Showing posts with label Incompetence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Incompetence. Show all posts

Thursday, August 4, 2011

A Little Story on Pedagogical Incompetence and Impracticality

Some history here before getting into this, the average grade of the 23 students enrolled in my section of this course this semester, is about 63%... that means... that almost everyone is failing the course, simply based off exam grades. Compound this with the fact that you need a letter grade of a C or better in order to get credit for the course to continue onto the next course for your degree. Currently, there are 2 students (out of 23) that are passing the course with a 75 or higher. Would you like to know why they're passing?

BECAUSE THEY ALREADY TOOK THE COURSE BEFORE OR HAVE TAUGHT THEMSELVES JAVA PROGRAMMING BEFORE ENROLLING IN CLASSES AT MCC.

So... today I decided to go speak with my CSC 101 Professor, regarding my grades and such for the course, because she decides to never return our tests after grading them with their actual grades on them (I'll explain that in a minute).

She gives her tests, takes 2 weeks to grade them, then hands them back with grading errors. We go over these exams in class, show her the mistakes she's made with the grades, and then she supposedly corrects them... but we never get to see the exam again and have to schedule times with her for her to allow us to see the exam again, either for review or just to ask questions about what the correct answer should be.

Before setting foot into her office I already know that my homework grade average is around 100%, because I have received a 95 or 100 on every single assignment we've done over the course of the semester. The number of assignments we've had to complete thus far is over 12...

We exchange the normal chit chat greetings and bullshit, then I ask her what my overall grade is in the course. So we begin to look over my grades and because I did poorly on the first two exams (57 and 63), she advises me that I should withdraw from the course. I ask her why and she explains that because of the track record of the exams (regardless of homework grades) it appears that I will not pass. (Excuse me?)

So I proceed to ask her that if this is the case, then how does she propose to advise the other 20 students in the class about their grades, considering that there are 20 other students besides me who are not passing the course based on their test grades. She has no response.

So I continue to say: "To be fair, this would mean that you would also have to advise these other students that are also NOT passing your course, to withdraw as well... is that correct?" Again, she has no response.

Me: "I think that your advisement here is absolutely ridiculous, considering that you have nothing to say about how you will be advising your other students... knowing forewell that they are also not passing your class."

Her: "I do not have to answer your questions regarding my advisement to other students."

Me: "I'm merely stating that you would have to be consistent in your advisement scheme if you intend to essentially remove over 90% of your students in this particular section of your CSC 101 class this semester."

Her: "Again, I do not have to answer to you."

Me: "No, but I do give money to this school to be taught well by the Professors of whom are teaching the classes of which I am enrolled. This school also pays your salary. In this particular instance, I would like a refund in full from the school for this course. I have learned more about Java Programming from my own studying than I have from listening to you babble on about how you worked for IBM on the stealth bomber. Not to mention that if anyone were to observe your class on a regular basis, would realize that you are completely pedagogically imcompetent. Your methodology of testing on the material of which you teach is completely impractical. We have debuggers and compilers for a reason... to tell us when we have made a mistake. In that respect, to test us using pencils and paper, while having to write the code out in full, doesn't make a whole lot of sense does it? Especially when we have all of these other tools to aid us in either our learning or as part of the job. Even in class you make dozens upon dozens of mistakes writing out your own code that you tell us to put into jGrasp... and we have to tell you that what YOU WROTE does not compile. So tell me again why I need to withdraw from your course considering I can prove to you that I know how to program in Java? Oh that's right... because my perspective of the "real world" is different than yours... sorry... I forgot for a moment."

At that point I had already picked up my bag and was halfway out of her door. She didn't say a word as I left, went down to the computer lab, and withdrew from her course... because after all, the probability I was going to be fail or be withdrawn from the class was fairly high anyway, right?

Un-fucking-believable. This kind of imcomptence drives me around the bend... how can this kind of shit be allowed at a COLLEGE level? If anything, it lets me know that I can more than likely teach better than 90% of the teachers I've ever had... but still... this is absolutely stupid.
/endrant