
Texas college professor tries to flunk his whole class - petethomas
http://washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/28/texas-college-professor-tries-to-flunk-his-whole-class/
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aaron695
This really is a pointless article of he said, they said.

There is nothing at all to be gained in reading it.

There's no actual evidence of who was in the wrong or what the real story is.

(You could easily argue after 20 years in the game he fully knew all the
students wouldn't actually get a F, even this is unknown)

~~~
baldfat
Happened at the College I use to work at (Systems Librarian and in Student
Life)

Whole class plagiarized their papers and it wasn't a he said she said. Clear
as day guilty. Some of the papers were word for word the same (The kids forgot
to change words). Professor gives the complete class a failing grade. College
within a week lets all the Seniors graduate and changed their grades to C and
fires the Professor.

Professor appeals and is re-hired. Than he is fired 2 years later due to
complaints that his classes are to difficult. Once again appeals and is
rehired. He is now the easiest professor to get a D or C as long as you don't
cut three weeks (AKA 1/4 of the class). You have to do projects for different
grades. D = writes out 50 words and their definitions with hand drawn
pictures. C = Pass a definition test of a possible 100 words (Super Easy). B =
do research and turn in a short half page synopsis of your findings with
printed out web pages or copies of books. A = write one 10 page paper and get
at least an 80 on the paper with his simple rubric (AKA Jr High level). Only
10% actually ever attempt an A and he has a perfect Bell Curve the past 15+
years now.

His lectures are incredible deep (Philosophy and Theology) and you can either
sit there and learn very little (Most do) or you can engage him and he will
give the best lecture tailored for whoever tries hard and talks during class.
When my friends who were alumni would come to visit I always took them to this
professor's class and they were blown away at how foolish they were to dismiss
him and think of him as a easy C or B class.

So this actually happened and it caused a professor to just not engage his
classes brains or challenge them academically due to fear of being fired
again. Philosophy and Theology field is incredibly competitive and there would
be over 150 applications for his position if it ever opened up. You also would
than be a person who was fired trying to get into a field where hundreds
trying for the same job.

~~~
helyka
This is a shame. When I first started college I felt that citations were
always a burden. Five years later and two degrees I wouldn't even dream about
writing without citing my work. If these kids want to cheat, they shouldn't be
rewarded. But hey, the more the kids fluff off the less I have to worry about
my field of study being over populated by people that can ACTUALLY do the
job..

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iridium
Even though this incident sounds more personal than idealistic, it keeps
bringing back up the question of the purpose of universities.

I am okay with universities being a medium of education, where one can take
any courses they want, and passing and failing is irrelevant (MOOCs?)

I am okay with universities being a place to enjoy four years of camaraderie
and self exploration before committing to life or career goals.

I am okay with universities being a stamp of selection, i.e you were good
enough to get into harvard so you must be smart.

However, universities try to be all three and fail miserably at all of them,
while leaving students in a large debt that most are unable to reconcile with
what they got out of it, along with a life-long 'average gpa' that barely
reflects abilities.

~~~
probably_wrong
I think you are confusing "universities" with "USA universities", specially
when it comes to debt and GPA.

~~~
nailer
Most USA-people do this, and they're aware of it: when they talk about
'universities', or '[some class of] people', or 'VC' or whatever else. I think
the reasons they do it are a combination of efficiency and a feeling that the
rest of the world isn't always necessary to the discussion.

Those of us outside the US may feel it's naive, but it's unlikely they'll
change. The simplest thing for us to do is to assume they always mean
USA-[topic].

~~~
jklein11
Are you implying that there is anywhere other than the USA?

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skywhopper
Breaking News: sometimes teachers have depressive flameouts just like every
other kind of person.

There's not really anything to take from this article. When this sort of thing
happens, the department hands the class off to someone else, the instructor is
disciplined in some way, and life goes on. The students won't receive an ideal
semester's worth of instruction, but that happens sometimes. The university
probably ought to find some way to let students who want to take the class
over to do so at no cost, but I have no idea if that's likely. The students
who would rather not take the class over shouldn't have to. One class is not
going to make or break their education. Meanwhile, they've learned that
sometimes spectacular flameouts happen, and they have an interesting story to
tell for the rest of their lives.

~~~
heapcity
I flamed out on cheaters once by telling students they could decide for
themselves what their grade was. "Go ahead live the rest of your life with the
false assumption you understand statistics."

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Casseres
I graduated from the college in question - Texas A&M University at Galveston
(TAMUG). Off the bat, I don't know that professor or any of those students (I
was in a different major, and had great professors).

The problem I have with this story is that someone went to the media with
rather than dealing with the school administration. Based on KPRC's online
video of the report, it was probably John R Shaw Jr. The video was poorly
made. About half of the video is shots of the same empty classroom. Another
part is where they stage John walking on the sidewalk. Due to poor editing,
you can see him turn around before walking and suppressing a smile.

The only reason that I can surmise that this is in the news rather than being
dealt with appropriately, is because John R Shaw Jr probably wanted 15 minutes
of fame. He says he has a job offer, but after this, I can't imagine what
company is going to want to hire him if he goes to the media instead of the
appropriate route every time he feels slighted.

~~~
gdulli
> The problem I have with this story is that someone went to the media with
> rather than dealing with the school administration.

"...he added that the university wasn't responding to his complaints about
their behavior, pushing him to take this drastic step."

~~~
fluidcruft
That quote is from the professor (Horwitz). John R Shaw Jr is apparently one
of the students.

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ejcx
If this college class operates like the ones I had then I think the professor
is in the wrong. On the first day I would be given a syllabus that clearly
outlined the grading scale and how the grade was calculated.

I look at that like a contract. Professor presented students with a grading
scale, students accept by staying in the class or withdraw from the class.

Granted I know nothing about this particular incident, but it could be an
interesting case to read about if it were to go to court.

~~~
rayiner
If the syllabus is a contract, cheating is a breach of the covenant of good
faith and fair dealing.

I'm all for failing classes pervasive cheating. There isn't enough social
pressure in schools to name and shame cheaters.

~~~
iak8god
> I'm all for failing classes pervasive cheating. There isn't enough social
> pressure in schools to name and shame cheaters.

I'm all for failing individuals who cheat, including every single student in a
class if that's the case. It's hard to tell if that's what's happened here. It
kind of looks like the prof is (rightly) fed up with a bunch of things and
(questionably) throwing a tantrum.

As for pressure to name and shame cheaters, note that it is usually a huge
hassle to formally charge students with cheating. I know people who deal with
this by giving exams that are hard to cheat on and really hard to pass without
having done the assignments. The alternative involves a lot of interactions
with the university bureaucracy for each case -- as it probably should.

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Red_Tarsius
There's not enough information for a fair opinion on the matter.

The professor felt devalued from class behaviour, so he "made himself scarce".
After establishing credibility by telling us about his past experiences and
successes, he quits for reasons we can all empathize with. _Scarsity_ ,
_social proof_ and _authority_ are 3 of the six principles described by
Cialdini's _Influence_.

~~~
winsletts
I imagine this is one of those situations where the truth will never be
available. All participates have taken sides, and have skewed / omitted /
shaped their own stories for their own interests.

I wish we had a black box recorder for organizational and cultural failures.

[edited tone to convey agreement]

~~~
IkmoIkmo
But the article ends with a student expressing disbelief as he did decent work
and getting an F before the class even ends, and the professor acknowledging
that some students were fine, but that he exercised collective punishment
because it was his only instrument.

That seems pretty clear cut to me, definitely a bad move. It can't be
justified, solves no problems and punishes innocent students.

I'd understand why he'd fail some of his students, and I can also imagine
situations where it's tricky to pinpoint and isolate the unwilling students
from his class, and if made out to be a clown day in day out, lacking the
proper instruments, management backing and (understandably) mental fortitude,
that you'd leave the school at some point.

But how that translates to giving an F to an entire class, including students
who bore no responsibility and were as powerless to keep the class going the
right way as he was, is beyond me.

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edw519
_Horwitz, who has taught management for two decades..._

What exactly did he teach? It doesn't appear he learned very much about
"management".

Imagine a manager firing all 30 of his direct reports. What would you suspect
was the problem, the manager or the workers? Same thing here.

Perhaps Professor Horwitz should get a real management job. Then he'd learn
how easy he'd had it for the past two decades.

~~~
jerf
"What would you suspect was the problem, the manager or the workers?"

Well, "the manager's manager" is an option here too. "Mismatch of
responsibility and authority" is certainly a fundamental problem that schools
at all levels from kindergarten to university have been struggling with as our
society goes through its social changes, as we keep loading responsibilities
on to the teachers even as we strip away their authority.

Whether or not this is the case, I don't know. As others have observed, there
isn't anywhere near enough info to conclude anything here.

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JadeNB

        Horwitz acknowledged that “a few” of the best performers might not deserve an F. But the school wouldn’t let him teach just those students, so he had no choice but to flunk everyone and leave the course, he said.
    

Wow—as a teacher myself, I went to this story all prepared to root for this
guy, but can't. "[T]he school wouldn't let him teach just those students, so
he had no choice but to flunk everyone"? Who knows what's going on inside the
classroom that we don't know—but, whatever happened, regardless of the
provocation, comments like this [0] are a stain on the profession of teaching.
It is our (teachers') job to deal with our students professionally, and that
professionalism on our part becomes more, not less, important when it is not
demonstrated by our students.

[0] Assuming that it is an accurate representation of what he said. I was once
the subject of a friendly story in my local paper, and, even with the best of
intentions on the reporter's part, I was amazed at how different what she
wrote was from what I meant (and, I believe, said).

~~~
wahsd
I am not sure that it really is a teacher, let alone professor's professional
responsibility to have to deal with the student's lack of basic human decency.
I don't know what happened in that class and I also don't know if his
statement about "a few" not deserving being flunked is accurate, but it does
not change the fact of the matter that a teacher / professor / lecturer's only
job is to teach and educate. Their job is not crowd control or behavior
modification therapy.

I don't see any way how A&M is not negligent in performing their duty to
assure an environment to allow him to perform his contractual obligation to
teach the students that are there to learn. Especially if he requested that
the disruptive students leave and / or be removed from the class, he and the
affected students that were possibly not contributing to the disruption should
really be suing the university for contract non-performance. If you go to a
university and expect education and instruction and the school does not
perform it's duty to assure that happens, they are in breach of contract.
There doesn't seem to be any real difference from any other service contract.

~~~
JadeNB
> I am not sure that it really is a teacher, let alone professor's
> professional responsibility to have to deal with the student's lack of basic
> human decency.

It _is_ every professional's responsibility to deal professionally even with
unprofessional behaviour. That _doesn 't_ mean tolerating or excusing the
behaviour.

For example, as a teacher, if I am repeatedly provoked and harrassed by
students (which has never happened!), then I am within my rights to ask them
to stop, to call security, and even to refuse to return to the classroom until
some assurance is made that it is a safe environment. That is a professional
response to unprofessional behaviour.

What I am _not_ entitled to do is to say that there are _some_ good apples,
but, because of the few (or many) bad apples, I am going to fail _everyone_.
That is an unprofessional response.

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marincounty
Slightly off topic, but I have a bachelor's degree in Management. The courses
were a joke. I wish I followed my passion in college, but figured a degree in
Management would get me a job. The Manaagement classes were basically business
classes. I was young, and naive.

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nashashmi
This is not the first time it has happened that a professor tries to fail a
whole class, but it maybe the first time a professor prematurely failed an
entire class without any chance of recourse and without letting final
performances materialize.

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jmilloy
There are students everywhere who are graded unfairly. Certainly punishing
students who break the ethical rules of the school or terrorize the classroom
with a failing grade is not the appropriate response, though many of such
students probably do deserve poor grades for the actual academic performance
that corresponds to such behaviour.

More interestingly, why should a single grade matter so much? Especially when
it can so easily be due to the whims of the professor or to extraordinary
personal circumstances of the student? Of course, it _does_ matter in
practice, and that's the bigger problem that I think is showcased by stories
like these.

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ggchappell
Professor here, with a viewpoint that seems to be underrepresented.

The kind of thing discussed in this article would absolutely not fly at my
university. We are expected to formulate standards for grading, inform the
students of these standards, and follow them when assigning grades.

A relatively standard term for grading in ways that does not follow announced
standards is "capricious grading". And many -- perhaps most, perhaps all --
U.S. universities now have official policies against it. Egregious violations
of such policies would be grounds for various kinds of penalities/punishment.

That is not to say that cheating is irrelevant. For example, every syllabus I
write contains the line, "Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated, and will
be dealt with according to [my school's] procedures."

In another comment, user hn_ says, "A syllabus is _not_ a contract." This is
correct. That means that a syllabus is not enforceable in a court of law.
However, _university policy_ may still dictate that a syllabus is an ironclad
statement of how the course will be conducted.

So, for example, I have seen a student make a complaint against a professor
and take it up the chain of command. The first question asked by each of the
administrators the complaint came to was, "What does the syllabus say?" If the
professor is found to be acting in accordance with the course syllabus, then
the student has a much harder time making a case -- at the very least.

A related issue, which seems to be an important one in the case mentioned in
the article, is that grading standards are generally to be applied
individually. There is such a thing as group work, of course; in such cases we
make it clear that each person in the group is judged by the performance of
the group as a whole.

Now, I don't know how accurately this article is representing the actual
events that occurred. But if Horwitz really is assigning individual grades
based on a nebulous judgement about the class as a whole, then I would say he
is clearly guilty of a violation of professional ethics. What "the class
deserves" is simply irrelevant to an individual's grade.

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goodcanadian
I have little doubt that (some of) the students were childish assholes. I also
have little doubt that the professor handled it poorly. Probably, he treated
them like children. This is incredibly insulting to the majority of students
that do care, and it does not solve the problem. I have seen that play out in
university classes. In the end, rather than telling the assholes to get the
fuck out, he throws a temper tantrum. No one is in the right here.

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aggieben
I've taught a graduate-level class in which I caught every single student
cheating at least once (18 students), including 6 of them on the final paper
(for which I set an absurdly low bar). I failed those 6, and I gave zeros for
all the other individual instances. I _should_ have failed them all.

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nickthemagicman
“Just ridiculous, I had never had a problem in the class. I thought I had done
pretty well, done pretty well on the first test and then I get an e-mail
saying I am going to get an F in the class, it was overwhelming,” Shaw told
KPRC.

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erikb
I also experienced that twice during my student years. That the professor not
makes a decision with his fellow profs and school organizers looks quite poor.
In any conflict you must choose one side, at least I believe so, and then
support that. If you fight with the students, that's okay. If you fight with
your fellow professors that's also okay. But just making trouble to both
groups and then running away... That can't be reasonable or achieve anything.

From the experience with the two professors I knew trying something like that,
I think that guy will be surprised that students and the other profs will bond
together simply to avoid more trouble and continue with the university life.

------
Kenji
Seems like he just had a nervous breakdown. He should probably take some time
off, recover, and maybe take a job that requires less social interaction.
Being a good teacher (no matter the age of the student) is draining and
requires a lot of patience and emotional intuition.

~~~
oddevan
I'll agree with you with the caveat that "just a nervous breakdown" might be a
little dismissive.

Does he need a sabbatical? Absolutely. It sounds like after one-too-many
classes of willfully unteachable students (as in students that refuse to
learn, not students that are unable to learn), enough was enough and he had
had it with these motherf%$&ing students in this motherf%$&ing school.

I think a lot of us here on HN can empathize with overwork and burnout, and it
sounds like this professor may have ignored the warning signs for too long. I
hope he can get the help he needs.

~~~
VLM
"I hope he can get the help he needs."

That appears highly unlikely given past experience:

"Speaking with the Houston Chronicle, he added that the university wasn’t
responding to his complaints about their behavior"

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vinceguidry
Now that's what I call a ragequit.

------
mahouse
>Horwitz

~~~
ajuc
?

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al2o3cr
"being disruptive, rude and dishonest"

Sounds like a bunch of straight-shooters with middle management written all
over them. ;)

