<p>Do ya ever wonder why it is that professors are, in the majority, liberals? Perhaps it’s all that dang reading.</p>
<p>Really now, I have never met a professor at the university level in my life who would grade lower for political views. They will grade on the expression and the logic of the views, but not the position itself.</p>
<p>My S is enjoying being the conservative at his school. He claims there are very few conservative students or professors, or at least students that will admit that they are conservative. So far he has engaged in some debates,but has been penalized by two professors for his conservative views. One literally asked him to rewrite a paper that instead ,would represent basically her views .He bit his lip, wrote it over again, and received a higher grade than the first paper (C to B+). I suggested that he stick to his views and write what he wanted. The assigment was to write about the authors plight and present your view of the author’s thesis. He claims his economics and biology professors never venture into political discussions but rather stick to the text books-but he is an English major so the liberal slant comes with territory!</p>
<p>Yikes songman, why can’t some professors actually BE as liberal as they claim and allow others to have their own views? Whatever happened to constitutional rights?</p>
<p>I’ve read of a great many incidents of politically biased grading. Here’s a news release about one that just came out this week.</p>
<p><a href=“http://thefire.org/index.php/article/6334.html[/url]”>http://thefire.org/index.php/article/6334.html</a></p>
<p>The Washington State example is unique. In this case, the School of Education has essentially decided and openly stated that certain philosphies are required of their teaching graduates. So the guy was being graded on public criteria, misguided or not.</p>
<p>I thought you all were saying that at an Ivy League university, the original question, a class in French Literature or Politics or somesuch would give papers that fit the stated grading criteria equally different grades if one were liberal and one conservative. Glad to see that is not what you meant.</p>
<p>LKF725- what disturbs me the most about all of this is that my son thinks it is ok to slant his papers to reflect the views of the professors. Three times in high school and now twice in college he has done this and received excellent grades. He just takes it all in stride and says “hey Dad ,that is the way it is” I am idealistic , silly me, but I assumed that college is the one environment that the open exchange of ideas should be accepted not censored or discouraged. Truly, it was in my day,and I was a moderate to conservative back then. I voiced my opinion without fear…</p>
<p>Songman:</p>
<p>I hope your son’s experience is an exception and not the norm. I agree with you thatstudents should not tailor their writings to the biases of their teachers. Some of the best discussions happen when students are asked to take a position with which they may not agree, as in Mock Trial.
Last year, however, my S wrote a paper for a science class which some graduate students pronounced to be excellent. The prof only gave hm an A- (it was a college class); we suspect it was because he did not care for the topic rather than the substance of the argument or the amount of research my S did. Duh!</p>
<p>Mini: Perhaps, since you’re so willing to give up Iraq to al-Qaeda and your snide remark about the Air Force Academy (which, even with its recent problems is probably a more open place than most Ivy Leagues), you should try living under the people who you seem to so admire. Perhaps you could find a Taliban area of Afghanistan - see how you like that. It seems to be the life you’re willing to sacrifice the women of Iraq to.</p>
<p>You have to stop taking this kind of professor seriously. Just give them what they want and get on with life. If the prof loves Nader, you love Nader, if the prof loves Bush, you love Bush. If the prof Loves Rice, but hates Rumsfeld, then you know what the paper should say. These people are not interested in your opinion. If they want people to say they agree with them, then say you agree with them. The harder courses are those in which the quality of your arguments and the writing count. The “repeat after me” types are easy. If the standards are that subjective, it puts in context the meaning of the grade.</p>
<p>“Mini: Perhaps, since you’re so willing to give up Iraq to al-Qaeda and your snide remark about the Air Force Academy”</p>
<p>I call it the way the Air Force Academy sees it. If you’ve got a problem, take it up with them.</p>
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<p>That would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Iraq, for all its grave faults, was not a theocracy which limited the rights of women.</p>
<p>It most likely will be now, though.</p>
<p>I think there is a fundamental problem here that is being overlooked: how can you say this paper should have received a higher grade? There are many examples on this board of people who say that his/her paper was given a lower grade than it deserved based on the content, but the student is not the one that grades the paper. Even the cases in which the student has rewritten a paper supposedly based on the professor’s disagreement with the content, no one has suggested that maybe the second paper (that simply happened to have a different content) was better logically, rhetorically, grammatically, etc. I am not denying that discrimination based on political beliefs happens, but it seems like a number of the cases listed on this thread jump to the conclusion that it was based on some hidden bias rather than that a paper was just not up to snuff. I’m only saying that there is a level of objectivity present in all of these stories (short of the teacher admitting, “yes, I gave you a D instead of the B you deserved because I disagree with you idealogically”) that readers must question before becoming outraged at such would-be injustices.
A piece of advice to original poster, having come from the opposite situation (being a liberal in an overwhelmingly conservative class/school/town/state [small town GA only minutes from an Air Force Base]) it is certainly possible to get through school being in the extreme minority, and in most classes, you’ll never notice it. The only exception would be political science classes or maybe current history classes. In French classes, English classes, calculus classes, engineering classes, you will more than likely never find out the political views of your teacher or classmates because it will never come up. Not being one who enjoys defending my beliefs against an onlsaught of twenty-or-so opposite-minded peers, however, I know that I chose my school with the political climate in mind, but I didn’t rule out conservative schools like Notre Dame simply because they were conservative.</p>
<p>From thefire.org link above. . .</p>
<p>“Swan was given poor marks on dispositions criteria used by Washington States College of Education for expressing beliefs such as the idea that white privilege and male privilege do not exist.” </p>
<p>This is a horrific example of “politically biased grading???” Don’t know whether to yawn or cry. . .</p>
<p>as for Mr. Chief. . .you should keep in mind that it is Mr. Bush who has attempted to hand Iraq to Al-Qaeda</p>
<p>Reid, I didn’t call the WSU example “horrific” or anything else. I just said it had appeared within the last couple of days. Since the topic of “education” curricula is such a hot topic here, I thought it was interesting. Disturbing, actually. If the student disagrees with the white/male privilege premise, the “educator’s” response is to remand him to an indoctrination class. Not engage him on his ideas…reprogram him. You’re OK with that? I’m not. You bring up Al-Quaeda–don’t forget the Taliban.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, the Taliban–isn’t that the folks that the Bush White House gave 43,000,000 dollars to in May 2001? Wonder what uses that got put to…</p>
<p>how could I forget the Taliban. . .the ol’ red, white and blue helped set them up too, more directly than we are enabling al-Qaeda in Iraq. Can’t blame that on Bush Jr however. . .</p>