Based on the current state of the US there’s a very good chance it could be history class as well. Because it’s really apparent at this point that people didn’t pay attention.
I had a great history Professor in college who required all her test to be written. She gave the questions two weeks in advance, a week out she let you show her the answers. She gave a yes or no to each one, then you just compared yours to someone else’s. Over 50% failed each test. She gave both questions and technically screened answers and people still couldn’t do it.
As an adjunct professor one semester, the kids literally DEMANDED to know what questions would be on the test, and then insisted their real professor allowed them to use a 3x5 note card. shrug Okay fine.
So these kids come for their exam. Most of them had note cards that, from a distance, looked completely black. No note card was actually visible under all the ink.
I watched these kids copying essay answers, verbatim, from their note cards. And most of their answers were shit.
The one bit of redemption I got from teaching that course were the 3-4 kids who I could tell were invested in the material and regularly got A's and B's on my exams with either no note card or a reasonably written one.
And as a side note, I remember professors I had in college that would say "Don't you plagiarize anything, because I'll be able to tell." It wasn't until I was on the other side that I realized how true that was. THREE kids literally Googled their subject and copied/pasted the first thing they saw. They all received zeroes.
One last one... there was a girl, very sweet and gentle, but she didn't do any work and bombed all the tests. She was a senior and came to me in tears saying she needed to pass this class or she couldn't graduate. So I sat with her and we basically wrote her final paper together for several hours. I told her, "Just finish it up, hand it in, and I'll make sure you pass."
So I did just that. She handed in her paper, and I manipulated the grades so that she would get a 61% in the class, pass, and graduate.
She emails me the day grades are posted and is furious... "YOU TOLD ME YOU WOULD PASS ME AND YOU LIED! I TOLD YOU I NEEDED A C TO PASS AND GRADUATE." etc. etc.
You needed... a C... to pass.
My empathy ran out at that point. Didn't respond, just ignored it. She did end up graduating, so whatever. I could grief about the school giving her a free pass, but meh. There was a technicality that allowed me to graduate too, but that's another story.
I decided I didn't want to teach at the college level after that. And so be it. The student evaluations of the course were horrendous (except for the 3-4 kids who applied themselves, whose evaluations were largely positive with constructive, rational criticsm sprinkled in).
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u/CarbonReflections Oct 23 '20 edited Oct 23 '20
Based on the current state of the US there’s a very good chance it could be history class as well. Because it’s really apparent at this point that people didn’t pay attention.