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Originally posted by: About to Be Banned
"Cossack, Tell me if I understand your point. You think faculty members should responsible users of the academic freedom they enjoy. Analogy: According to the U.S. Supreme Court, I have the freedom to burn an American Flag in public. Should I exercise this right on the steps of a V.A. hospital? Probably not. It would be unproductive, mean-spirited, and insensitive. Perhaps I should choose another location for my protest. If I have positive motives driving my protest, I probably will not target the V.A. I have the freedom to talk about a lot of stuff in my class; however, I steer clear of some topics that are clearly a stretch to incorporate into my class. I don't routinely cross my widely blurred margins to pull in such remote topics."

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It may not be WISE for me to burn a flag on the steps of the VA -- it might not be good politics or even good symbology. But the law doesn't say I don't have the right to express stupid ideas or express good ideas badly --

Course, I tend to hope that the professorite would opt for a higher standard but . . .  the law doesn't say their aren't stupid professors either. In any case, the stupid, insipid, or "dangerous" ideas of the present are often only known for their stupidity or their wisdom after the passge of time.

 

I'm very suspicious of terms like "inappropriate." That is pretty much a value judgement.

 

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Originally posted by: stephen judd
"OK you guys -- I really gotta GO!
THanks -- I hope we all meet in 3D space/time at some point -- this has been great. My head is spinning. "

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I'm going too--there is a major work of art I have to teach tomorrow and my notes on what I'm going to cram down their throats about it aren't done yet.

(NOTE: This was intended to be humorous! . . . . . )

I will post one more time on this issue. The major topic of interest over the past week has been the angst between faculty and some members of the Hattiesburg community. In reality the number of persons involved was small, but vocal. Some of their angst is the result of their perceptions of faculty and what they see as a collective attitude toward ordinary people. Some of their angst has occurred because of faculty at other universities and USM faculty happen to be in Hattiesburg. The preponderance of activities at USM, and other universities are routine. Faculty conduct classes and students attend, tests are taken and tests are graded, and final grades are assigned. It is the rare exceptions when there is friction between faculty and students over issues that become contentious. But it is these exceptions that leak out into the community and become folklore. Taking on a faculty position carries with it a responsibility as well as obligations. Being a faculty member also allows a breath of freedom usually not found in other professions. We call it academic freedom. I value it highly and I try to be responsible and not involve my self in everyday activities that threaten that freedom. It is interesting that faculty hold very dearly this freedom, yet can be very dismissive of others who hold different freedoms dearly. An example can make this clear. Academics become very defensive when academic freedoms are threaten. These same academics feel no remorse when they threaten the freedom of their fellow citizens to own and carry firearms. One right is enumerated in the constitution, the other is not. Both are important to the participants involved, but often not to each other. My point is that many people want to reduce academic freedom and many want to reduce the ability to own guns. Moreover, the right to own guns is legally defined while academic freedom is a tradition that has been honored through time. Academic freedom is too important to be abused by irresponsible faculty who have a cause or just have strong emotional feelings about an issue.

Why should you challenge a student's belief system?

That makes it sound as if you want to change the student's belief system through "education," however you choose to define that term.

Anyone who reads the board regularly knows that Invictus and I are miles apart, politically, but in this he has my total agreement. Beliefs have to be challenged. It's like exercising muscles. I don't want my minister, for example, to be totally unaware of the history of the church, the challenges it faces, the arguments used against our faith, and thus be unable to answer those challenges. "Understanding" does not equal "agreement" but this is a very hard concept to convey to today's students.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" -- I would add that the unexamined belief is not worth having.

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Originally posted by: LVN
""The unexamined life is not worth living" -- I would add that the unexamined belief is not worth having."

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Mr. Wonderful should take note! I wish I'd said that. I made my last post & felt that I hadn't expressed what I was trying to say very well. Thanks, LVN!

A person who holds different beliefs from my own is OK in my book if they have thoroughly considered their position & have valid reasons for the way they think. In fact, it's usually a lot of fun to "argue" with them -- makes for a real mental stretch, which is good for the brain-muscle. Of course, I do have a problem with folks whose reasons are utterly objectionable (e.g., people whose politics -- left or right -- are based on skin color, that sort of thing).

Maybe that's the conundrum in the "Sobering Thought" thread: SFT's supporters don't have any real "examined" reasons for their position ... or any reasons that they're actually willing to share with the world. They don't stand for anything; they're just defending a particular guy. And man, they sure have fallen for it!

Thanks for the nomination. I don't guarantee this phrase is original, however. There's a lot of stuff in my brain of Unknown Origin. If I accidentally stole it from somebody here, better speak up!

If you guys are going to debate gun control, would you mind starting a new thread? Thanks.

Understood, but you're asking for a ten-page thread if that gets started. When threads start to get too divergent from the original topic, it's helpful to just start a new one.

Lets see if I can maybe steer this back in the right direction.

Allow me some digression here, when I was in elementary school, I was expected to learn the facts, spit them back out and not question why I was doing it.  Then I got to Jr.High and was expected to begin thinking on my own, and developing my own conclusions about a given item. There was still some of the suck it in, spit it out learning, but in English I was expected to give MY thoughts on the reading materials.  In history it was suck it in, spit it out, same for math and science.  Although in science I now had the opportunity to give a hypothesis on what I thought was going to happen and conclusions to say yep it did, or nope it didn't. Then in High school, more independent thinking was encouraged. I will admit there are certain subjects that are black and white, cut and dry, history being one of those. But in Literature, each person can interpret the information differently, oh how I loved my Lit classes.  Music is another one of those classes where interpretation is important, how one person plays a peice or vocalizes a piece might be very different than how I might play or sing it, which in turn may be very   different than what the composer intended.  In my psych class (yes in High school) my teacher and I would go around and around and around debating whether a theory was a fact ( I got an A in the class because I debated with him, that and I could spit out the information).

Now in college, it was assumed I could think independently and would not accept things at face value. Even in math, now called algebra, 2+2  isn't always 4.  It can be zero if adding a negative and a postive together. Algebra is the only place I have ever found where two wrongs (negatives) make a positive and only if you are multiplying or dividing  .  In an ethics class I took, I argued with the prof over my stance on the Cain Munity.  I could see both sides of the issue with the first officer, but the prof told me I had to take one side or the other, I refused to do that.  Did my grade suffer, no, he respected my views. ( It would be very interesting to get into an ethical discussion on the Terri Shiavo case, talk about having set opinions, whooeee, that would get heated and fast. )  In my therapy related classes I learned that there is only ONE absolute in Physical Therapy (I'm an assistant to clarify things) and that is you never ever ever ever exercise someone with a resting heart rate of 120 or better. Everything else is up to interpretation. How I chose to rehab or teach a patient how to strengthen his/her legs might be different than another therapist, but we are both right.  My prof use to tell us that his job was to impart the information to us, it was up to us what we did with that information.

My husband is going to a tech school as we speak, and he was going to take a humanities class on early world civilizations.  He walked into class on the first day and had the professor (who has her PhD) state that we (USA) should not be in Iraq, that we (US) has no right interferring with HER countries leadership etc.  My husband, a vet, walked out of the class and filed a complaint.  He, nor I give a rats rear end if she doesn't like us being there, what did that have to do with the subject matter except that Mespotainia is now Iraq. But, her opinion on that first day of class was forced down the throats of her students. In this case, the profs opinions should have been kept quiet.  There are other times in which a lively debate over the subject could have been useful and educational.  Take your pick.

Without the ability to think critically and independently we would become mindless robots doing whatever it was that was  programmed into us.  Professors are there to guide us in the process of thinking critically, and sometimes we do disagree, but my opinion is mine, yours is yours. Doesn't mean that you are right and I am wrong, or vise versa, it means we don't agree. As long as the student can justify their belief to the professor in clear concise terms with some type of factual backing the professor should be willing to listen and grade according to the proof presented.  History they say is doomed to repeat itself, and we do see that trend over and over.  How can we change history? By getting off our backsides and speaking out to change the uninformed to the informed, by presenting facts to back up what we say is true. By thinking independently.

No, you didn't kill it. It was about done. I've noticed that three pages seems about max, by then the subject gets exhausted (or we do.)