From: lee@wang.com (Lee Story)
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: Teacher evaluation (was: alternative to hitting students)
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:09:00 GMT
	<LEE.92Mar23132447@meercat.wang.com> <leblanc.701494079@knuth>
	<42272@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <LEE.92Mar30115434@meercat.wang.com>
	<leblanc.702180912@knuth> <LEE.92Apr6112858@meercat.wang.com>
	<leblanc.702659375@knuth>
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Organization: Wang Laboratories, Inc.


(Stuart LeBlanc) writes:
  I write:
   >Customers DO express their displeasure, even
   >in a highly controlled market like formal education, and those
   >corporations which ignore it in their decisions can expect either to
   >be forced from business, or (in an over-controlled economic segment
   >where they can continue to survive) continue to provide an
   >ill-targeted and mediocre product.

   As I understand your argument, you have advocated that students be the
   ones to make hiring, promotion and tenure decisions.

I never said that.  I indicated that a college administrator (or
tenured faculty member acting in such a role) who decides to hire,
promote, and tenure people who are known to their customers (the
students) as poor teachers is a bad administrator and is abrogating
the responsibility given him.  I suppose this does mean that the
student body has a form of collective authority to hire, promote,
etc., but only in _good_ institutions.

   The excerpt above implies a much more limited and discreet use of
   student evaluations, equivalent to the collection of "customer
   complaints" and consideration of their points when they appear to
   be well reasoned.

I didn't say that either.  Who is qualified to determine whether the
actions of people who have paid for your services are "well reasoned"?
The service providers?  That's a pretty perverted system.  And what
does "discreet" have to do with it.  I'd damned well publish the
evaluations for all to read.

   If this represents an amendment of your original argument, then I
   believe that we have reached agreement.

We have not.

   >In response to a parallel post by Mr. Leblanc: One of the most
   >surprising things about leaving an Ivy League program and entering
   >industry was finding that the people from Montana or North Dakota
   >State are often just as quick as the Ivy Leaguers. [...]

Sorry about the ad hominem which followed this---I must have been in a
worse-than-usual mood.

   If Mr. Story can extrapolate the "talents and awareness" of the student
   bodies of every state university based on meeting two individuals from
   Montana and North Dakota State [...]

Oh, really!  I never said anything like that, either.  Do we have to
fill the air with straw?  Stuart LeBlanc apparently believes that no
easterner could have met more than one of each?  What sort of argument
is this?

   He will doubtlessly conclude that the varying levels of selectivity
   correlate with varying levels of "talents and awareness" in the
   groups of applicants.  It is interesting to note that if this
   conclusion is correctly reached [...]

I've noted the extraordinary ability of music professors, not merely
to opine, but to tell me in the most absolute terms that a particular
opinion is "correctly reached".  I do not reach the "correct"
conclusion that the talents of the Yale honors graduate are so
superior to those of the median American, though this may be the case.
(I have no idea how to demonstrate such a thing, nor how to prepare
_any_ very convincing socialogical experiment design.)  I would claim
that his talents are directed at more clearly targeted, more
measurable, and more socially approved ends.
--
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  Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
              (Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
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