Re: Caving in: "Too strict" teacher fired

[Bill Lamb <blamb@oes.edu>]

> > I have taught under some pretty adverse conditions, but
> > could never justify failing/dropping 80% of my students.
> >
> > Scott Rippetoe                                  rippetoe@tenet.edu
> > Academy of Science and Technology               voice   (713) 292-2615
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca> said:

> Sounds like it's probably a tough inner city school, eh?
> I think you have no imagination. I've heard stories that
> would make me believe in 80% irredeemable classes - in
> physics!

Like anything else, physics can be taught at several different levels.  
Most of us are familiar with the difference between non-calc  and calc 
physics at the college level, and "regular" and "conceptual" physics at 
the high school level.  Probably, there was more to the 80% flunk/drop 
rate than the news media reported;  there nearly always is.  Therefore, 
it's hard to say what I would have done in that teacher's circumstances.

However, I can think of several things I might have done before putting 
80% of my students out the door.  I might have asked the admin to allow a 
renaming of the course, or splitting the 20% off from the 80% so I could 
teach them at a higher level.  I might have even found out where the kids 
were in terms of knowledge, skills, and conceptions, and started the 
course at that point.  If I was unhappy teaching at the required level, 
I'd have also been looking for a job.

This idea that 80% of some classes would be irredeemable -- esp. physics
-- seems to me to be elitist.  Physics is just like the other subjects --
teachable at some intellectually honest level to any age kid at any level
of cognitive development and mathematical sophistication.  Of course, 
some of us *prefer* to teach it in certain ways, at levels that we like, 
to students who interact well with our chosen methods and levels.  But 
that doesn't make the students irredeemable;  perhaps it makes the 
teacher irredeemable in the unwanted context.

(Note that I am not saying that all students are redeemable, because 
they're not.  Some of them are brain damaged.  Some of them are 
sociopaths.  Etc.  But ***80%***???  I doubt it, even in the roughest 
inner city school.)