Thursday, March 23, 2006

Pat Robertson joins attack on university professors

Read about how Pat Robertson is attacking college professors as murderers and "termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society."

There is more info here about politics around the Horowitz' bill in Florida as well.

Is it just me, or does Robertson get wierder and more extreme every day? Having his denunciations can only help expose the lunacy of many of these claims!

Inside Higher Ed :: Murderers, Video and Academic Freedom

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I look over the snippets of news you select, I think they could be summarized as "everyone hates us, the stupid of the earth are attacking us, our students are drunken louts, and now we are foresaken by our one true champion, Michael Zimmerman. Dear God, what ever will become of us?"

How do you get out of bed in the morning?

For what it is worth, Zimmerman has been looking for other jobs for at least a decade, and the last time I reviewed a stack of scholarship applicants, ten had gpas of 3.9 or above (oops, that's right -- they didn't earn those grades, they got them through grade inflation.)

I would urge you to reconsider your outlook on the world, if not for your benefit, then for the benefit of your family. Think of what you must be doing to them.

Lake Winneblogo said...

A hostile comment from anonymous. I guess anonymous thinks that it is all a bed of roses here at UWO and in the world in general.

It is not as though I make up the news that I post on this site, though sometimes it does seem to bizarre to be real.

Clearly, the reader doesn't like my perspective and that is perfectly fine. I perfectly willing to admit that mine is not the only view.

However, I would have to say that a stack of scholarship applications with a 3.9 grade point average is grade inflation. How can you tell one from another if they all have the same grade? There should not be stacks of students with that grade point average here or anywhere else.

Grading is about determining people's relative performance. Just like at Harvard, if everyone gets 3.9s, that means no one is outstanding--they are all just average. We give workloads that our students can handle and grade them appropriately.

If students are recieving those grades, then either the classes are not challenging or the teacher is simply giving good grades for no decent reason.

On your other point, Zimmerman has always been one to work to improve the place, and regardless of how long he might have been keeping an eye out for other jobs, his loss will make for a difficult transition.

I am actually quite a good natured person and I don't let the negative academic environment get me down. UWO could be a much better institution than it is, but we don't have any good ideas about how to transform it.