go out for Starbucks latte, and come back half hour later. He said his cruel boss made him work late and he did not have his breakfast. Of course, I would cruel if he curtailed his work schedule that enabled him to pay his living expenses.
Of course, you can tell who will get the better grades – the students who come on time—while the students who come have other problems that impede their learning. I just tell the students that when they graduate lateness will not go away as problem magically. Instead, employers will not advance them on the job and replace them with people that will show up on time.
No matter what the time of day –morning, afternoon, or evening– they come in late in a steady stream. And it is always the same people coming late at the same time. About half of every class comes in late. For these students the class schedule is simply a suggestion.
I had one person who managed throughout most of the term come the last half hour of a three hour class or even come just as the class was being dismissed. He blamed mass transit for his problems though it boggled my mind on how he planned to come to class from the section of the city he was coming from in one hour although I knew from personal experience this would take at least two hours. I had one student leaving from the college where I taught and she worked to go another college where I taught and she was my student. I knew the trip took about 1 ½ hours but allowed myself two hours because this required three changes of mass transit. She allowed herself one hour to make the same trip and usually arrived about fifteen minutes before the end of class.
One student claimed every other time he was late that the drawbridge was up which held up traffic for half hour or more. I would ask students where they would come from. I would say it is strange that I had to make two changes of mast transit while you only to take the bus once and I am still here on time from whatever location they were coming from One semester I had the students write down their excuses if they wanted to be marked present. Several of them collected 10 to 15 pieces of paper which would have been higher if they were not absent. The favorite was that the bus was late. I would tell them they were practicing just-in time and they should come early on their time instead of being late on class time. I could utilize the extra time as I did to study or read or some thing else productive.
I eliminated the so-called “grace period.” I noticed the students who would come in just as the grace period came to an end could now make it on time when class was suppose to start. I have students who argue that I should not make them for being late by one minute. I tell them late is late. I have had students who feel they should not be marked late even if they are twenty minutes late.
In most of the classrooms, there is a public clock which I go by. I tell the students they should make adjustments with their wrist watches or whatever time piece they use to tell the time. When the claim the clock is “fast,” I say let us have a vote. I will start taking the attendance five minutes after the hour but that means we will end class five minutes later. The students argue I should start the class later but not end the class later. When we have a vote, the original time stays.
I mark students late whose bags on the chairs while they have “gone to the bathroom.” When they complain, I tell them, “Your books are on time but not you.”
Excuses on why students are late: The bus is late is the favorite, a few are candid enough to say they overslept, coming from a distant part of the campus (sometimes legitimate for which I would make an accommodation), dental or medixal appointments, etc. Some would say they would have to take care of a child or an elderly parent every day. The excuse would be noble but why sign up for a class you cannot make on time.
The obvious issues are that coming in late, they are lost, have to ask the teacher or fellow students where the class is, or they want to tell the teacher they should be marked present, they don’t do their fair share of the group work, miss vital parts of instruction, and are some what confused on what are the proceedings of the class.
And, of course, they come late for tests. I tell them, they will not extra time to accommodate their being late.
Other teachers I know have closed the door on student after the first ten minutes or give a surprise or announced quiz at the beginning of class that late comers cannot make up. For me, this sounds like extra work which based on past experience really does not motivate the students to come to class on time. The students show no shame in coming late to class. Of course, repeated lateness is a sign of no respect for the teacher or the subject.
I had one student who would come an hour late; go out for Starbucks latte, and come back half hour later. He said his cruel boss made him work late and he did not have his breakfast. Of course, I would cruel if he curtailed his work schedule that enabled him to pay his living expenses.
Of course, you can tell who will get the better grades – the students who come on time—while the students who come have other problems that impede their learning. I just tell the students that when they graduate lateness will not go away as problem magically. Instead, employers will not advance them on the job and replace them with people that will show up on time.
Friday, May 9, 2008
10 Feeling Bad
Today I felt bad when I told more than one student that he or she could not bring in work the next day or e-mail it to me. I refuse to have students e-mail stuff to me or put it in my mailbox because it is amazing how much stuff they swear they have given you but somehow you never receive it. The work ranged from one assignment to the entire term’s work. I had been telling students that the coming deadline to hand in any missing homework or assignment for the past two weeks. Never how late you make the deadline students always do it at the last minute.
I had one student that frantically e-mailed me that he had arrived just few minutes before the end of class but alas the class ended a few minutes early and I had left for the day. Normally, this student was only a few minutes late but today he outdid himself. One woman student had borrowed resource book from me and did one of nine assignments missing by next we had class again. I had one student that truly outdid herself, Jessica, which I shall discuss at greater length who arrived five minutes at the end of the last class one week after the deadline to hand in anything after missing in action for at least four weeks.
The next day after I wrote this I had student Steve who e-mailed me. He had missed the last three classes because he felt too ill to go to school but not too ill to see a doctor. He asked me to e-mail him the information on what he had missed because he found contacting his fellow students too unreliable. I e-mailed him information on the forthcoming final examination. This was the Thursday before the test that would take place on Tuesday. At midnight Monday he e-mailed me for additional information about the test. He admitted he had waited to the last minute to answer.
These are the only there choices. The class had a vote of the original six essays. They chose two and I chose one. You will be asked to answer all three questions. There is no open book test.
Professor,
Upon reviewing your e-mail, I just noticed that you only gave me three possible essay choices. In your e-mail you said that three of a possible ‘five’ would be on the test. Am I to assume that the three you gave me are the three that will be on the test, or did you mistakenly forget to add the other two questions? I will try to study the questions from my Midterm since the essays appear to be based off of that, but I’m not sure what aspects will differ.
Closed book test.
Another thing I noticed is that the final exam will last until 1:00 PM. At current, this will conflict with another class of mine, which starts at 12:15. How should I proceed with the test?
Do the best you can. I said I would give class as much time as possible. I presume most students will finish well within the two hours. Nobody else present mentioned any particular problems with the time.
I realize that I have contacted you with nearly no advance notice, and as such I don’t expect much accommodation. I only wish that I noticed these things earlier in the weekend when I was reviewing these topics. If there is anything you can do for me, I would greatly appreciate it. In either case, I will have to make do.
Unfortunately, this is the price you pay when you do things at the last minute and you were out the last three sessions of class in which I explained the nature of the Final Examination.
Originally, I felt I was doing the students a service by being so accommodating. In reality, I have realized that facilitates the dysfunctional nature of their learning activities. One must ask why they can in one night or one weekend make up all the term’s assignment that were unwilling or unable to do for the previous fourteen weeks. Even if they do the work themselves instead of copying it is not quite the same as doing this over a period of time or discussing it in class with their fellow scholars.
I had one class where I provided seven of ten homework assignments so that they did not have to buy the book or even search for the material on the Internet. The assignments ranged from two to eight pages. The other three assignments involved reading a section of a book of sixty pages, reading part of one Biblical book and the looking for a creation story on the Internet. Compliance ranged from any given assignment from twenty percent to sixty percent. What happened would be that several students would be absent so that would not have the work for the next time, a few more would hand in ahead of time and coming in late it would be inconvenient to give the assignment back to them, or they would be absent. On one memorable occasion, in this class of twenty-five students, five had the assignments, one had handed it in early, ten were absent, and the rest did not have it. The next class, they out did themselves, we had twenty students present but only four had done the assignment. The unprepared students would share their insights of ignorance as repeated what others had said. My favorite technique would be when one of these would repeat the same information or said they agreed, I would ask why.
A few students endeavored to do the assignment in class as we discussed it or read the material, A few students called upon that did not do the work would say they had already handed it in. I solved the problem of handing in the work early by saying I would give an “F”. Some teachers would try to get students by doing the work by giving a quiz, surprise or announce. For this particular class, for both the midterm and final examination one of the essay questions the students had to answer was the homework assignment they had none done.
By sticking to deadlines, I find I reduce the amount of work that I have to process at the last minutes so that I have time to analyze. I do myself a favor and the student can’t slip inferior work by.
As a former high school teacher, I can recognize the student assumptions behind these phenomena. They would do as little work as possible on the assumption that not all of them could be failed by the teacher or the teacher would look bad. The teacher would conspire by permitting the students to make up the work at the last minute. This was often homework assignments they would copy over night from other students or the more lazy ones would try to scribble their name in place of the student that actually had done the work or use white. I would observe how many often styles of writing would change from the homework assignments. I would have students who would swear they had learned their lesson if they were only permitted to make up their assignments. They would repeat this in the next class and the next semester. The only thing they had learned they did have to really do the work or push came to shove to do as little as possible.
I had one student that frantically e-mailed me that he had arrived just few minutes before the end of class but alas the class ended a few minutes early and I had left for the day. Normally, this student was only a few minutes late but today he outdid himself. One woman student had borrowed resource book from me and did one of nine assignments missing by next we had class again. I had one student that truly outdid herself, Jessica, which I shall discuss at greater length who arrived five minutes at the end of the last class one week after the deadline to hand in anything after missing in action for at least four weeks.
The next day after I wrote this I had student Steve who e-mailed me. He had missed the last three classes because he felt too ill to go to school but not too ill to see a doctor. He asked me to e-mail him the information on what he had missed because he found contacting his fellow students too unreliable. I e-mailed him information on the forthcoming final examination. This was the Thursday before the test that would take place on Tuesday. At midnight Monday he e-mailed me for additional information about the test. He admitted he had waited to the last minute to answer.
These are the only there choices. The class had a vote of the original six essays. They chose two and I chose one. You will be asked to answer all three questions. There is no open book test.
Professor,
Upon reviewing your e-mail, I just noticed that you only gave me three possible essay choices. In your e-mail you said that three of a possible ‘five’ would be on the test. Am I to assume that the three you gave me are the three that will be on the test, or did you mistakenly forget to add the other two questions? I will try to study the questions from my Midterm since the essays appear to be based off of that, but I’m not sure what aspects will differ.
Closed book test.
Another thing I noticed is that the final exam will last until 1:00 PM. At current, this will conflict with another class of mine, which starts at 12:15. How should I proceed with the test?
Do the best you can. I said I would give class as much time as possible. I presume most students will finish well within the two hours. Nobody else present mentioned any particular problems with the time.
I realize that I have contacted you with nearly no advance notice, and as such I don’t expect much accommodation. I only wish that I noticed these things earlier in the weekend when I was reviewing these topics. If there is anything you can do for me, I would greatly appreciate it. In either case, I will have to make do.
Unfortunately, this is the price you pay when you do things at the last minute and you were out the last three sessions of class in which I explained the nature of the Final Examination.
Originally, I felt I was doing the students a service by being so accommodating. In reality, I have realized that facilitates the dysfunctional nature of their learning activities. One must ask why they can in one night or one weekend make up all the term’s assignment that were unwilling or unable to do for the previous fourteen weeks. Even if they do the work themselves instead of copying it is not quite the same as doing this over a period of time or discussing it in class with their fellow scholars.
I had one class where I provided seven of ten homework assignments so that they did not have to buy the book or even search for the material on the Internet. The assignments ranged from two to eight pages. The other three assignments involved reading a section of a book of sixty pages, reading part of one Biblical book and the looking for a creation story on the Internet. Compliance ranged from any given assignment from twenty percent to sixty percent. What happened would be that several students would be absent so that would not have the work for the next time, a few more would hand in ahead of time and coming in late it would be inconvenient to give the assignment back to them, or they would be absent. On one memorable occasion, in this class of twenty-five students, five had the assignments, one had handed it in early, ten were absent, and the rest did not have it. The next class, they out did themselves, we had twenty students present but only four had done the assignment. The unprepared students would share their insights of ignorance as repeated what others had said. My favorite technique would be when one of these would repeat the same information or said they agreed, I would ask why.
A few students endeavored to do the assignment in class as we discussed it or read the material, A few students called upon that did not do the work would say they had already handed it in. I solved the problem of handing in the work early by saying I would give an “F”. Some teachers would try to get students by doing the work by giving a quiz, surprise or announce. For this particular class, for both the midterm and final examination one of the essay questions the students had to answer was the homework assignment they had none done.
By sticking to deadlines, I find I reduce the amount of work that I have to process at the last minutes so that I have time to analyze. I do myself a favor and the student can’t slip inferior work by.
As a former high school teacher, I can recognize the student assumptions behind these phenomena. They would do as little work as possible on the assumption that not all of them could be failed by the teacher or the teacher would look bad. The teacher would conspire by permitting the students to make up the work at the last minute. This was often homework assignments they would copy over night from other students or the more lazy ones would try to scribble their name in place of the student that actually had done the work or use white. I would observe how many often styles of writing would change from the homework assignments. I would have students who would swear they had learned their lesson if they were only permitted to make up their assignments. They would repeat this in the next class and the next semester. The only thing they had learned they did have to really do the work or push came to shove to do as little as possible.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
9 Team Effort
April 22, 2007
On April 19, 2006, Virginia e-mailed me:
Listen I am very upset here! You cannot give me a low grade because I have a work partner. If I choose to team up with one of the other students in my class to do my assignments with, that should be fine. I will be bringing this to the attention of the school Dean and Academic Services. Any one student shall not be confined to limited studies, if I work better with the help of a student and vice versa this should not be a problem. Besides these are question that are direct and come from the power point slides and internet, so of course the answers will be the same. Now, for the other assignments like the collages and personal projects like trading cards this is something that can only be
done by one student.
ps. I also spoke with my supervisor who will be contacting you regarding this matter.
I wrote to my supervisor:
As in all my classes, I emphasize individual responsiblity for one's work although occasional group and team efforts are encouraged as part of small group activities.
The problem is if we have study partners who hand in identical work, how can we judge the proficiency of either or whether or both are doing the work. The assignments ask for personal opinions in 2 or 3 questions -- not one person asking as the spokesman for the group.
Virginia did not follow directions for term project A which is a personal collage about herself. The assignment asked for ten pictures and a sentence or caption each expressing your opinion on the various political issues. You simply submitted some family photographs without any captions at all. .
Virginia did not follow directions on the second major project for which I wrote:
Do not confuse the personal/political collage with trading cards. Please resubmit by following instructions.
Due date: March 7, 2007
Instructions: Trading Cards Project (equal to a test)
You will be asked to create 5 trading cards of five Americans active in the political arena since 1900. Virginia sent in assignment # 2 as fulfilling assignment #b which was irrelevant to the assingment in question.
It appears that Virginia is the weaker of two students. Lucille and Virginia. It would have been nice know from the beginning that they were working together as “study partners “if all were above board. However, we are entering a nebulous area and we should set guidelines in the future to cover this.Since neither Lucille and Virginia have ever participated in discussion questions (and there have been twelve of them), this seems to show an inability to really analyze material or think for oneself.
8 No Time
Dear Betty,
It is never easy to give a "F" to a student, especially when the student has paid a high tuition fee to attend the class. Unfortunately, you lack the skills at the present time to be a successful college student.
Firstly, you need to improve your time management. You come late to class and leave early. You may have had perfectly good reasons but you are not in the room to participate in activities of the class. Furthermore, if you had handed in term project in a timely fashion, you would have the opportunity and the time to revise the paper to a passing standard.
Secondly, you cannot follow instructions both written and oral. This is obvious in regard to the essay question on each of the examinations and the term project. In the first examination, you were the only that one that managed to misinterpret the question. In the second examination, you were asked to evaluate the importance of five people to world civilization. Instead, you were able to give only two or three specific individuals. In the case of both examinations, the class received a review sheet two weeks before the examination. Time was set aside to review the essay questions.
The term project required biographies of five people. Instead of a keyboarded essay, I received one biography that appeared to be hastily written that I found in my mailbox the day that I handed in the grades.
When you improve your time management and organizational skills, you will get more out of college.
It is never easy to give a "F" to a student, especially when the student has paid a high tuition fee to attend the class. Unfortunately, you lack the skills at the present time to be a successful college student.
Firstly, you need to improve your time management. You come late to class and leave early. You may have had perfectly good reasons but you are not in the room to participate in activities of the class. Furthermore, if you had handed in term project in a timely fashion, you would have the opportunity and the time to revise the paper to a passing standard.
Secondly, you cannot follow instructions both written and oral. This is obvious in regard to the essay question on each of the examinations and the term project. In the first examination, you were the only that one that managed to misinterpret the question. In the second examination, you were asked to evaluate the importance of five people to world civilization. Instead, you were able to give only two or three specific individuals. In the case of both examinations, the class received a review sheet two weeks before the examination. Time was set aside to review the essay questions.
The term project required biographies of five people. Instead of a keyboarded essay, I received one biography that appeared to be hastily written that I found in my mailbox the day that I handed in the grades.
When you improve your time management and organizational skills, you will get more out of college.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
7 A Bright Bulb
When I was a senior in high school, my social studies teacher gave as the last of three papers for the six-month semester a substitute; we could visit a museum or historic house and bring back a post card. I have used this variant when I teach American or global history of some kind with the addition of art galleries. I find it is a good way to get students to think out side the box.
I allow students now to make their own post cards from the Internet if the museum or art gallery does not have one that covers it or the specific exhibition. In the metropolitan area that I live, there is every possible sort of museum for every interest not to mention art galleries. I also allow students to use post cards from places they have visited before they were in my class. I have students that have the people back home send a post card of Mount Fuji or the Aztec pyramids. I had even one student who gave a postcard of an art exhibition that he had presented as artist. Although several students might visit the same museum, I have not had a case where one person went and gave post cards to his or her friends so that they don’t have to go. Generally, even the most reluctant students admit they have enjoyed the outing. I give students four months to complete the assignment. They have to report back to the class. I remind them every class session as the days come to an end. I have students in the course of a vacation or as part of their job, they managed to visit a museum in Paris or London or some other exotic place.
I had one male student who said he could not visit a museum because he had just become a father. I told him he had three months to visit a museum and he still had a month to go or he would lose five points from his entire average. A month later, he reported he had gone with wife and new baby to visit a museum. He had to admit it was wonderful family outing.
However, I had one bright bulb, which we shall call Tom, who described a visit to the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. His scam fell apart when he I asked where it was located. He explained it was in a local area. The only problem is that our city is not Philadelphia.
I allow students now to make their own post cards from the Internet if the museum or art gallery does not have one that covers it or the specific exhibition. In the metropolitan area that I live, there is every possible sort of museum for every interest not to mention art galleries. I also allow students to use post cards from places they have visited before they were in my class. I have students that have the people back home send a post card of Mount Fuji or the Aztec pyramids. I had even one student who gave a postcard of an art exhibition that he had presented as artist. Although several students might visit the same museum, I have not had a case where one person went and gave post cards to his or her friends so that they don’t have to go. Generally, even the most reluctant students admit they have enjoyed the outing. I give students four months to complete the assignment. They have to report back to the class. I remind them every class session as the days come to an end. I have students in the course of a vacation or as part of their job, they managed to visit a museum in Paris or London or some other exotic place.
I had one male student who said he could not visit a museum because he had just become a father. I told him he had three months to visit a museum and he still had a month to go or he would lose five points from his entire average. A month later, he reported he had gone with wife and new baby to visit a museum. He had to admit it was wonderful family outing.
However, I had one bright bulb, which we shall call Tom, who described a visit to the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. His scam fell apart when he I asked where it was located. He explained it was in a local area. The only problem is that our city is not Philadelphia.
Monday, May 5, 2008
6 The Magic Mailbox
I always tell my students to hand the work to me personally. From personal experience, I know students with the best of intentions sometimes put their stuff in the wrong box by confusing first and last names, whether the recipient’s box is below or above the name, or a fellow student simply steals the work. Dishonest students simply claim they have handed in the work. I have discovered that students have the same problem with e-mail. They claim they have sent it to me by e-mail but I simply don’t have it.
Dr. Jack Green Mussleman in his Ethical Analyusis course (
http://faculty.stedwards.edu/jackgm/phil2329/syl_late.html) states that
“All late material must be handed to me personally or handed to Laura Sanders in Andre 111 Monday-Fridays 1pm-4pm. Laura will time-stamp the assignment so I know when she got it.
THERE WILL BE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS POLICY SO DO NOT HAND IN LATE PAPERS IN ANY OTHER WAY!!
If you send me an email attachment and it never gets to my inbox because it gets lost in the electronic ether, the assignment will be considered late/missing.
• This means your late material should not be placed on or under or near my door.
• It should not be given to another person to hand in for you.
• It should not be sent to me via campus mail.
• It should not be tacked to my door.
• It should not be sent to me via email.
In person is the best way I can verify late work has, in fact, been received by me. (And, as noted above, late/missing email attachments are a risk you run if you pursue that route.) If you want to arrange a time to hand late work directly to me, contact me.
I will also not accept late materials in the last week of class that were due in the first 14 weeks of class.
Handing in papers in any way other than to me is an option you pursue at your own risk.”
Dr. Jack Green Mussleman in his Ethical Analyusis course (
http://faculty.stedwards.edu/jackgm/phil2329/syl_late.html) states that
“All late material must be handed to me personally or handed to Laura Sanders in Andre 111 Monday-Fridays 1pm-4pm. Laura will time-stamp the assignment so I know when she got it.
THERE WILL BE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS POLICY SO DO NOT HAND IN LATE PAPERS IN ANY OTHER WAY!!
If you send me an email attachment and it never gets to my inbox because it gets lost in the electronic ether, the assignment will be considered late/missing.
• This means your late material should not be placed on or under or near my door.
• It should not be given to another person to hand in for you.
• It should not be sent to me via campus mail.
• It should not be tacked to my door.
• It should not be sent to me via email.
In person is the best way I can verify late work has, in fact, been received by me. (And, as noted above, late/missing email attachments are a risk you run if you pursue that route.) If you want to arrange a time to hand late work directly to me, contact me.
I will also not accept late materials in the last week of class that were due in the first 14 weeks of class.
Handing in papers in any way other than to me is an option you pursue at your own risk.”
Sunday, May 4, 2008
5 Another Great Scholar
Hello professor this is your old student Aida from your history 101 class. I hope all is well with you, and that you are enjoying this amazing summer that we are having. all is well with me just focusing on school right now. I am writing this email to you to see if he can do anything to fix my brother’s grade I know he was not the most attentive student that you had, but from what I saw at home he tried, but I guess that just was not enough he received a D in your class I was hoping if we can come up with something for him to do to gain a higher grade. the D really lowered his GPA I know I am asking for too much but anything would make a difference.
Thank you for your time.
i am aware of all the mistakes he has done and i know there should be no excuses to justify any of the actions he has done, but at that time i can understand he had a lot on his plate he took everything so lightly for he is a bight student he went to school this semester because my family did not want him to take a semester off. he was going through a lot for his dearest friend had passed away they were inseparable after that i have really never seen him take anything seriously which i agree is none fault but his. he is now beginning to take shape and I am very proud of him. this grade has put a tole on his college degree. i promise he will do anything extra, even if it a 10 page paper to boost his grade up.
thank you
Aida
[and her sister-in-law had both been great in attendance and in doing the work. they had commuted from the same neighborhood as her brother Alfred without any problems of coming to class on time.]
Dear Aida,
I thought about your brother. Unfortunately, he does not get a third do-over. He had his second opportunity which was more than he deserved. I said at the beginning of the semester extra credit work was for those that did the regular work. I really don't need a sob story to explain why he was unable to get to class on time or show up on a regular basis. This of course would have some impact on his getting something out of the class or getting prepared for the examinations. [He failed both examinations abysmally.]
Because of your brother, I will no longer be doing term papers any more. [I swore off term papers for one semester.] I would have no way of determining whether any so-called extra credit work was his or not. If he were determined about his grade then, he would have done something during the semester instead of after the semester to deserve the highest possible grade.
Since your brother refused to learn from the bad experiences of other people, he will have to learn from his own. It was he, not me, who gave himself the low grade through his lack of effort. You would make a wonderful lawyer but unfortunately you cannot get your client off. Your brother will have to learn that he should do his best effort the first time around.
Respectfully yours,
Dr. Wisenheimer
Her brother Alfred had handed in a term projects weeks after it was due. He was too cheap to use whiteout to reo replace the handwritten name of the student who had done the project before or to re-Xerox the title pages. He had tried to tear off part of the name and wrote his name above it. You could still read the name of the original student. I had written a letter that I told him I would give to the dean. His sister Aida then came in the next day to plead on his behalf and I let him do the term project over which was miserable but adequate.
James M. Lang, "Dealing With Plagiarists," in the May 14, 20002 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/05/2002051401c.htm), suggests,
“So I have settled into the middle ground: option 2.[A colleague pointed unless the plagiarist was reported, the student could claim each class he took it was just his “first time.”] Our college has a form, available from the dean of students, that amounts to a confession of plagiarism. Accused students are not required to sign the form; they can contest the charge of plagiarism if they wish -- almost guaranteeing that the accusation will become public. If they do agree to sign it, I agree to give them only the penalty that I spell out on the form -- which, for me, means that they receive no credit for the assignment.
That form stays in their file for five years, so that if a student should plagiarize a second time, the college has a record of it. More serious action would follow a second offense.
..------
This solution has one design flaw: It works only if all of my colleagues are doing it, so that we truly do know when a student commits a second offense.
Thank you for your time.
i am aware of all the mistakes he has done and i know there should be no excuses to justify any of the actions he has done, but at that time i can understand he had a lot on his plate he took everything so lightly for he is a bight student he went to school this semester because my family did not want him to take a semester off. he was going through a lot for his dearest friend had passed away they were inseparable after that i have really never seen him take anything seriously which i agree is none fault but his. he is now beginning to take shape and I am very proud of him. this grade has put a tole on his college degree. i promise he will do anything extra, even if it a 10 page paper to boost his grade up.
thank you
Aida
[and her sister-in-law had both been great in attendance and in doing the work. they had commuted from the same neighborhood as her brother Alfred without any problems of coming to class on time.]
Dear Aida,
I thought about your brother. Unfortunately, he does not get a third do-over. He had his second opportunity which was more than he deserved. I said at the beginning of the semester extra credit work was for those that did the regular work. I really don't need a sob story to explain why he was unable to get to class on time or show up on a regular basis. This of course would have some impact on his getting something out of the class or getting prepared for the examinations. [He failed both examinations abysmally.]
Because of your brother, I will no longer be doing term papers any more. [I swore off term papers for one semester.] I would have no way of determining whether any so-called extra credit work was his or not. If he were determined about his grade then, he would have done something during the semester instead of after the semester to deserve the highest possible grade.
Since your brother refused to learn from the bad experiences of other people, he will have to learn from his own. It was he, not me, who gave himself the low grade through his lack of effort. You would make a wonderful lawyer but unfortunately you cannot get your client off. Your brother will have to learn that he should do his best effort the first time around.
Respectfully yours,
Dr. Wisenheimer
Her brother Alfred had handed in a term projects weeks after it was due. He was too cheap to use whiteout to reo replace the handwritten name of the student who had done the project before or to re-Xerox the title pages. He had tried to tear off part of the name and wrote his name above it. You could still read the name of the original student. I had written a letter that I told him I would give to the dean. His sister Aida then came in the next day to plead on his behalf and I let him do the term project over which was miserable but adequate.
James M. Lang, "Dealing With Plagiarists," in the May 14, 20002 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/05/2002051401c.htm), suggests,
“So I have settled into the middle ground: option 2.[A colleague pointed unless the plagiarist was reported, the student could claim each class he took it was just his “first time.”] Our college has a form, available from the dean of students, that amounts to a confession of plagiarism. Accused students are not required to sign the form; they can contest the charge of plagiarism if they wish -- almost guaranteeing that the accusation will become public. If they do agree to sign it, I agree to give them only the penalty that I spell out on the form -- which, for me, means that they receive no credit for the assignment.
That form stays in their file for five years, so that if a student should plagiarize a second time, the college has a record of it. More serious action would follow a second offense.
..------
This solution has one design flaw: It works only if all of my colleagues are doing it, so that we truly do know when a student commits a second offense.
4 Clarifications
I am talking about college students who have paid good money, made the choice, and chosen the time to be in college. I am not talking about high school students forced against their will to attend class and, of course, are immature. Having taught them for several years, I am in favor of dropping compulsory attendance for the high school age.
Our local public high schools are not worth much. As Harvey, my friend of blessed memory used to say, all we are doing are shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. Many years ago, our local electric utility had to go through 20,000 applicants to fill 200 entry-level positions.
I feel these young people have the right to be illiterate and unemployable. No provision should be made for their diversion on the taxpayer’s dime until they choose to return to school. If they misbehave, they should be expelled so they do not interfere with those that do desire an education. There should be no social promotion. If John has to spend five years in the fifth grade until he masters fifth grade skills, so be it. These students can always learn from their own bad mistakes instead of the experiences of others.
Our local public high schools are not worth much. As Harvey, my friend of blessed memory used to say, all we are doing are shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. Many years ago, our local electric utility had to go through 20,000 applicants to fill 200 entry-level positions.
I feel these young people have the right to be illiterate and unemployable. No provision should be made for their diversion on the taxpayer’s dime until they choose to return to school. If they misbehave, they should be expelled so they do not interfere with those that do desire an education. There should be no social promotion. If John has to spend five years in the fifth grade until he masters fifth grade skills, so be it. These students can always learn from their own bad mistakes instead of the experiences of others.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
3 Witless
Dominica from the Dominican Republic told me, “I can find no pictures on Abraham Lincoln. “ She had chosen this president as one of the five people she was doing for the term project. She was a middle aged immigrant who spoke English fluently. I imagine that they do teach Abraham Lincoln as part of world history in that country. This incident took place before the Internet. I told her, “Good manners prevent me from laughing out loud.” At our next class meeting, Dominica told me she had found pictures on Abraham Lincoln. What this complaint told me was that she was too lazy to go the library or the encyclopedia or she was unaware of their existences!
Friday, May 2, 2008
2 The Harvey Awards for Stupid Students
There are the Darwin and the Stella Wards. Why not the Harvey Awards for stupid students? I am naming them for my friend Harvey of blessed memory who taught at the same high school I did. He would teach Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, he would review, and write the answers to the multiple choice test. On Friday, he would give the test and half the students would fail. Harvey would thank them for not doing their work because he would see them in summer school and be able to make enough money to give one his sons a car.
Entrees for stupidest student of the year should be submitted by June 15. Winners will be announced on June 30.
Here is my worst candidate for this dubious honor. We will call her Adrienne. She received a take-home midterm examination. “Essay no. 3. Explain how five inventions or ideas from the Sumeria have changed the world” was typical of the questions asked. The students had two weeks to work on this examination. They could help one another but the papers had to be done individually. When I read her submission, I gave her 10 points out of a 100 because she had not really answered the questions. I asked her how she did so poorly. She explained she did the work at the last moment and really did not understand the questions. I said you could have e-mailed me or contacted me.
I gave her a chance for a redo. We had the spring break of a week coming up so she could work on it. After the spring break was over, Adrienne came over to ask me if she could visit a museum for extra credit. I said yes if she had done the regular work. She explained she had been too busy to rewrite the midterm. I told her that I was not in the habit of giving extra credit work in place of the regular work that had not been done.
I e-mailed her the night before class to bring in the midterm. At the end of class, I asked if she had handed in the midterm examination. She said yes. I found homeworks she had submitted along with the revised term paper but no midterm examination. When I spoke to her the next occasion, she claimed she had e-mailed me her assignment. I told her that I had asked her to bring in a hard copy. Since, I had already given her a 010 for her grade; I was doing her the favor. This was now the fifth request for a copy of the re-do.
The midterm project by Adrienne was another story. I gave her first version back on Tuesday the same day I told her to bring the revised midterm for Thursday.
I explained she had failed to follow directions and she had received a 20 out of a possible 100. I showed her the work submitted by another student. She argued whether she had to submit a complete bibliography. I told her yes. She said wanted to submit only half the bibliography. I said she would then get partial credit. Looking at the revised term paper, she had followed some directions but she still merited a 54 on her revised term project. She omitted the bibliography which if she had done would have given the paper a passing grade. When I asked why she did not follow directions this time. She explained that she had done w ht I had requested—write a bibliography. Questioned further, she explained she confused biography and bibliography. In a brief discussion, she had no real clue what this is. She would bring in the third draft on Thursday.
Adrienne also does her homework assignments in class. When I call upon her, she does not have the answer to the particular question but at the end of the period, she hands in the complete assignment. She appears to have the inability to listen to directions and then to follow directions. I had also told the student not read The New York Times in class at one point. I knew she could read but apparently not well enough to follow directions.
Entrees for stupidest student of the year should be submitted by June 15. Winners will be announced on June 30.
Here is my worst candidate for this dubious honor. We will call her Adrienne. She received a take-home midterm examination. “Essay no. 3. Explain how five inventions or ideas from the Sumeria have changed the world” was typical of the questions asked. The students had two weeks to work on this examination. They could help one another but the papers had to be done individually. When I read her submission, I gave her 10 points out of a 100 because she had not really answered the questions. I asked her how she did so poorly. She explained she did the work at the last moment and really did not understand the questions. I said you could have e-mailed me or contacted me.
I gave her a chance for a redo. We had the spring break of a week coming up so she could work on it. After the spring break was over, Adrienne came over to ask me if she could visit a museum for extra credit. I said yes if she had done the regular work. She explained she had been too busy to rewrite the midterm. I told her that I was not in the habit of giving extra credit work in place of the regular work that had not been done.
I e-mailed her the night before class to bring in the midterm. At the end of class, I asked if she had handed in the midterm examination. She said yes. I found homeworks she had submitted along with the revised term paper but no midterm examination. When I spoke to her the next occasion, she claimed she had e-mailed me her assignment. I told her that I had asked her to bring in a hard copy. Since, I had already given her a 010 for her grade; I was doing her the favor. This was now the fifth request for a copy of the re-do.
The midterm project by Adrienne was another story. I gave her first version back on Tuesday the same day I told her to bring the revised midterm for Thursday.
I explained she had failed to follow directions and she had received a 20 out of a possible 100. I showed her the work submitted by another student. She argued whether she had to submit a complete bibliography. I told her yes. She said wanted to submit only half the bibliography. I said she would then get partial credit. Looking at the revised term paper, she had followed some directions but she still merited a 54 on her revised term project. She omitted the bibliography which if she had done would have given the paper a passing grade. When I asked why she did not follow directions this time. She explained that she had done w ht I had requested—write a bibliography. Questioned further, she explained she confused biography and bibliography. In a brief discussion, she had no real clue what this is. She would bring in the third draft on Thursday.
Adrienne also does her homework assignments in class. When I call upon her, she does not have the answer to the particular question but at the end of the period, she hands in the complete assignment. She appears to have the inability to listen to directions and then to follow directions. I had also told the student not read The New York Times in class at one point. I knew she could read but apparently not well enough to follow directions.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
1 Dedication
This blog is dedicated to invincible ignorant, lazy, stupid students who are convinced that they have aced learning but are simply cheating themselves. I knew a high student who graduated with very low reading levels. I was part of the gentle conspiracy that graduated him because he was a very nice guy. I ran him into him at a school event where he said he had only cheated himself because he had no skills to get a good job. Unfortunately, there are far too many students who never realize this. They live in a world where they feel they are entitled to the good things in life without really earning them. Society pays the price as their incompetence impedes progress. Administrators and educators live in a dream world where everybody is learning but in reality ignorance is simply shared.
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