• 515: My professor has made tutoring mandatory., submitted on 2023-03-29 04:19:39+08:00.
• 516: WARNING: The TikTok bill is a Trojan horse. Prepare for the Patriot Act for the internet, submitted on 2023-03-30 10:02:52+08:00.
• 517: Is college mostly just about putting the work in and not necessarily being smart, submitted on 2023-03-31 16:03:20+08:00.
• 518: Woman Faces $13,000 Fine For Calling French President ‘Filth’ On Facebook, submitted on 2023-04-01 09:21:00+08:00.

515: My professor has made tutoring mandatory., submitted on 2023-03-29 04:19:39+08:00.

—– 515.1 —–2023-03-29 21:33:39+08:00:

I have never heard of “mandatory” tutoring, as an additional instructional component, nor have I ever seen a college math professor give participation points for such a component (particularly, where doing so would change the course requirements mid-way through the semester). If that grading criteria was added after the course began, it likely does not comply with intradepartmental (or university) policy. However, if that criteria was a part of the original syllabus, OP needs to have a discussion with the professor.

If OP is doing well without the tutoring, it is insane to penalize him/her by requiring mere participation in a separate instructional component.

This next bit is going to sound harsh, but I’m speaking from the viewpoint of the professor and department.

I am also speaking from the viewpoint of a professor. And my response to you will seem a bit harsh, because you seem to have missed the point of what a math class is supposed to do.

Further, from the viewpoint of a professor who routinely butted heads with incompetent departmental and university admins, in my experience, the folks on the admin side tend to be the ones who are too incompetent to conduct a proper class. Almost without exception, they lack anything approximating instructional ability, and more or less function as the “HR” of universities. The folks who fill these roles rarely publish. Doing so is often beyond the limits of their ability. If they publish, they can only pass muster in journals no one has ever heard of. Their h-indexes are lower than some of the post docs I’ve worked with. And they have not even submitted a grant proposal in years, or if they have, they never got funded. Is this your situation?

While I may not agree with the professor’s policy, my issue is that it seems pretty late in the semester to address this policy. If all expectations were given to you upfront and you stayed in the course without asking your professor for potential accommodations, etc., the you implicitly agreed to the policy. Then, you failed to comply, and now you’re complaining because you didn’t do the work. I’m not saying that is what happened. But that’s what it’s going to look like.

I am getting the sense that you do not actually teach. Let’s unpack this situation together.

First, OP is in an “online only” math class. Which is terrible. The post-COVID incoming classes seem to be further behind than any prior, because everyone dropped the ball during the pandemic. I remember when this bullshit began. Pearson and McGraw Hill started aggressively marketing their “online components” as course supplements to a standardized curriculum for lower-level classes. University department heads, who did not understand (and did not bother to understand) how those classes were taught thought this would be a great idea. But they incorrectly assumed those platforms would work as advertised. They never did.

Second, you assume OP knew the tutoring was mandatory, or should have known the tutoring was mandatory, as of the date the class began. Did you read the OP? OP has a 4.0 GPA outside of this class, in particular. Students with 4.0 GPAs tend to be able to perform, whether they have a good professor or not. But you assumed the professor communicated the course grading criteria clearly from the start. It seems to me like if the grading criteria were communicated clearly from the start (read: written in the initial syllabus), OP wouldn’t be in this situation.

Third, although OP wasn’t clear on this point, it seems to me like the professor changed the grading criteria mid-way through the semester. A component that was not there before has now been added. If the professor changed the grading criteria in the middle of the semester, that’s an issue. It may also be an issue from a departmental perspective. As someone who holds himself out to be “speaking from the viewpoint of the . . . department,” I am surprised you didn’t note this issue. All you said was that the student shouldn’t go to the chair without talking to the professor first. And your only suggestion was to have the student try to make up the tutoring, which you assumed was a part of the grading criteria from day one of the class.

Fourth, if the professor changed the grading criteria mid-way through the semester, it seems like that’s something we would need to understand. If a lot of students are failing to perform adequately, granting “participation” points may be a way to boost their grades. Credit for participation in a math class seems fairly idiotic to me, but I assume you never taught math classes (or anything similar). However idiotic the new grading scheme may be for this sort of class, there’s got to be a way to do it without tanking OP’s grade while still being fair to the rest of the class. Further note that making tutoring “mandatory” could impact the credit-hour designation with the registrar, so it is not obvious to me the professor even had the right to add an additional instructional component such as mandatory tutoring.

Fifth, I suggest you take a step back and think about what the point of a math class is, in the first place. The point is to equip students with a skillset that is useful in the world, outside of school. The point is not to account for time spent doing a particular activity, such as ostensibly “mandatory” tutoring. If OP was performing well without the bullshit participation component, based on the prior objective grading criteria (e.g., tests, quizzes, homework, etc.), it is nonsensical to add such a component that would drop his/her grade. Your “advice” seems to have missed that most basic aspect.

—– 515.2 —–2023-03-29 21:40:37+08:00:

Regardless, I don’t think OP intentionally tried to ignore work.

Students with 4.0 GPAs tend to aim to meet expectations, no matter how stupid those expectations are.

Mandatory tutoring for a college math class is a stupid expectation. It is not normal at all.

But it seems reasonable to infer that if that expectation was a part of the course requirements that the professor clearly communicated from the start (read: written out in the syllabus), OP wouldn’t be in this situation.

That is why the comment from “Charming-Barnacle-15” seems pretty vapid to me.

—– 515.3 —–2023-03-29 21:48:59+08:00:

Yes, it is. And the whole approach of “assume the student fucked up,” when OP says he/she has a 4.0 GPA otherwise is insane.

OP seems to have been blindsided by expectations that were changed mid-way through the semester. Which is understandable.

—– 515.4 —–2023-03-30 11:29:13+08:00:

If tutoring is mandatory where you teach, you are in no position to weigh in on pedagogy. That would be like asking Nikocado Avocado for dietary advice.

Your further misapprehensions do not require my response.

—– 515.5 —–2023-03-30 13:10:58+08:00:

It is simply a debate

Your further misapprehensions do not require my response.

—– 515.6 —–2023-03-30 19:32:36+08:00:

Determining whether the syllabus, in electronic form, was changed, is not complicated. But the student may not be able to do it. The department chair easily could. Assuming the syllabus is electronic, the metadata and version history would say whether it had been recently changed. An audit log on the back-end should be easily obtainable. But it almost certainly doesn’t even need to get that far. The department chair should ask the instructor whether the grading requirements were changed. And if so, why. It is possible the instructor had a good reason.

Tangentially, it is my view that tutoring requirements which form a participation component of a student’s final grade in a math class are nonsensical.

516: WARNING: The TikTok bill is a Trojan horse. Prepare for the Patriot Act for the internet, submitted on 2023-03-30 10:02:52+08:00.

—– 516.1 —–2023-03-30 12:16:45+08:00:

Damn right.

517: Is college mostly just about putting the work in and not necessarily being smart, submitted on 2023-03-31 16:03:20+08:00.

—– 517.1 —–2023-03-31 21:19:17+08:00:

The ASVAB is something like an IQ test. The idea is to determine whether you’re smart enough to be useful in the military. As you probably know from recruiting, it’s a low bar.

If you scored in the 75th percentile or higher on the ASAB, you should assume you have the capability to outperform most college students in most college settings. Obviously, some colleges are more competitive than others (e.g., Columbia would be more competitive than Pace University). And some majors are going to be more competitive than others (e.g., majoring in engineering is harder than majoring in history).

Even still, intelligence and education are not the same thing. There are plenty of stupid civilian kids that get college degrees. There are plenty of smart Marines who enlist right out of high school and don’t go to college. Some of them don’t have any other options. Some of them don’t want to go to college. And some of them want to get out in the world and actually do something that matters, as opposed to sitting in a classroom for four more years listening to some self-styled intellectual drone on about gender theory.

I almost enlisted right out of high school. The marine recruiter saw my SAT scores, ASVAB scores and was doing everything he could to keep me from talking to the Air Force recruiter. This was shortly after 9/11, although my reasons for wanting to enlist were personal. Sometimes I wonder what direction my life would have taken, if I’d enlisted.

I wound up going to college on a full ride, got a couple of graduate degrees, and taught college kids for a little while. I refused to put up with bullshit of higher academia. Now I work in biotech.

DM me if there is ever anything I can do to help you. If you’re trying to figure out what to do after the Marines, I might be able to help with that too.

518: Woman Faces $13,000 Fine For Calling French President ‘Filth’ On Facebook, submitted on 2023-04-01 09:21:00+08:00.

—– 518.1 —–2023-04-01 13:44:36+08:00:

First amendment

The United States Government found a way around that little problem. Their solution was simple: don’t censor people directly, with laws that can be scrutinized. Or agencies that can be subject to FOIA requests.

Just pay private companies to violate the first amendment on the government’s behalf. Like Twitter, before Elon Musk bought it.

—– 518.2 —–2023-04-01 22:25:00+08:00:

The government can and has done that. Many suspect that government contracts of this type were the only reason Twitter appeared profitable, before Musk bought it.

Twitter set up a portal for federal employees to flag content that would be removed from the platform. Twitter also throttled the visibility of entire categories of discussion, the activity of specific people (including journalists) and groups.

The workflow was more complicated than this, but basically here is how it worked:

1. Employee of the federal government finds content they don’t like, people who post content the employee didn’t like, conceptual categories, and the like.
2. Employee of the federal government identifies that content, user or group, or conceptual category to Twitter’s so-called “Trust & Safety” team.
3. Twitter’s so-called “Trust & Safety” team removes the information, throttles its visibility, throttles user visibility, etc.

This bullshit was initially described as necessary to control “misinformation.” But that was not what Twitter was doing. Twitter was engaged in overt censorship of political dissent, among other egregious constitutional violations at the behest of the federal government. Some folks at some media outlets knew this was going on and knowingly decided to withhold it from the public.

But then Elon Musk bought Twitter and this information was made public. Astonishingly, the media (except folks like Matt Taibbi) tried to spin this as a good thing. More astonishingly, some citizens were ok with the censorship.

Relatedly, the discussion of these issues has been very nonsensical. For example, some argued Twitter had a right to decide how to operate the platform, because Twitter is a private company.

Those people did not understand that Twitter was censoring content at the behest of the government. Obviously, the government’s use of a company as its cat’s paw to violate the first amendment is just as wrong as doing the same thing, directly.

Disgraceful.

—– 518.3 —–2023-04-01 22:37:42+08:00:

Legally can they do that? I mean 1st amendment and all?

Constitutional rights mean nothing if they are not enforced. Who will enforce them? The government, of course. Except when doing so does not suit the government.

People should have read what Snowden disclosed. And made some effort to understand it. Do you seriously think that agencies of the government give a shit about the constitution? The government will impede on liberty to the extent it can get away with doing so. That is the norm. Need proof? Remember when James Clapper lied under oath about what information the NSA was collecting under the Patriot Act? There was no accountability.

And there has been no accountability for Twitter, so far, or the individuals (many of whom Elon Musk fired shortly after joining) who participated in or developed the scheme I described above.