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You know, I think I'll pass on the suggestion that I name professors I feel are mediocre researchers. Career suicide's just not on my schedule for today.
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<p>Why? I named one who's a bad teacher. But of course it's not a matter that I "feel" she's a bad teacher: the course evals clearly show it to be such. Hence, it's not a matter of opinion, but a fact. </p>
<p>What you can do is simply list some names of people who's publication list is clearly short and not well-cited, but who have won teaching awards, and then won tenure. That would be a simple statement of fact. </p>
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Yes, certainly lowering standards is a way to go. Kudos to most professors who refuse to do this. Grades are supposed to mean something, and anyone who would suggest this as an alternative is not qualified to discuss the merits of teaching, IMO.
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<p>Uh huh, and yet isn't it interesting that the subjects where the grading tends to be the harshest (i.e. engineering, mathematics, hard sciences) tend to be the ones that also coincidentally seem to have the worst-regarded teachers. For example, I think we can all agree that Caltech is a harsh-grading school, yet the is also a school that is infamous for bad teaching.</p>
<p>If anything, I would argue that harsh grading causes bad teaching (or at least, bad teaching evaluations). Those students who get bad grades might indeed try to seek revenge on their profs by giving them bad teaching evals. But I can't see the reverse, which is what you implied: that bad teaching somehow causes harsh grading. </p>
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Therefore, if a person is a great, dedicated teacher, but s/he is not meeting the research requirements, that person will be told to pick up the slack where the slack exists. It has nothing to do with valuing or not valuing teaching. A deficiency was noted. Similarly, if a professor was publishing like mad but getting poor evals, the department would be remediating by having the classroom observed, etc.
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<p>Yet has that ever happened? I can't even think of one time where it has. Like I said, the Unabomber was almost certainly going to get tenure at Berkeley despite being a terrible teacher. John Nash would almost certainly have gotten tenure despite barely even showing up to his own classes that he was supposed to be teaching, and displaying actual hostility to the students whenever he did show up. {To be fair, both of them had social and mental problems that greatly detracted from their classroom skills.} Yet their research abilities were impeccable. </p>
<p>And, like I said, Fiona Murray got tenure despite clearly being a relatively low-rated teacher. I am sure if I analyze the MIT data more, I can come up with others who got tenure despite not being good teachers. </p>
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Wrong. You do realize that many professors and schools have attendance requirements, correct?
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<p>No, right. You do realize that many professors and schools don't have attendance requirements, correct? After all, how did my brother manage to skip so many classes at Caltech - which is a very small school? Heck, he once took a class with less than 5 students, and skipped most of those lectures too. Nor was he the only one in that small class who skipped. He told me that, on the rare times that he would show up, he would usually be only 1 of 2 students who actually attended. Skipping lecture is actually a quite common feature of the student culture at Caltech. I have a feeling RacinReaver knows what I'm talking about. </p>
<p>Remember, this is Caltech we're talking about. Caltech is smaller than even many of the LAC's. Many of the classes are tiny, such that when you skip class, it is obvious. Nevertheless, many students will do so, yet still do very well anyway. My brother clearly didn't need lecture in order to do well.</p>
<p>MIT, same thing. I knew a guy who never went to lecture except for exams. One funny story is that he actually got slightly lost in trying to find the lecture room when the exam rolled around, because the fact is, he had never been to the room<a href="and%20hence%20ended%20up%20showing%20up%20to%20the%20exam%20a%20few%20minutes%20late">/i</a>. Why? *Because he was taking another class at the exact same time. Hence, skipping class was something he simply had to do. He did all the assignments, took the exam (for which he skipped the other class), and did very well. </p>
<p>Look, I am simply pointing out that there are indeed numerous classes that simply do not require attendance. Heck, there are classes where the professor himself often times fails to show up. Like I said, John Nash was notorious for not showing up to his own classes at MIT. Speaking of MIT, Marvin Minsky is also rather notorious for absent-mindedly not showing up to teach his own classes on artificial intelligence. {Frankly, I don't blame Minsky, because he has far more important things to do than teach class, and people who want to learn from him can simply read his publications and then schedule office hours with him to talk about them.} </p>
<p>Now, I agree with you that some professors require class attendance. But almost always, that is at the professor's discretion. If he doesn't require attendance, he doesn't have to.</p>
<p>But what I don't understand is why a professor who is a bad teacher would nevertheless require class attendance, and certainly not to the point that it might cause classroom disruption (as DSP asserted). If I was a bad teacher, I wouldn't require attendance. I don't think that classroom attendance is particularly necessary to learning anyway. Like I said, numerous Caltech students don't attend class, but they seem to learn plenty anyway. Like my brother said, he felt that he would actually learn less by going to class, as opposed to just staying in his room and reading the book. </p>
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No, it hasn't. Your asserting that it is true doesn't make it true.
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<p>Well, what about your assertions. Just because you assert something doesn't make it so. </p>
<p>I am indeed making assertions, but also providing evidence to back my assertions. You, on the other hand, are providing only assertions. If you have data, then I welcome your exhibition of it. But if all you have are assertions, then don't complain about my assertions. </p>
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I really don't feel like getting into these discussions with you, Sakky. Your style is to continue to post n=1 anecdotes and fallacious reasoning buried in unnecessarily lengthy posts until everyone gets tired of responding, then you count it a win. Say whatever you like, but you're very, very wrong about the importance of teaching experience when on the job market. Readers can take whatever they like from this discussion.
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<p>And what about you? All you have stated are assertions and clearly fallacious reasoning. For example, I have clearly shown that you don't "need" teaching experience to get an academic position, as I have pointed to several people who got top positions who had no such experience. Hence, it is you who are very very wrong about the teaching market. {Actually, I suspect that you probably did know that you don't actually "need" teaching experience, but I don't know why you asserted it to be so.}</p>
<p>You keep complaining about my n=1 (actually far more than 1 now) anecdotes. But what about your n=0 cases? Whatever you want to say about my data, frankly, it's better than yours, because you presented none. </p>
<p>So I agree, readers can and should take whatever they want from this discussion. I encourage them to carefully read both of our arguments, and then examine the data that we have both presented (which should be easy in your case because you didn't present any), and then draw their own conclusion about whether you really "need" teaching experience or just how much teaching skills are truly valued within the world of academia. </p>
<p>I also encourage them to use their own empirical evidence. Forget about the hypothetico-deductive style presented here. Just use their own eyes and ears. Look at their own college and see if you can find bad teachers who nevertheless somehow got hired or got tenured. Then ask yourself, how did that happen if teaching is so important? Then draw your own conclusion.</p>