Is having a bad teacher REALLY an excuse?

romanigypsyeyes
Sun, 30 May 2010 20:58:13 +0000

I have trouble believing that you couldn’t have gone and asked about that ahead of time. I admit, there are a few teachers who just pull problems with your paper out of their ass. But from my experience, when someone complains about how a humanities teacher is so horrible and unfair, it’s usually because they never asked or thought about what he or she would like to see written.



We had to write a paper about transculturation in art. She told us to write about some artist (don’t remember who… Van Gogh maybe?) and write about transculturation. The entire rest of the college believes that you can have transculturation WITHIN a country. She did not. We assumed she did since that is part of our core curriculum (transculturation that is) and the whole college- every other professor I’ve come in contact with- believes that transcultuarion can be within one country, as long as different cultures are in contact. I wrote about how different cultures in a country were reflected in the artist’s art. After the paper was handed BACK and we all bombed, she told us that she believed that there could only be transculturation BETWEEN DIFFERENT countries. She had NEVER mentioned that and in fact it goes against what we’re taught in our other classes.

So please, explain to me how we (my whole class) was supposed to know when she had NEVER mentioned it and it is one of the pillars of our college. Something that the REST of the college which disagrees with her on. Please, tell me.