Discriminatory Practices By Professors?

[PottedMeat]

Is anybody being unfairly treated by a professor due to your opinions/beliefs/political position?

Alternatively, is anybody witnessing such practices?

 

[Banquo]

it depends on what you mean by "unfair." unfair grading or unfair conduct in the classroom? there was a student in a class that I had who was picked on in front of the class for voicing her political opinions to the class. i have no reason to believe that this was factored into her grade, due to anonymous grading, but it must have been humiliating for her. after being called upon, she expressed herself in a polite and calm manner, but the professor yelled back at her that she was "wrong wrong wrong!" and then made a joke at her expense. it was a large class too.

 

[protovack]

Actually last week, we had a guest speaker from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).

This one guy next to me started ranting and interupting her...saying how he thought the ACLU was ideologically motivated and "Communist." He even quoted the founder of the ACLU as saying something nice about communism (whoo-hoo).

It was nuts. Everyone in the class was just staring at him with their mouths open wondering what the hell he was talking about.

Here this lawyer is trying to explain to us how they protect freedom of speech (even hate speech) as long as there is no incitement to violence or declaration of intent to commit a crime.

And this guy just doesn't get it. The next day our professor posted a message on the class website reminding us of the common rules of decency (it was directed at the guy). I don't think this counts as "unfair." More like, "completely warranted."

 

[randycaver]

A prof of mine is grading us based on our attendance, participation, etc on our papers. I don't really think that's fair.. some people aren't as apt to participate and may not be quick thinkers like someone else is.. I don't think they should be marked higher just b/c they participate in class. If a paper/assignment is good, it should be marked high regardless of how often that student participates in class.

it seems unfair to me, and sort of discriminatory.

 

[rat tat tat tat]

I'm in highschool so I don't exactly have professors but I must say that the administrators of my high school are incredibly discriminatory. I was talking to a friend of mine in the hallway, I had a $50 clenched in my hand, the teacher takes us down to the deans since my friend was black and he thought there was a deal going on. This doesn't seem too bad but my dean said straight up "theres no reason for some crazy white kid to be friends with a streetwise black kid". Damn, I don't see how they get away with this.

 

[elemenohpee]

A prof of mine is grading us based on our attendance, participation, etc on our papers. I don't really think that's fair.. some people aren't as apt to participate and may not be quick thinkers like someone else is.. I don't think they should be marked higher just b/c they participate in class. If a paper/assignment is good, it should be marked high regardless of how often that student participates in class.

it seems unfair to me, and sort of discriminatory.

I agree, there's a kid in my chem class, dumb as a rock, but he talks CONSTANTLY. Every time there's a question he just starts shouting out answers, evin if they're completely wrong. And since the grade is based on participation, hes got a million "checkmarks" (how juvenille). I on the other hand like to think to myself, not to mention its fucking 9 in the morning. Bullshit I tell you

 

[brothermarcus]

A prof of mine is grading us based on our attendance, participation, etc on our papers. I don't really think that's fair.. some people aren't as apt to participate and may not be quick thinkers like someone else is.. I don't think they should be marked higher just b/c they participate in class. If a paper/assignment is good, it should be marked high regardless of how often that student participates in class.

it seems unfair to me, and sort of discriminatory.

talk with the professor, although they are generally trying encourage in-class participation most i've encountered are willing to accept short written critiques/analysis/expansions on the in-class discussion in leiu of vocal participation.

...as far as discrimination goes i've never witnessed it blatantly, i was in a women in cj class where the class was constantly getting "time outs" where no one was allowed to talk. this was thanks to some students saying things like "sometimes girls want to get a train run on them" or calling each other names... we did a lot of fighinting in that class. In my criminal deviance class the last quarter of school an outspoken liberal dude was thrown out of the class for threatening an outspoken conservative dude with violence when they got into an argument- not about politics, but about talking in class of all things. in general i noticed the people who were ignorant, didn't show up to class, or simply annoyed the professor (cell phone, newspaper during lecture) got treated like shit- but i'd do the same thing.

 

[sushii]

In my first year of uni I took a poorly organised class taught by an outspoken and obnoxious woman who would basically shout down anyone that dared disagree with her on any topic. I actually don't think she meant to stifle discussion and debate, but she was so overbearing most people would just give up and let her get on with it.

There was one girl who she clearly had major issues with. She told her more than once that she was distracting the other students and trying to disrupt the lecture even though it appeared she was doing nothing but asking legitimate questions - at one point she even stopped the class and announced she wouldn't continue unless this girl left, which she did. I'm sure there was probably more to it than simply the bits I saw, but it seemed pretty discriminatory to me. I never once saw this girl do anything out of the ordinary or disruptive.

And classes where you're graded on vocal participation suck. All they do is encourage people to make idiotic comments in order to get the allocated marks, which is irritating and makes me want to contribute even less.

 

[funks_hybrid]

A prof of mine is grading us based on our attendance, participation, etc on our papers. I don't really think that's fair.. some people aren't as apt to participate and may not be quick thinkers like someone else is.. I don't think they should be marked higher just b/c they participate in class. If a paper/assignment is good, it should be marked high regardless of how often that student participates in class.

it seems unfair to me, and sort of discriminatory.

I'm not sure I agree with you on this one. In my experience with most of my professors adding participation into the grade, they're looking for quality of participation, not quantity. Generally it's aboutr 5 or 10% of your grade, so it's not a huge deal breaker if you're a good writer. But from the experience with a few professors, they pretty much give you that 5 or 10% unless you're disruptive, which shows that they're looking for good participation, not just participation. So as long as you answer a few questions and you're not a loud-mouth, you should be fine on that grade.

And hey, he's giving you some incentive to say something! surely you have questions or ideas you would like to present durring class. Even just one will give the professor a good opinion about you, because they like people who think

 

[Pct]

^ i agree... I think its important to be able to discuss whatever you're learning.

 

[wizekrak]

I don't like being graded on participation.

The way I see it I'm being judged on my knowledge of the course material, not how often or how insightful I can be during class. I show up to learn, and most of the time when participation is being graded people feel they have to ask more questions. So you get a fair amount of stupid questions which waste valuable class time.

Now I have taken a few classes where participation was expected (Intro politics, 20th century lit, philosophy) but we were never graded on it.

It never fails though, you always get one loudmouth who never shuts up, and it wouldn't be so bad if they didn't make stupid or incorrect comments. You feel like reaching over and ramming the chalk board eraser down there throat and telling them to shut up. Of course many other people often feel the same way and if you listen carefully you can hear a little groan from the class everytime they open their mouth

 

[elemenohpee]

there's one in every class it seems

 

[sushii]

I've only had a couple of classes graded on participation, and they all focussed on quantity rather than quality, unfortunately. I'm not sure how you'd grade comments and discussion on quality anyway, as it seems to me something that would be quite hard to judge in a manner that was not only valid, but appeared fair to the students involved.

In one of the subjects I did, we each had to say one thing per class, which contributed to an overall 5% or our final mark. We got our names ticked off once we said something. I think I got checked off one time for pointing out a spelling error in a handout.

I know some classes (particularly first and second year ones) can often be crammed with people either too shy or too disinterested to participate, in which case grading them on participation may seem like a good way to initiate discussion. It just never seems to work well though - at least not in the classes I've done - and ends up with most of the class time filled with people asking inane questions to get their marks. Personally, I like participating in discussions and I don't think I've ever been in a class where there haven't been lots of other people willing to talk - I say let the people who want to be quiet stay that way! If they're not participating because they're shy then forcing them to speak is only going to make them feel worse.

I've had this discussion with a few uni friends before though, and most of them disagree with me and think graded participation is a good thing. I guess you can never please everyone......