I thought I'd dip into some old student evaluations this morning. This one strikes me as especially informative:
Professor [Spiros] is a terrible teacher of political philosophy. The readings were too hard. He has no interest in what the students think. Whenever a student would say an opinion, Dr. [Spiros] would argue that the student was wrong (unless it was a philosophy major). This was very frustrating and not a good way to encourage class discussion. He just spent the whole class time talking about the reading.
Would someone remind me, again, of why we ask the uninformed and ignorant to evaluate their professors?
14 comments:
Last I heard, we ask the uninformed and ignorant to evaluate their professors because there is no other way to construct a *quantitative* measure for the *quality* of teaching. Administrators have come to rely on student evaluations because the last thing they want to do is trust individual departments' measures: peer-evaluation, grades and placements after graduation. Ultimately its a charade, and publication becomes the only measure for tenure, but those IMPRISONED in teaching institutions pay the cost pretty heavily (are teaching all the time, constantly evaluated on teaching, and still required to publish as if that isn't the case with their situation). I guess I sound just a little bitter.
What really gets me, is the way students, being constantly solicited for their assessments of professors, have now acquired the language--the buzz words--of the entire process, and see it as just one more way to express their *customer dissatisfaction*. When it is one's job to be completely honest about when a learner is *not right*, it has become impossible to convince *customers* this is, in fact, one's job. If I again sound a little bit bitter, do forgive. It seems pretty clear that I'm probably a whole lot nicer to students than a lot of my colleagues, but still get the same shit. It doesn't pay to care about teaching.
"I can feel your anger... it makes you strong, gives you focus..."
Agreed on the infiltration of the consumer model into students' attitudes regarding their own education. It's as if they've read the beginning of the *Protagoras*, but misunderstood Socrates' point.
Screw 'em.
I love the fact that because you challenged students to defend their views and focus on the reading you were -- *obviously* -- asking too much of them. So what did they think philosophy was like, anyway...?!
My favourite complaint (I assume it's intended as a complaint) is "He just spent the whole class time talking about the reading."
I read a terrific essay by Clark Glymour about putting any weight at all on student evaluations sucks donkey balls. In one part of the essay he recounts some some changes he made to his logic course at Princeton over several semesters that demonstratively improved how much and well students were learning. The students' subjective impressions of these changes, at least as reflected in the student evaluations, were that the course was subsequently worse.
Brooks:
My suspicion is that in my department lots of other philo courses are more focused on textual interpretation ("What's Philosopher P saying here?"), and are thus more "open" to student expression (read: bullshitting). It's like a Great Books department, only with books that are not so great.
Ben:
Hi. Yes-- that's the best bit. Why talk in class about the assigned reading for the day when there are students out there who want to "say opinions"?
Imipolex:
I know that piece. Good stuff.
I remember vividly being yelled at as an undergrad in class that "A PROOF IS A FORMAL RELATION BETWEEN PROPOSITIONS! IT HAS *NOTHING* TO DO WITH YOU WAGGING YOU TAIL 'YES' OR 'NO'!!!"
I still don't know what the wagging the tail stuff means...
Spiros: I know what you mean about the "textual interpretation that goes on (What's Philosopher P saying here?"). This sort of approach undermines serious approaches to the history of philosophy, too. Just today I needed to put my foot down on the "riff on Philsopher X" without understanding (or attempting to) Philosopher X. I find this pretty pervasive.
729:
Word. It's a fucked up state of affairs when almost all of the good, responsible historical stuff is coming out of the (so-called) analytic people, while the people who go on and on about context and History (note the cap H) say lots of stuff about the past, but do no history.
Indeed!
Our students complete their evaluations on-line, so I'm evaluated by students who don't attend class.
This is amazing.
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