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How should students deal with woo-woo professors?
Posted on: July 17, 2006 - 3:37pm
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How should students deal with woo-woo professors?
I just finished reading LeftofLarry's thread My friend and biology professor at VCU got fired, and I'd like to know how you think students should approach professors that make outlandish claims.
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It is exceedingly difficult to fire a tenured prof, just look at Behe. The entire department of the school can issue a statement saying you're insane (as was done in Behe's case), but in many cases simply being a crack pot won't get you the axe.
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As a student, if I did not possess the knowledge to refute the claim (how would I know his claim was false in the first place then?), I would just make a note to stay away from this professor's courses in the future. If however, I did believe I could refute the claim and the claim actually influenced the course material and educational value of the course, I would first bring it to the professor's attention, and if that didn't work, I would bring it to the attention of the dean. And if that didn't work, I would begin to organize enough other students and professors to support my side and then bring it back to the attention of the dean. If this doesn't work (which would be highly unlikely if you actually had a fair amount of students and other professors), I couldn't really say what I would do. That would be a highly unlikely situation (but a possible one) that I would deal with at that time. However, if I simply couldn't find enough students and professors who felt the same way as I did, I'd transfer to another school as soon as I reasonably could and take the situation as a learning experience and a talking point in the future. First and foremost though, it goes without saying that you'd better be sure you actually have a valid point before you do anything radical.
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Right, it is hard to get fired when you're tenured. My friend, however was only an adjunct professor and easily axed.
Going back to the question, Creationist think tanks wiht the help of fundamentalist colleges are training professors in science on how to introduce ID or creationism in a classroom without being overtly open about it. It's much like product placement. The problem is that, as a student, you probably aren't even realizing it, but what these people are doing is that they are placing seeds of doubt. There is absolutely no room for ANY mention of creationism or ID in a biology 101 textbook. It would take an astute student to catch a false claim. I always recommend doing your own research as well and if you find something that contradicts your teacher...ask....and hold their feet to the fire in front of the classroom.
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How about just bitch-slap them?
I heard suicide-bombing was sometimes effective. It has something to do with yelling "Allah Akbar!" and then pressing a button or something...
On a serious note, I would start contacting various scientific communities about this. If you can't get a tenured professor fired you can at least disgrace his credibility.
-=Grim=-
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shoot them in the fucking head.
uh.. I mean.. uhh..
bring up the concerns to the other faculty/administration, if that doesn't get you anywhere, take your money elsewhere, and attempt to get others to do the same.
unfortunately not many people would care.
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