Les neiges d'antans
Feb. 8th, 2013 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cincinnatus_c
Currently at Toronto Pearson: -9. High today: -6.
Haven't seen it snow this much this long in a while. (Oh, Weather Channel, what have you done? Further along the lines of what everyone else is saying in that Star article, anyone following the EC watches and warnings for the present Weather Event in southern Ontario will have noticed that originally they were calling the storm an "Alberta clipper", and then a "Texas low". The fact that it could be seen as one or the other speaks to the point that differentiating weather systems from each other is often not that simple--tropical storms are unusual not only in that they are characterized by a distinct set of physical properties, but also in that in order to survive they need to be distinct systems built around distinct centres. The trouble is that people have come to associate named storm with helluva storm, which is not how it's supposed to work.) In the last couple of weeks we've had three lake-effect snowsqualls through here, too--two off of Lake Ontario, one running on a straight edge all the way off of Huron. Mostly you go years and years in Toronto without ever seeing a bona fide lake-effect snowsquall. Like Tom Cheek used to say, the great thing about baseball is anytime you go to the ballpark you might see something you've never seen before.
So, I was saying a while back there topnijjar that I hadn't had any students complain about their grades since I was a TA. It turns out that maybe the reason for that is that I hadn't been doing any grading for first-year courses since I was a TA.
I'm pretty sure I would love teaching if I wasn't holding a grade gun to the students' heads. (Sometimes I think it would be much better if I at least had TAs doing all my grading. But that would only go so far. Students--not all of them, maybe not most of them, but enough of them to bother me almost constantly--would still be upset that my un-power-pointy lectures aren't doing enough to help them get A's out of the TAs.) In fact I do love it in those fleeting times when I'm able to forget that I'm holding the grade gun. But on the whole, as it is, I just can't take it anymore. (It occurred to me a few weeks ago that teaching seems like a really awful job for me, given that it requires me to make people do things they don't want to do and then punish them for doing those things wrong. I hate, hate, hate making people do things they don't want to do.)
I once TAed for a prof who said that for a lot of these kids, all we can do is teach them to spell their boss's name right and show up for work on time. (That prof gave some of the best lectures I've heard. Of course, they were pitched squarely at the top of the class, and they were un-power-pointy as hell.) I sometimes tell students that I TAed for a prof who said that. I more often tell my students that there are really only two things I have to do in my job, as far as my bosses are concerned: I have to produce a grade distribution that fits the guidelines, and I have to not piss the students off.
From time to time, it happens that a student asks me, usually by e-mail, how to get an A in my course, and it happens that the student asks in such a way as to demonstrate that it is probably almost impossible for that student to get an A in my course, or any humanities course--as if the student were asking how to get an A in an advanced math course somehow in such a way as to demonstrate that the student doesn't quite understand, or--more to the point--really care about, the basic operations of arithmetic. (It may be that you can add five and three correctly when it's really important. But if it's not really important to you to add five and three correctly all the time, you're probably not going to do very well at math. And if you don't see that for yourself, it's a bit hard to know what to say to you.) These are among the most upsetting students. It would be easier on everyone if I could manage to say, "I'm afraid I have to tell you that it's probably almost impossible for you to get an A in my course, for the same reason that it's probably almost impossible for you to understand why it's probably almost impossible for you to get an A in my course." (There is also this problem: many students who are terrible writers have been told that they are great writers. I don't mean "terrible writers" like, I don't know, some snooty person might say that Anne Rice or whoever is a terrible writer. I mean terrible writers like they constantly misuse words and don't understand particularly well how grammar or punctuation works, and so write a lot of gibberish. I get the sense from this that a lot of teachers think that a good writer is someone who is snarky, or at least somehow forceful, and uses a lot of words they don't know.) The trouble is that it is almost never strictly impossible, and one never knows in any given case whether it really is (all-but-)impossible. In many cases it is possible, with a lot of effort, which requires a lot of motivation--but a lot more motivation than just motivation to get an A. The real deep trouble for me seems to be that it's never OK with me for anyone to think that philosophy, itself--I mean, what I mean by "philosophy"--is a waste of their time.
Another prof I once TAed for said that we shouldn't really worry about teaching content, because we should assume that we were preparing the students to be lawyers, not philosophers. (I passed the time in this prof's lectures writing down things the prof said that were flat-out wrong.) Of course I get that there would not be any such thing as professional academic philosophy as we know it if it didn't put itself in the service of extrinsic ends. For years I've seen that as a tragic dilemma; I'm becoming more inclined now to think that it's not really a dilemma at all, and that professional academic philosophy as we know it simply shouldn't exist--or, at least, that what I mean by philosophy shouldn't make compromises with it.
And yet: there's one set of courses in particular that I sat in on (didn't take for credit, mind you) with one prof that were obviously very important for me to get where I am with philosophy (and one other set of courses I took with another prof that were important in their own way, though a bit of a side-track) ... and yet: what is most important to me in philosophy is something that I began tuning into before I knew what "philosophy" was, before I had ever heard of Nietzsche or Heidegger or John Searle and his Chinese Room. Certainly a lot of my study of "philosophy" has been noise in the way of that signal, too. Given the corruption of the whole enterprise, can it possibly be worth it?
I guess this is moderately amusing, as spam goes:
Dear ,
Recently, you received an email indicating chosen as a potential
candidate to represent your professional community in the New, 2013
Edition of Worldwide Who's Who.
Presumably once I'm in Worldwide Who's Who, my spam will address me by name.
Haven't seen it snow this much this long in a while. (Oh, Weather Channel, what have you done? Further along the lines of what everyone else is saying in that Star article, anyone following the EC watches and warnings for the present Weather Event in southern Ontario will have noticed that originally they were calling the storm an "Alberta clipper", and then a "Texas low". The fact that it could be seen as one or the other speaks to the point that differentiating weather systems from each other is often not that simple--tropical storms are unusual not only in that they are characterized by a distinct set of physical properties, but also in that in order to survive they need to be distinct systems built around distinct centres. The trouble is that people have come to associate named storm with helluva storm, which is not how it's supposed to work.) In the last couple of weeks we've had three lake-effect snowsqualls through here, too--two off of Lake Ontario, one running on a straight edge all the way off of Huron. Mostly you go years and years in Toronto without ever seeing a bona fide lake-effect snowsquall. Like Tom Cheek used to say, the great thing about baseball is anytime you go to the ballpark you might see something you've never seen before.
So, I was saying a while back there to
pnijjar that I hadn't had any students complain about their grades since I was a TA. It turns out that maybe the reason for that is that I hadn't been doing any grading for first-year courses since I was a TA.I'm pretty sure I would love teaching if I wasn't holding a grade gun to the students' heads. (Sometimes I think it would be much better if I at least had TAs doing all my grading. But that would only go so far. Students--not all of them, maybe not most of them, but enough of them to bother me almost constantly--would still be upset that my un-power-pointy lectures aren't doing enough to help them get A's out of the TAs.) In fact I do love it in those fleeting times when I'm able to forget that I'm holding the grade gun. But on the whole, as it is, I just can't take it anymore. (It occurred to me a few weeks ago that teaching seems like a really awful job for me, given that it requires me to make people do things they don't want to do and then punish them for doing those things wrong. I hate, hate, hate making people do things they don't want to do.)
I once TAed for a prof who said that for a lot of these kids, all we can do is teach them to spell their boss's name right and show up for work on time. (That prof gave some of the best lectures I've heard. Of course, they were pitched squarely at the top of the class, and they were un-power-pointy as hell.) I sometimes tell students that I TAed for a prof who said that. I more often tell my students that there are really only two things I have to do in my job, as far as my bosses are concerned: I have to produce a grade distribution that fits the guidelines, and I have to not piss the students off.
From time to time, it happens that a student asks me, usually by e-mail, how to get an A in my course, and it happens that the student asks in such a way as to demonstrate that it is probably almost impossible for that student to get an A in my course, or any humanities course--as if the student were asking how to get an A in an advanced math course somehow in such a way as to demonstrate that the student doesn't quite understand, or--more to the point--really care about, the basic operations of arithmetic. (It may be that you can add five and three correctly when it's really important. But if it's not really important to you to add five and three correctly all the time, you're probably not going to do very well at math. And if you don't see that for yourself, it's a bit hard to know what to say to you.) These are among the most upsetting students. It would be easier on everyone if I could manage to say, "I'm afraid I have to tell you that it's probably almost impossible for you to get an A in my course, for the same reason that it's probably almost impossible for you to understand why it's probably almost impossible for you to get an A in my course." (There is also this problem: many students who are terrible writers have been told that they are great writers. I don't mean "terrible writers" like, I don't know, some snooty person might say that Anne Rice or whoever is a terrible writer. I mean terrible writers like they constantly misuse words and don't understand particularly well how grammar or punctuation works, and so write a lot of gibberish. I get the sense from this that a lot of teachers think that a good writer is someone who is snarky, or at least somehow forceful, and uses a lot of words they don't know.) The trouble is that it is almost never strictly impossible, and one never knows in any given case whether it really is (all-but-)impossible. In many cases it is possible, with a lot of effort, which requires a lot of motivation--but a lot more motivation than just motivation to get an A. The real deep trouble for me seems to be that it's never OK with me for anyone to think that philosophy, itself--I mean, what I mean by "philosophy"--is a waste of their time.
Another prof I once TAed for said that we shouldn't really worry about teaching content, because we should assume that we were preparing the students to be lawyers, not philosophers. (I passed the time in this prof's lectures writing down things the prof said that were flat-out wrong.) Of course I get that there would not be any such thing as professional academic philosophy as we know it if it didn't put itself in the service of extrinsic ends. For years I've seen that as a tragic dilemma; I'm becoming more inclined now to think that it's not really a dilemma at all, and that professional academic philosophy as we know it simply shouldn't exist--or, at least, that what I mean by philosophy shouldn't make compromises with it.
And yet: there's one set of courses in particular that I sat in on (didn't take for credit, mind you) with one prof that were obviously very important for me to get where I am with philosophy (and one other set of courses I took with another prof that were important in their own way, though a bit of a side-track) ... and yet: what is most important to me in philosophy is something that I began tuning into before I knew what "philosophy" was, before I had ever heard of Nietzsche or Heidegger or John Searle and his Chinese Room. Certainly a lot of my study of "philosophy" has been noise in the way of that signal, too. Given the corruption of the whole enterprise, can it possibly be worth it?
I guess this is moderately amusing, as spam goes:
Dear ,
Recently, you received an email indicating chosen as a potential
candidate to represent your professional community in the New, 2013
Edition of Worldwide Who's Who.
Presumably once I'm in Worldwide Who's Who, my spam will address me by name.
