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TimelySubmissionOfGrades 53 - 11 Jul 2012 - Main.SanjayMurti
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| | Days after we finished our finals we received the following email from the Dean of our law school which I am reposting here:
| | | My concern is not with changing the date, it is the methods used to ensure compliance with that date and the so-called "hard deadline" (which I imagine contrasts with the current system in which Eben - and possibly others - continue to fight about what is reasonable throughout summer and potentially flout that July 25 deadline when they deem it appropriate). The new policy is not designed to shame professors that DGAF, it's designed to shame professors that don't fit with the administration's desire to construct an assessment schedule around the sole consideration of corporate law recruiting. Why not have an option where 2L/1L elective professors not wishing to comply with this deadline can do so provided they say so upfront in an evaluation policy? Dean Schizer's framing of the problem as one of pure teacher laziness, and his assumption that the best solution to the problem is criminalesque fines and public shaming is indicative of a model that punishes underlings and assigns responsibility for systemic failure to the worker rather than those responsible for managing the system itself.
I worked at a school prior to coming here, and observed similar tactics being used to ensure teachers met homework grading and lesson planning requirements. It was part of a broader arsenal of policies that together functioned to dissolve any responsibility on the leaders of the school for the teachers' high level of stress and overwork, as well as frame every educational problem to the school community as one of poor individual teachers rather than broader systemic structure. Of course, being a "reformist" charter school, there was no such thing as tenure so the final stick (to complement the carrot of bonuses for higher test scores) was simply to fire teachers late on a Friday afternoon, and whitewash their existence from the school by Monday. | |
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William,
First, I'm not sure grades are any more arbitrary than any other mechanism that employers could use to find out who "has the right stuff." I think we've touched on the value (or lack thereof) of grades enough in this class though, so I'm not going to push any further on this. However, I'm not clear on where you see a connection between the existence of anonymous grades/a curve and professor laziness. Frankly, I think you're wrong about the majority of the faculty not caring about students learning the material. I don't think I've had a single professor here who I thought actually didn't care about the success of his/her students. I'm sorry if you've had a different experience.
I think, though, that this is probably why we disagree on the viability of individual evaluative feedback. Where you see laziness, I see physical impossibility despite sincere effort. Regarding this class, I think the idea that "Eben actually gave us feedback every single day in class" is silly and a copout. For all the things this class was successful at (and it was), it wasn't at providing the level of feedback that Eben initially said it would. Now, I'm not in the loop on what you meant by "one professor not being able to teach" causing us to receive less wiki feedback than originally intended, so I'm willing to take your word that this semester was an aberration. Lastly, on a related point, I'm not so sure that students should always be professors' number one obligation. If we're demanding more practical education, it only makes sense that lawyers with experience practicing teach more classes. For the hours that Judge Lynch (for instance) dedicates to teaching, I'm confident his students are his focus. But being a Judge is also a full-time job.
On preparedness, I'm moving away from the med school example just because I don't know enough about med school to make the argument (although to uninformed me, it seems like lab hours : doctoring :: LPW : lawyering). First, I don't know what you mean by "real lawyers." Second, I didn't mean to argue that everyone should go to a corporate law firm upon graduation to get training. I meant, rather, that the best practical education you can get is practicing law (whether it's at a corporate firm, at the DA's office, or independently). I don't understand why we'd expect (or want) to get practical training in a classroom. Eben's repeatedly made the point that you can start practicing law in the real world right now. Maybe the problem is just that law school is too long. Would a world where law school ended now and we got practical experience for two years suit you better? Is this just a timing issue?
-- SanjayMurti |
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