<p>No one is objecting to accented English, per se. But count me as one who would object to paying money for my child, or myself, to take a course from someone whose manner of speaking impeded understanding. It happens. Does it happen a lot? Probably not. Does it happen at all? Yes, it does. Would I investigate if I heard multiple stories about a particular instructor or department? Yes I would. Do I consider Henry Kissinger’s accent a problem? Nope. I have other issues with Henry Kissinger. But I would consider myself lucky to be able to sit in a classroom where he was lecturing.</p>
<p>^^^^^^Exactly!</p>
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You don’t. Have you ever lived in the Boston? NY? Louisiana? I have. People have local accents and you have to adjust. It might be good for educators to take elocution lessons to learn “midwest” English like newscasters.</p>
<p>Have none of you/your children ever had teachers/friends with “different” accents before entering college? I find it so hard to believe that could be possible in the USA. I recall having foreign teachers in elementary school, hs, and college, both UG and grad. Same in my neighborhood and among fellow students.</p>
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<p>You keep explaining why an underperforming PhD student deserved what he/she got. Not that it matters in the least, but this is all the making of a story of a junior student flexing his STEM muscle and “teaching a lesson” to a more advanced student who … could not care less about one part of his or her degree requirement. </p>
<p>Could it be possible to have stories that are similar but polar opposites? The hard sciences major struggling with a liberal arts assignment? The CS or Engineering advanced student taking shortcuts in classes he/she considers a waste of his/her precious time? </p>
<p>And, in the end, nothing will change my OPINION that your TA friend had no business whatsoever to be in the position to participate in the grading of a peer, especially not one who seemingly was quite a bit higher in the food chain. </p>
<p>And nothing will change your opinion that I must be wrong.</p>
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<p>All superstars! Here’s a video of one the greatest men and minds one could dream to meet, let alone be taught by.</p>
<p>[Peter</a> F. Drucker on the Value of Volunteers - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5YsqnKbS9Y&feature=relmfu]Peter”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5YsqnKbS9Y&feature=relmfu)</p>
<p>Those example are, however, entirely misleading. For every Bethe or Kissinger, there are thousands of “teachers” that simply are not qualified nor trained to be entrusted to teach students in the United States. Some do have a hard to understand accent; plenty more do not. Same difference!</p>
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<p>Again, the presenting question was “hard-to-understand accents” not accents, per se. I have had lots of friends with accents. I can’t say that my child has had teachers who have, but our family is not without international friends. But that is not the point! The concern is accents that make it difficult for some people to understand the material. Are there people on this thread who believe this is not a possibility, not ever? Or that there are people who would be curious about the possibility without being xenophobic?</p>
<p>I’m not prepared to say anything about how big a problem this might be overall or at any particular place because I don’t know. But I am the sort of person who would be irritated if I could not understand what a professor was saying, so I understand the impetus for the question. Yes, yes. I know. Prepare for the real world. But given that the spoken word is a rather significant component of an educator’s armamentarium, if a persons’s spoken words cannot be understood by lots of people, it’s a problem.</p>
<p>I hope people aren’t confining their “research” to scanning faculty lists for foreign-sounding names. And I hope people are not using this subject as a proxy for their fear of people from other cultures. In any case, I’m not, I assure you.</p>
<p>The “real world” argument is stupid anyway, because you are not going to get a job or succeed in it if you were never able to grasp the basic concepts in college due to a prof who was incomprehensible due to a heavy accent.</p>
<p>Wait, Bay. Are you saying you think kids should learn something in college? ;)</p>
<p>I’m not sure. But I can say with confidence that learning how to not learn is not important to learn in college. ;)</p>
<p>i would not base my college choice on a broad generalization such as this. you will encounter people with ‘heavy accents’ in STEM fields and in your daily life. today, i had to call delta about some flight changes and i could barely understand the customer service rep. try calling any type of technical support these days and you’ll probably be talking to someone in India.</p>
<p>the only prof i had difficulty understanding taught me multivariable calculus and linear algebra at an ivy league school, and he was one of the better teachers i’ve had. never judge a book by it’s cover.</p>
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<p>We are in agreement that the effectiveness of a good teacher is not determined by his/her accent. And for every Hans Bethe and Chang-lin Tien, there are many, many more professors who speak with different accents and are also excellent teachers.</p>
<p>Someone could have been turned off by the heavy accents and walked away after a few minutes of the first lectures by Hans Bethe or Chang-lin Tien without realizing he had missed out on a GREAT teacher. </p>
<p>Chang-lin Tien was one of the best teachers at UC Berkeley; he won the best teaching award and was named University Professor. But I heard several people making derogatory comments about his heavy accent shortly after his appointment to Berkeley chancellor. As it turned out, Tien was considered by many as one of the most beloved and effective chancellor in Berkeley history.</p>
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<p>In many aspects of one’s life…especially in certain types of jobs…assessment/instruction from peers or even nominal subordinates with expertise in key areas is a matter of course. </p>
<p>One extreme example of this was one older cousin’s experience as a fresh ROTC Naval Ensign assigned to train in a mixed class of officers up to Naval Lieutenants(0-3s) and enlisted with the instructors being senior NCOs. </p>
<p>Although the Senior NCO instructors were nominal subordinates to the officer trainees…especially the Naval Lieutenants…only those who were braindead and looking for a premature termination of his/her officer career would ever think of feeling the Senior NCO was “too low on the food chain” to be their instructor in training…much less display/act on such attitudes. Especially considering the Senior NCO’s full authority over the trainees is derived from the CO of the training school and indirectly…the chain of command above him/her. </p>
<p>Similarly, my TA friend had strong expertise in the area of Educational Technology derived not only from academic study, but also from real-life working experience in K-12 schools before becoming a grad student/TA. As a result of this expertise and his superior academic record, he was assigned as a TA in that Educational Technology course…with the authority to grade/assess all students enrolled in the course derived from the course’s Professor, the particular department, division/school, and the university.</p>
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A teacher who is unable to make himself understood cannot be an excellent teacher. I actually had such a teacher–in his case, the problem was low mumbling, not an accent. (Although he may have had an accent too, who knows?) I suppose it’s possible that the math department didn’t know how incompetent he was.</p>
<p>Cobrat, your story is yet another example of the practices at schools that have become academic factories. And why candidates should exercise great care in selecting a program, especially when the program is very large with tons of potential TAs.</p>
<p>Why are you assuming that TAs have to be worse graders than professors? I know I’ve gotten on a number of my teaching quality reports requests that I teach the class the following year instead of the tenured professor!</p>
<p>There are legal issues involved here, too. I am not going to comment on whether students should seek out “schools without hard-accented professors,” but I’m really surprised that no one has brought up the legal issues involved in this discussion. For researchers/scholars, making “accent” part of a hiring criteria or making it the material point of a faculty member’s job/performance evaluation may be in conflict with Title VII (of the Civil Rights Act). </p>
<p>Title VII protects individuals from discrimination based upon upon several characteristics, among them national origin (real or perceived), and accent is a marker of national origin. It is illegal to, for example, make hiring decisions based upon national origin or perceived customer preference about national origin. For example, a college couldn’t refuse to hire a Serbian-American math professor who has a noticeable accent (though otherwise communicable English) on the basis of his name or accent because it anticipated that students may prefer an “American-sounding” professor.</p>
<p>The EEOC has clarified this: "Because linguistic characteristics are a component of national origin, employers should carefully scrutinize employment decisions that are based on accent to ensure that they do not violate Title VII.(43)</p>
<p>An employment decision based on foreign accent does not violate Title VII if an individual’s accent materially interferes with the ability to perform job duties. This assessment depends upon the specific duties of the position in question and the extent to which the individual’s accent affects his or her ability to perform job duties. Employers should distinguish between a merely discernible foreign accent and one that interferes with communication skills necessary to perform job duties.(44) Generally, an employer may only base an employment decision on accent if effective oral communication in English is required to perform job duties and the individual’s foreign accent materially interferes with his or her ability to communicate orally in English. Positions for which effective oral communication in English may be required include teaching, customer service, and telemarketing. Even for these positions, an employer must still determine whether the particular individual’s accent interferes with the ability to perform job duties."</p>
<p>If a research university determines that the most important factors in the job performance/evaluation/assessment of a faculty member in a particular field (let’s say biology) are research productivity (publishing articles, books, conferences, patents, break-throughs, etc) and grant funding secured ($$) and then in no particular order teaching and service (e.g. university committees and the like), I think you could probably argue that speaking with easily decipherable English would not be material to the job.</p>
<p>However, if a small liberal arts college determines that the most important factors in the job performance of a faculty member are teaching and service and then research productivity and grant funding (if applicable to the field), then I think you have a reasonable leg to stand on without violating Title VII.</p>
<p>[As a side note, I have friends who are faculty at ‘top’ research universities and their tenure and promotion guidelines, which are effectively their ‘job performance’ criteria, are prioritized to research productivity (all fields) and grant funding (in the sciences). Teaching is minor.]</p>
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I don’t think anybody here disagrees with that.</p>
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I don’t agree with this, but even if this far-fetched argument were to be made, I don’t believe that I should be asked to pay tuition for a class that my kid cannot understand. Most colleges advertise that they offer excellent classroom instruction.</p>
<p>I actually agree with you Hunt-- not on the tuition/cost side, but more on the side that universities have a mission-driven responsibility to promote (require?) good, high quality teaching – but I was surprised no one mentioned the legal issues involved in the accent discussion.</p>
<p>That’s because there is no legal issue if the teacher actually cannot be understood–the only situation any of us is talking about.</p>