Day: November 16, 2011

A Really Offensive Student Evaluation

~ Clarissa ~ 109 Comments

A female prof just posted the following excerpt from a student evaluation:

I learned so much about research and writing in this class. However I have to say that as a man, I found her big boobs to be slightly distracting during lectures. Now I don’t mean this in a bad way, cause what straight man doesn’t love big boobs? Professor [comebacknikki] taught me that I should say things directly and assertively in order make a point, but to not be offensive. I hope this isn’t offensive, but rather an indication of my appreciation. I wouldn’t write this if it weren’t anonymous, so I guess I’m not as assertive as I think, but still… big boobs are both hot and distracting, FWIW

Would you like to guess what the post’s title is? It’s “Thanks… I think?” The comments people left for the post are of the “Congrats!” variety.

It’s sad to see that some people are so insecure and attention-starved that they would take something this offensive and disgusting as a compliment.

I hope my readers know me well enough by now to realize that it isn’t the reference to “hot big boobs” that I find offensive. If the student just stopped at that, I’d simply dismiss him as a stupid idiot. What I find really egregious is the attempt to manipulate a prof into accepting this piece of ridiculousness as an example of honest self-expression that this very teacher had tried to promote in the classroom.

It isn’t a good sign when students attempt to manipulate a prof in such a blatant way. If you can’t make yourself even marginally respected in the classroom, why teach at all? When students start to ridicule you in such a direct way, it’s a sign you should reevaluate your entire teaching philosophy.

Co-Sleeping as a Form of Child Abuse

~ Clarissa ~ 251 Comments

I want to warn everybody that this is a sensitive topic for me. So I kindly ask people not to be jerks in their comments. If you have a burning need to share the story of how you sleep in the same bed with your child and that child totally digs it, I ask you to take this story elsewhere. Here, it will bring you no applause. 

Every form of emotional abuse of children comes out of the parental incapacity to see children as separate human beings. There is nothing more dangerous to a child’s psyche than a parent who sees that child as an extension of him or herself. Parents often invade the personal space of their children in ways they would have never allowed themselves to employ in respect to other adults. Putting children to sleep in the same bed with themselves is one of the most egregious invasions of a child’s personal space that a parent can come up with.

Children start exploring their bodies and masturbating early in life. Obviously, it cannot be very healthy for a person’s developing sexuality to experience his or her first instances of sexual arousal in the same bed with the parents.

At the same time, adults normally have erotic dreams. (Whether you remember them or not is, of course, completely immaterial.) It is also hardly a good thing for a child to wake up and observe a parent who is orgasming in his or her sleep.

One of the greatest challenges on the road to a healthy sexuality for both men and women is to learn to select partners exclusively on the basis of their own sexual desire. Parents who drag children into bed with them exercise their authority over the children in order to service their own tactile needs. Later on in life, such children have absolutely no idea how to reject unwanted tactile contacts.

There is a mile-long list of justifications parents who practice the so-called co-sleeping have come up with to excuse their invasion of the personal space of their miserable children. I read such lists a couple of times and they made my hair stand on end. There are people who seriously say that sleeping with children is acceptable because it allows them to save on heating. Truly, the hypocrisy of child abusers knows no bounds.

The only real reason why adults drag children into bed with them is because they are incapable of developing a relationship with another adult(s) to satisfy their tactile needs. To put it bluntly, they can’t persuade anybody to touch them as much as they need and to share personal space with them, so they use the only people who cannot refuse them, their unfortunate children. And if those children then have to spend the rest of their lives trying to deal with the emotional and sexual problems they develop as a result, who cares?

I know that this post will make many people very angry. But as long as there is a tiniest chance that I might persuade at least one person to get out of his or her child’s bed, I have to use it.

Very Creepy: MyEdu Website

~ Clarissa ~ 20 Comments

Has anybody heard of the website myedu.com? A colleague just mailed us a link to it and I’m completely creeped out by it. The website claims to provide grade averages for courses at pretty much every university in existence. How does it get access to grades, exactly? Does anybody know?

The colleague who sent out the link says that the grades in his courses are reflected correctly. I looked at my courses and the grades don’t look like my grades. It’s hard to say, though, because the website doesn’t specify which semesters of instruction are included. I also have no idea why some of my courses as opposed to others got on the list. The frequency with which I offer the course or the number of students that enroll in it don’t seem to be the decisive factors.

Does anybody have any idea how this website works and where it is supposed to be getting the grades? The U of Texas apparently just hands over the grades to that website (well, it’s Texas, what do you expect?). Do all universities now do that?

I’m a tough grader and I hand out Fs like candy. I’m not worried that students will stop taking my courses after consulting this stupid website but I’m wondering why universities would want to hand over the data about the grades to some shady organizations that can’t be trusted to be even marginally decent about what they do with that information.