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| Janna Barber |
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Thursday, September 18, 2008
Leftwing Professor Throttled
9 comments:
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Nomennovum said...
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What a cutie.
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9/18/08, 3:26 PM
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Rodger the Real King of France said...
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It's not just that. I'm thinking that it's our women who have all the balls.
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9/18/08, 3:59 PM
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Anonymous said...
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I taught freshman comp for over a dozen years in dual enrollment classes for P'cola Junior College and later at the University of West Florida. Like many of my colleagues, I quickly grew tired of the mundane regurgitate-on-command approaches and began offering lists of topics from which students could choose to do their compare-contrast, cause--> effect, argumentative, narrative, descriptive, or whatever essays.
Students had to provide at least 5 sources, use parenthetical glossing and documentation, and be prepared to defend their position in open class. The unforgivable flaw was failure to do research properly and falling into the trap of believing the last and loudest of the sources they found.
My greatest challenge was to get them to stop going into research trying to prove what they already believed and instead looking at a topic with the attitude of what might be there to learn that they didn't already know.
That takes a lot of time, patience, and examples, but ultimately they begin to see that one source may be compelling, authoritative, well-documented, persuasive, and inviting. The follower mentality latches onto that source and become a disciple, focusing research from that point forward ONLY on the major thesis of that source. The trick is to get them to find other sources which are similarly interesting, forceful, organized, thoughtful, and convincing.
For the first time in their lives, they realize that not only is it O.K. to find that their attitude toward an issue has been changed by research, but it might happen twice, or three times, or more. And finally they begin to comprehend that nothing is necessarily wrong with them when they've changed their minds several times during research . . . it might be simply that there IS no right or wrong, left or right, black or white, but shades of gray and several right answers depending on perspective. It's called "learning." In other words, the ultimate answer is that there IS no ultimate answer, and their job as journalists or essayists or researchers is to accumulate the data and arrange it logically so that a conclusion is suggested, but not demanded.
Such an approach is often called the "Rogerian" argument, wherein no thesis is proposed in the introduction or conclusion except that an issue needs to be looked at without bias so that logic can prevail and the most promising, or least damaging, of the possible outcomes can be sought. The data are collected and presented in such a way as to speak for themselves as much as possible.
Of course, the best place to hide a fact or a recommendation is in the middle sentence of the middle paragraph of the middle page of a paper . . . and I told them that, too. Because failure to at least give the nod to the opposing viewpoint suggests a closed mind. What great fun we had on topics such as abortion, nuclear energy, curfews, foreign aid, separation of powers, capital punishment, political correctness, and many others. Generally they tended to hate the class until it was over and they were in follow-on upper-division courses where individual thought and the skill to defend it became paramount for success. -
9/18/08, 4:13 PM
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Rodger the Real King of France said...
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Yup, I invented that argument too. Thanks et. (good post)
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9/18/08, 4:25 PM
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Anonymous said...
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I graduated from Metro State back in the Golden Age, when it was an urban college without a fixed campus. The instructors and professors were all working stiffs who taught because they wanted to pass along their skills and knowledge.
Now it has become like most, if not all, state funded, state supported liberal arts colleges....
LIBERAL!!!!
Yet, it still draws a broad spectrum of students, both in age and socio/political background.
This Janna Barber is not the first conservative to speak out against the ensconced liberal teaching machine. She simply happens to be the first to be heard...in a pivotal election year...with another hottie running as the next VPLIF.
Good on this gal. Rattle their fuckin' cages and send them into a frenzy where their true socialist/communist colors come raging out where everyone can see them.
-Sven in Colorado -
9/18/08, 7:02 PM
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skh.pcola said...
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Eros Total, I attended PJC before I went to UWF and had a blazingly libtard Contemporary Lit prof who had Harper's mag clippings on his office door and drove me nuckin' futz. We got into several in-class debates about ideology starting on the first day when he gave a pop quiz that began with some shit like "What is the only country that has ever used atomic bombs in anger?"
That sort of off-hand and casual liberal bent permeated the entire semester. He actually hand delivered a response to me in front of the entire class the session after we had a particularly heated discussion about his asshattery. Of course, the note accused me of closed-mindedness.
This happened around 2002-2003. The guy is still there, infusing the young(er) minds with propaganda and doubt. -
9/19/08, 1:59 AM
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Anonymous said...
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skh.pcola:
I'm not at all sure it'd be appropriate, but should your professor not be named? Is it not time to pin the tail on the donkey? This is a tough question for me, and at first blush, I'd say no, but it's eminently debatable. -
9/19/08, 2:56 AM
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Rodger the Real King of France said...
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I agree, let's name names.
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9/19/08, 9:31 AM
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skh.pcola said...
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Hokay, the dude's name was Prendergast, Pendergast, Pendergrast, or some variation thereof. I saw it on institutional documents spelled in several mutations. The guy was (is) a serious misanthrope, but he particularly dislike Americans.
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9/19/08, 11:47 PM
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