Personally, I'm really amazed that some people, both below and in comments to that article, are finding themselves siding with the student.
IMO the prof's email was excellent. He conveyed his point across very nicely without showing even a small hint of irritation or annoyance.
The part copied below, for me, really sums it up. This student is an immature jackass and s/he really needs growing up. S/he first made a mistake and then had the audacity of justifying his/her action. Personally I would hate to have a person like that in my team.
Quoted part: Just so I’ve got this straight…you started in one class, left 15-20 minutes into it (stood up, walked out mid-lecture), went to another class (walked in 20 minutes late), left that class (again, presumably, in the middle of the lecture), and then came to my class. At that point (walking in an hour late) I asked you to come to the next class which “bothered” you.
To the folks who are siding with the student: Find out who s/he was, hire him/her and then lets see what your reaction is when the moron walks in late to meetings, customer calls, doesn't deliver on time etc. and then when you fire him/her, sues you..
Don't ignore some of the good traits this student is showing, namely the interest to try 3 different lectures and the guts to email the prof. This person could easily turn out to be a star. We can't only focus on one part of the data.
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. The student's behavior was completely justified, and the professor comes off as a self-important prick.
Whenever there are several courses competing for the same time slot, it's reasonable to visit all of them in the first 1-2 weeks of the semester, to understand which one you want to choose. Going just by the course description isn't sufficient, because the quality of the lecturer matters, and varies greatly. For example, you may want to know in advance that the professor is a self-important prick, and take that into account when deciding whether to take their course.
The professors and the students all know that, and late entry during weeks 1-2 of the semester is a normal, expected occurrence. Good manners dictate that the student who walks out in the middle or walks in late sit close to the entrance, to minimize the disruption to others. That's all, really.
Even beyond the first few weeks of the semester, walking in late to a lecture shouldn't be a big deal. The one who's hurt by this is the student who misses the material. The lecturer with a penchant to interrupt their lecture, deliver a brief sermon to the student and expel them are advised to grow the hell up and focus on their teaching.
The comparison with walking late into meetings doesn't have any legs to stand on. The professor is not harmed by the student's initial absence and can proceed with the lecture as planned. Each particular student's participation and feedback aren't essential to the lecture. And meetings that overlap or coincide can be rescheduled, unlike university courses.
I totally agree. I currently am a student at a public university, although on the other side of the country, and this behavior in any of my classes would result in the teacher refusing to enroll a student in the class. You are older than 18, grow a pair and learn to respect others time and energy. The quote that I'm hoping the kid really gets is of course "having manners, demonstrating a level of humility…these are all (relatively) easy. Get the easy stuff right".
Hope this kid grows up before he joins the workforce, or hell, attends another day of class, because this behavior is just not OK for an adult.
You can't assert that as truth, because that is the question being debated. I find all the speculation on how this student would behave in corporate life rather amazing: it suggests knowledge of correlations that you can't possibly have evidence for. It's just putting this guy down for the sake of feeling better about yourself.
For the anti-establishment types automatically siding with students: Remember that this is a total of 4 class interruptions for everyotherstudent in the course.
It's actually only 1 class interruption: the interruption occurred when Galloway decided to stop teaching and instead focus on a student who he felt disrespected him (but probably went unnoticed by other students).
Assuming he was reasonably quiet, the student did not interrupt two other lectures. I often have a late student or two. No one notices or cares because I don't waste time on it.
"So this means that this set of functions is an orthogonal basis for the space of polynomials. Timmy, close the door behind you. This means that we can translate our problem with signals into a matrix problem, and then just gaussian eliminate it like every other problem this semester."
Would you similarly criticize the student if he showed up on time, but used the bathroom after an hour?
Sayre's Law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter." Sayre's law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905-1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University.
I don't see an overall good in the professor's late policy. Awkwardness is usually enough of a deterrent to people willingly being late. This extreme policy punishes those who are unwillingly late (car trouble, emergencies, etc.).
Making a show out of kicking out late students is self-important. The professor extrapolating from this one event that the student is failing at life and should be thankful this professor set him straight indicates more of that attitude to me.
I've been in classes where a late student was told to leave. It was way more distracting than if he'd just been allowed to sit down because it sets off a bunch of pondering and empathy, and you look around you to see what the other students think about the situation, and you're no longer hearing the teacher talk.
This I have never understood. What does it mean to respect an institution? Is this sort of like corporate personhood (which I am not taking a stance on)? Does Harvard demand more respect than the local community college?
The word "respect" is as loaded as the word "fair." One interpretation is simply, "Don't be rude." But, that's not all that the word commonly encompasses. Implicit in most definitions is the difference in social status between two parties. When is it properly "respectful" to call John Smith by his first name instead of "Mister Smith"? When the person addressing John is socially beneath him?
Both of them are. It is reasonable to expect that sampling classes that are scheduled at the same time will be acceptable. However, it's not something students are entitled to. The proper way to respond to such a policy if you insist on responding is to explain your situation and ask the the professor revisit his policy for the beginning of the term in the future.
Sure --- the professor might also just be tired of getting attitude from mediocre students. It's never the A students who show up late and then complain about getting in trouble for it :-)
The professor overreacted, to be sure. And probably spent too much of his own valuable time on a student who is likely not worth it. A, "Thanks for the feedback." would have been better.
Such students may not be "A" students, depending on how the class is graded.
When I was an undergrad, I had a couple of "A" performances (in one case, I was among the top 3 students in a class of about 150) marked down to "A-" due to attendance/pop quizzes ("statistical sampling of attendance").
I tend to agree with you. All the professor had to reply was: "Sorry, I find it really hard to teach when people walk in late, so that is the reason for the policy." There was no sense of humbleness, or trying to see any alternative point of view on the part of the professor at all.
My wife is a lecturer and had a related experience with a student.
Sometime early in the semester after the course outline had been presented to her students, my wife received an email in which a student put forward his plan on how he was going to game the course to get a pass with the minimum amount of work. It went something like this:
According to the course outline, I plan to just read the poetry and one of the books. If I do essays 1 on the poetry, essays 3 and 4 comparing the book to the poetry, skip essay 3 and get 50% on the exam then, by my calculations I should get a pass. Could you tell me if this plan will work?
I've heard of time management but I'd never seen such a blatant disregard for actually wanting to learn anything in a course before. It didn't occur to the student that telling a lecturer that her course was just an obstacle course to be rushed through as efficiently as possible was a little disrespectful?
There is nothing disrespectful here. It is simply a symptom of how universities operate. It's even more blatantly obvious in lower division math classes.
Universities often to require students to take lots of filler courses, unrelated to their chosen field, taught simply to raise funds for the department providing the filler.
So that english course could easily be nothing but an obstacle in the way of an engineering or business major graduating. And it might be an obstacle which exists solely to get some of the student's money.
The point is not that the course might be mandatory for a business student (it wasn't - the student picked it as an elective), nor that he shouldn't make and execute such a plan if he thinks it is in his best interests.
The disrespect was in telling the lecturer, "we both know this is a waste of my time so tell me how to get it over with as easily as possible".
It's like constantly checking your phone while talking to someone in person. Even if you are listening to what they are saying, you are signalling to that person that there are more interesting things than them which demand your attention.
I hate to break it to you, but school is just not that important. Getting a degree is a stepping stone (or as you say, obstacle course) to something that people actually want.
While Galloway may or may not be an "arrogant a-hole", I can understand him snapping. (small rant:)
On my master's there are a few people who regularly show up halfway into lectures (leaving the doors swinging and banging), leave work that requires genuine understanding and insight until the last possible second and just generally seem confused by everything. They're intelligent folk, but I don't understand the lack of application at this stage. Why bother coming? It's not like they're starting businesses or fighting crime at night.
I used to be a sloppy student at undergraduate, but for a postgrad degree there's just no point being there unless you want to attack your subject like a rabid dog. Nobody will save you at this point. Nobody cares if you fail.
My university had a simple fix for this problem - all lecture halls actually had doors at the back. People who have back-to-back classes in different departments had to take a shuttle bus to commute since the campus is big. They could slip in silently from the back door and take a seat somewhere in the last few rows. No body gets disturbed, and the prof doesn't get offended.
The tagline for mixergy is "Online Business Tips from Successful Entrepreneurs". I'm having a hard time imagining how he fits with that or why he'd make a great interviewee.
As far as I can tell, his claim to fame is writing a narky email to someone who's paying ~ $40K/year to learn. What unique or interesting thing does he bring to the table? "Being nasty to your customers" doesn't work as well when you're outside of the sheltered workshop that is academia.
He co-founded Red Envelope and ran an activist campaign against the NYT. The combination of high IQ, strong opinions, and borrowed money more or less requires asshole behavior (every minute you fail to convince someone is a minute you're paying interest on. Replace "interest" with "rent," and you can explain New York City.)
It's not necessarily Scott Galloway's fault, as he was kicked off the board in 2004 (although he did get back on the board in 2006 after buying up enough stock to push it through) but I'm not sure it passes the 'successful' test.
I think the line gets a bit blurred when you charge as much for tuition as some of these MBA programs.
(The value proposition is actually a bit puzzling given you could lock yourself in a cheap apartment somewhere for ~18 months and try out different business ideas without having to work for the same amount as a years tuition).
While I mostly agree with the prof's response in this situation, as the student should've both accepted that his actions may be rejected and should've spoken with the profs first if possible, professors seriously need to get over themselves. Quite frankly, they are not, much less all (despite the apparently common belief), the most important part of anyone's life, and other events do indeed come up.
The part I disagree with is the policy. How is interrupting the class further to turn them away at all helpful? Speak afterwards; you're only turning a minor distraction into a major one. Especially since people who come in late are demonstrating that they are interested enough to arrive and face that glare / lecture, more often in-class than out.
Laziness / shit not together would be far better demonstrated by not going to class at all, but no professors I've encountered take as strong of a stance on that. It's disproportional and insulting to the people who do show up to make a big deal out of it (prior to other attempts to change things), both the late arrivals and the ones who have to sit through the whole fabricated event.
Manners and respect should exist? Absolutely. But that doesn't give professors any additional right to that feeling of entitlement. I've met some real jerks of professors in my time, and they're typically also the worst teachers around. What right do they have to act like that? Oh, right. Tenure (forgive my expletive).
Respect is, and should be, earned. They get a little bonus for being in the teacher role, but for many (note: not saying most, not denying its possibility either) the line "those who cannot do, teach" is true.
Why is this story so polarizing? Here's a theory, inspired by a Less Wrong post [1]: some people, thinking back to their time in class, remember how distracting it was for a student to come to class in the middle of a lecture. Others, like myself, barely even noticed.
The one side thinks "how rude of the student to walk in and out of lectures like that!" and the other side thinks "what's the big deal? Just ignore it!" and from there they side with the professor or the student, respectively.
Does this gel with your personal experiences? Is there anyone who sided with the professor but does not find student movement distracting? Or anyone who sided with the student but can't stand it?
At first, my natural inclination was to dislike you. The professor comes off as an asshole.
On the other hand, the student was taught a lesson in a harmless way. Anyone who wants to go into business needs to be able to handle egotistical assholes who make this professor seem saintly by comparison.
In my opinion (as pointed out by lucifer already) the ""xxxx, get your shit together." and following paragraph are quite likely to be the most important lesson the student will learn in his entire academic career.
The professor wrote a highly memorable obviously personalised letter to the student teaching that.
Without outside evidence of "egotistical assholishenss" from the prof (which _may_ exist), I'd read it as an intentionally exaggerated reaction with a solid grain of cold hard truth.
Ironically, this is sort of an interesting b-school case study. s/student's career/business/g. Esp. in New York. What is the marginal utility function for disrespect? Does it vary by environment? Professor? In the immediate context, if the potential reward of a great class that would be missed if the student didn't sample outweighs the potential backlash the student will receive by sampling, it makes no sense for the individual student to forgo the opportunity. However, outside of the immediate context, if it breeds bad habits and a lack of decorum, that can be injurious in the long run.
Actually, I think the appropriate modus operandi in New York is to sample if you want and if a professor tells you to leave or come back in the next class, then do so. But don't take it personally and e-mail. In Silicon Valley and elsewhere, I think it varies.
Apart from the tortured logic, the most egregious part of the e-mail was the Prof.’s elementary math error.
Question: A student goes to three classes, each for approximately the same amount of time. He arrives at the third course approximately an hour after the first one started – how long was the student in each of the first two classes?
Professor: 15-20 minutes!
(He mistakenly divided 1 hour by three and tried to account for travel time. Of course he should have divided by two.)
In combination with his grammatical skills, I’d say the Prof needs to get HIS shit together!
But seriously, the student was justified to walk in, but not justified to complain about being thrown out. The Prof's e-mail was bizarre but the closing paragraph was well-spoken.
this conversation depicts exactly the type of professor I hope I never become.
1) the classroom != business meetings-----------
in meetings, other people rely on you being there. in lecture, professor just talks - he can give the same lecture to an empty room or to a full room. it doesn't matter
2) student is not responsible to the professor. -----
because the student's presence is not needed to make an effective lecture, the student has no responsibility to check with the TA or something. his presence is for his benefit alone, his absence is to his damage alone.
3) lecture is not affected by walk-ins and walk-outs ----
no student tries to "make a statement" by walking in late to class. it is not disruptive, if they walk in,find a spot, and sit down, quietly. the lecture is not affected, if they are focused, people hardly notice the door opening. it's like somebody coughing in lecture - who hears it, who remembers it? nobody.
4) professor is wrong to interpret this as deliberate action---
there are a million and one reasons to be late for class or go early. in a large class, a small subset will always have some kind of priority over lecture, be it conflict exams,interviews, small accidents on the way,or lecture sampling. this is completely understandable, the students' lives don't revolve around the lecture.
5) policies should become "strict" after 1st week ----
even if the professor decides to exercise his snobbiness by power of being a lecturer, he should have done so not in the first lecture, but made it clear to the entire class, multiple times during the first week, and started implementing it next week. dismissing the student is such a shallow, "i got the power", type of behavior. extremely disappointing display of insecurity of an NYU MBA professor.
6) urinating? ----
wow the professor goes over his head with his outrageous analogies. no logical sense.
Getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a live/work balance…these are all really hard, xxxx. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility…these are all (relatively) easy. Get the easy stuff right xxxx. In and of themselves they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential which, by virtue of you being admitted to Stern, you must have in spades. It’s not too late xxxx…"
Now that is an honest to goodness teacher. xxxx is quite fortunate. She/he may or not may recognize this now, but that letter was such a huge favor.
Jobs dropped out of Reed not because he wouldn't/couldn't play by the rules, but because he didn't think he was getting value for the top dollar his parents were spending to send him there. He ended up 'dropping in' on classes (like calligraphy), but there's no indication that he just strolled in an hour late and disrespected the professors he was trying to learn from.
That's a fair point. But I just somehow don't see Steve Jobs sending that email. (He would have Woz hack the school PBX and have fun with the Professor. ;) So, yes, if you are a genius with a devilish charm, and have the stuff to back it up, go ahead and break the rules. Hell, even Jobs had to learn a few painful lessons about people, business, and politics the hard way:
"You are an anonymous student who is now regretting the send button on his laptop. It’s with this context I hope you register pause…REAL pause xxxx and take to heart what I am about to tell you [...]"
To me that's the subtext of this object lesson by the ex-"Muffketeer". Let me paraphrase: "I didn't know you before, and the event was forgetful. Not any more. That was stupid, and you need to learn so you won't make that mistake again."
If the student's course sampling story is genuine, then this professor has accomplished nothing more than being a jerk to an engaged student. There is no reason to interpret 1 hour tardiness of a single student as disrespect. Consistent 10 minute tardiness of a large portion of a class or a single disengaged student? Now that's a different story. The only time students entering or exiting make much of a distraction is when the instructor calls them out on it.
However, it is more likely that the student's story is bullshit. In which case he or she shouldn't have bothered to send that email. Both people are at fault here. The student shouldn't have written an email when a simple "I'm sorry, bye." had already resolved the issue. The professor should have assumed good intentions and kept his unsolicited advice to himself. Especially if he was going to be that rude about it. He could have simply ignored the email. That is what my political experiences have proven the safest course of action to be.
The student pays the university. The university pays the professor. This is not a small detail. Professors (and other teachers more generally) are not personal employees of their students.
Beyond that, the student is paying for an education and - in the case of an MBA - an entrance into a professional world. He or she just got both. I would say this semester, he or she already got value for the investment.
Quoth the prof: Most risk analysis offers that in the face of substantial uncertainty, you opt for the more conservative path or hedge your bet (e.g., do not show up an hour late until you know the professor has an explicit policy for tolerating disrespectful behavior, check with the TA before class, etc.).
Really? I always heard that it was better to apologize later than to ask permission first, at least when you're doing something as harmless as entering a classroom with a lecture in progress.
Galloway sounds like a butthurt nitwit who missed his calling as a librarian. He probably isn't, of course, but he certainly doesn't take the high ground in his response to the student's perfectly civil letter.
It's true that many doors open in the business world when you make a habit of being early, but it's also true that many doors open when you show up someplace where you aren't supposed to be at all.
A lot of kids (and they are kids) turn up at third level education (some institutions more than others) with an overweening sense of entitlement. Lessons like this aren't out of place.
Dressing someone down for doing something that is usually tolerated (sampling classes at the beginning of the term) is actually a little out of place in my opinion.
Sampling classes doesn't occur at all schools. I'm an engineer now, but I've taught a few college classes, and having students walking in and out of the lecture is intensely irritating. Maybe it would be better if professors liked being treated like a salad bar, but I understand the sentiment.
On the other hand, I wouldn't write an email like that (because I have better things to do (like argue about that email on Hacker News!)).
Here's a Harvard Crimson article from 1950 complaining about the slashing of "shopping time" from 2 weeks to 1 (as far as I know it's been 1 week since then). Clearly "relatively" is relative.
That would certainly suggest that I'm wrong, at least about how long shopping has been common. But I still don't think it happened everywhere (at least it didn't at my school).
I can't tell if you're expected to drop in on classes in the middle of them or not. I read it as you can sample a large number of non-overlapping classes during the first two weeks of term, and then make an informed decision about which ones to stick with.
I can see how it would be irritating. However, you as a provider of educational service are not entitled to your students' patronage. Without checking to see what else is on offer, how can they make an informed decision about which class they should spend their semester on? Surely you don't expect them to trust their luck.
After the drop/switch deadline, I think this kind of policy would be fine (if a bit draconian).
Without checking to see what else is on offer, how can they make an informed decision about which class they should spend their semester on.
Personally, I would try to drop in on professors' office hours, contact them via email to ask for a quick chat to explain the course, or ask friends for a recommendation. I'm not sure exactly what one can get from 20 minutes of the "these are the books and this is the late policy" kind of stuff covered during the first lecture anyway.
That's a good addition to what I said above. As a teacher, I'd be absolutely delighted to help students choose between classes, even if my classes weren't in the running. It's the, "I spent hours preparing this lecture, and now you are walking out in the middle of it," that I don't like.
Maybe so. I found that among the professors at my school only a handful had personalities that were at all engaging. The remainder ran the gamut from barely tolerable to completely unacceptable. You can get a sense of that factor in the first lecture.
You can also get a good sense of that factor by asking any person who has ever taken a class from that professor. This achieves the same objective, with a little more work and a little less rudeness from you (or whoever it is in this situation).
I can't pretend to have familiarity with the subject taught in this guy's class, but as someone who teaches a subject that requires multi-step derivations, it can be really devastating to have interruptions. I do not have such a policy in my courses, but I can understand why someone might want this.
The autonomy of the instructor and his/her ability to set policies that will ensure the common good in their class is an important cornerstone of academic freedom. People who would complain about this probably don't understand this principle.
I can only give anecdotes to back up my opinions here, but at my university, the most respected professors treated the students like adults, or even better, like customers who have paid a lot of money for a valuable service. These professors are respectful to the students, and they get respect in return. They treat students like the mature adults that they are, and the students act as they should.
Well, presumably, there's rather a lot of people paying good money for access to this professor's time and would prefer not to have class disrupted by inconsiderate people coming and going for no good reason.
Being a paying customer doesn't grant an entitlement to be obnoxious while on someone else's property and I can't fathom why you think it would. If you got kicked out a movie for talking on a cell phone during the film, would you call the theater "entitled" and ask who's paying who?
In my experience, these people never actually disrupt the class, only the professor. I don't know why you used an analogy of cell-phone usage; the much more obvious analogue is people who come in half-way through a movie. Do we kick them out? Do you, personally, even get annoyed by such people, or do you just wave it off?
The classes where the prof doesn't make a big deal out of it? The lecture continues. Nobody remembers in 5 minutes, and everyone keeps going. More students pass the class too, as fewer end up annoyed / insulted that their non-laziness is being attacked, while everyone who simply didn't arrive is silently ignored.
The classes where the prof does make a big deal out of it? Lots end up skipping over time, and everybody notices that someone came in because the prof takes time out of class to berate them, causing the prof to lose their (and their students) place in the lecture.
The only "reason" I can see for behavior like that is that the professors are acting childish: they want to get even, at the expense of everyone's time, instead of getting over it.
What you don't see because it is invisible is that you've lost 5-10 minutes out of every hour of lecture time. And you don't realize that you're losing over 10% of the course you paid for because you don't realize what you could have had.
I say this both as someone with a tendency to arrive late, and as someone who has taught classes. Before I tried to write up lesson plans and saw what those interruptions added up to in lost teaching, my sympathies would have been with the student. Now they are not.
And in this you're assuming I'm the one arriving late and witnessing this? I certainly do occasionally, but I'm far from the worst in any of my classes.
As to missing those 5-10 minutes, if they're that valuable, the students will either arrive or miss out. That's their choice. And I wholly feel that way. I'll also point out that many many professors spend those first 5-10 minutes doing very little to progress learning, instead going over the previous class or simply getting ready. Not all, and I'm not accusing you of it, it's just that it's most certainly not the most valuable period in a class.
It's not your job as a teacher to make up their losses, it's your job to teach to the students. If those interruptions are taking teaching time away, it's because you are taking time away to deal with the interruption. That's your choice. All of the most effective lecturers and most valuable classes I've had have been taught by people who kept teaching, because these interruptions don't truly exist unless they're made to exist.
The student comes in late? Then they have to pick up from where they came in. You don't need to point out to everyone that they came in, nor do you need to tell them everything they missed - they'll ask other students (who they likely know) if they're interested. And with two exceptions in my 5 years in college thus far, I've never missed anything in the first 15 minutes that I couldn't pick up in 5 minutes from paying attention from that point on.
Those two exceptions were in art classes, when a demonstration was occurring. They couldn't rewind, and I didn't ask. It instead took me 5 minutes of experimenting and watching someone else go first, and then I was caught up.
If the teacher had made me go first, it'd have been identical to stopping everything just to berate me; it's only purpose would have been to see me fail, wasting class time, which is infantile at best. Sadly, many teachers feel this need.
The students don't know what they are missing. Were you aware that the few minutes at the start of class are the period where students have the best potential for paying attention? It is the place where ideally you should put the most important stuff that you want remembered. Not doing that is a wasted opportunity.
As for your lament that the time is wasted in review, review is actually one of the most important activities in the classroom. If you want long-term retention it is absolutely critical. Of course it is easy to not see the value of doing it.
As for my experience and part of why my attitudes changed, see http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-linear-algebra... for some of my teaching experience, and how I addressed these issues there. My attitudes only changed because I saw first hand how important that time was for learning.
Not that I blame you. When I only had only the amount of educational experience that you do, and like you only from one side of the educational equation, I too did not see how important these things really were. If you are like I was, then you won't understand unless, like me, you wind up experiencing the other side as well and thinking hard.
But even though you haven't experienced it, please pause in your certainty about the world long enough to accept that it is at least possible that, just perhaps, more experience would cause you to change your mind. Just as it changed mine.
> the few minutes at the start of class are the period where students have the best potential for paying attention
Oh, bull. Most are groggy, not thinking about the subject, and far from at their best. If you're an interesting teacher, their attention level goes up with time, not down. Learning in general exhibits a bell-curve-ish shape, not 1/x. Those first few minutes are best spent getting people back into the swing of what they're going to be learning about, starting the rise up that bell.
> time is wasted in review
Not saying it's a waste. Just that it's nothing that can't be picked up later by paying attention in class. That's kind of the nature of reviewing information - it's been covered before. Yes, the beginning is an ideal time to review, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to make up, and by missing you simply can't learn anything that class period (which turning them away does mean). And remember, especially with a berating teacher, the ones that arrive late are the ones who want to learn. If they didn't, it's far simpler to just avoid the class. And interested students effectively come pre-primed for learning.
To sum up, my main point in all this: yes, arriving on time is important. But taking time to berate the student is the interruption, and is easily the least efficient way of dealing with the issue, and the most likely to alienate the student on both the subject and the teacher.
How, precisely, is this productive? It's just cutting them down when the teacher is feeling vindictive. If the teacher isn't aware of this, then they should really start looking at their motivations, because this is how it comes across. Unless they're a "repeat offender", in which case the class is probably on the teacher's side. It's simply downright mean, which is childish, which does nothing to further learning or respect for the teacher.
edit: I read your article, and it sounds like the sort of class I'd like. Most classes fail miserably at retaining info from the beginning, and the three-thirds setup sounds like a really good fit. The homework policy also appeals to me, as on-time is on-time, and very importantly it allows flexibility if needed. As a heads-up however, though frequent Q and A works with some professors, and when it does work it definitely keeps the class more alert, it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution. One of my gen-ed professors would be a perfect failing example of this; he'd end up waiting 10+ minutes for someone to answer his simple question, because everyone was sick of it. But he was hardly an engaging teacher.
If you got kicked out a movie for talking on a cell phone during the film, would you call the theater "entitled" and ask who's paying who?
You want to think that through a little farther. If you got kicked out of a movie for getting up and going to the restroom, would you call the theatre "justified"? Because that's all this student's actions amounted to, at the end of the day.
I doubt anybody even noticed the guy entering and leaving lectures until the good Professor threw a rod.
Could whoever is modding me down please take a moment to explain the difference between the student's actions in this case, and the actions of a student who gets up and goes to the restroom?
You know, I struggled with that simile, and it came down to either librarians or priests. :-P Neither one really worked, I agree. Should've gone with "prima ballerina," maybe.
IMO the prof's email was excellent. He conveyed his point across very nicely without showing even a small hint of irritation or annoyance.
The part copied below, for me, really sums it up. This student is an immature jackass and s/he really needs growing up. S/he first made a mistake and then had the audacity of justifying his/her action. Personally I would hate to have a person like that in my team.
Quoted part: Just so I’ve got this straight…you started in one class, left 15-20 minutes into it (stood up, walked out mid-lecture), went to another class (walked in 20 minutes late), left that class (again, presumably, in the middle of the lecture), and then came to my class. At that point (walking in an hour late) I asked you to come to the next class which “bothered” you.
To the folks who are siding with the student: Find out who s/he was, hire him/her and then lets see what your reaction is when the moron walks in late to meetings, customer calls, doesn't deliver on time etc. and then when you fire him/her, sues you..