<p>I'm taking a sociology class this summer and it is ridiculous. The professor is so far on the left wing it is not even funny. It is an Intro To Sociology class and instead of teaching principles of sociology, he keeps showing us videos about why the Tea Party is bad for America and indoctrinating us with his socialist views. I personally am in the middle politically but am still disturbed by this way of teaching. Recently I wrote an essay for this class but I felt (and did) like I had to write about the topic in a way the professor would want me to write it (aka using his viewpoints) and I got an A. If it wasn't for the stupid grade, I probably would've bashed all his opinions and written 20 pages about that.</p>
<p>As an institute of higher education, I think it is important to hear different opinions and have them openly discussed freely and without fear of judgement in the classroom setting. What has happened I feel instead is that teachers, of both extreme liberal and conservative views, are forcing their views on other students (a form of indoctrination) and students are just sitting there taking it in as fact instead of thinking critically about the subject and exploring both sides of the issue fairly before making their own opinions. Only in that way, can a student learn.</p>
<p>Anybody have any similar experiences with teachers like this (or not)?</p>
<p>In real life, you have to deal with people of all views and sometimes
you have to bite your tongue or do what you’re told to get the job
done. The idea is that you’re paid to work with people and people vary.</p>
<p>With some professors, it’s best to go with the flow. Some may allow
varying points of view and some may only want to hear their own points
of view regurgitated. You can speak your mind and perhaps have your
GPA damaged or just go with the flow.</p>
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<p>I think that this is an ideal but you’ve surely found out that
institutions and people are far from ideal.</p>
<p>I think that institutions of higher learning should have excellent
admin systems and cafeteria food but these are often two big areas
of complaints about universities.</p>
<p>I would hope that you have some classes where open discussion is
more freely allowed.</p>
<p>I’ve taken courses where professors allowed free discussion and
some where you took a risk in going outside the professor’s views.
There was far more of the former.</p>
<p>My take: A professor’s job is to teach you things that are true. In the humanities in particular, but even in science and technology to some extent, truth is highly subjective. Yet some professors, attempting to fulfill their obligation, will dutifully present you with their version of the truth and expect you to learn it as the truth. Your job is to become, over the course of four years, a discriminating consumer of information who keeps an open mind to all viewpoints, including those of professors who present conflicting viewpoints on the same topics, without becoming doctrinaire about any of them. When you can do that, you have become what we call “educated”.</p>
<p>So take what the professor tells you as gospel if he wants you to, regurgitate it on the exam, and be prepared to find out it’s all a load of bull upon further study. Good luck. :)</p>
<p>What are these “principles of sociology” I wondered? So I googled and one of the first hits was a jstor article that seemed to wonder as well. It seems to me that these days there are many critical theories used to interpret sociology… and that exploring these different schools of thought is the most interesting way to approach sociology, history, etc. And will also, perhaps, teach critical thinking skills.</p>
<p>I know many professors. None would ever mark down a research paper, or essay in your case, because it disagreed with their views… IF it actually provided substantive and persuasive evidence for the student’s POV. This would be a useful exercise for you imho. Before writing the paper, you could meet during office hours to propose your idea and discuss and defend your thesis.</p>
<p>My daughter took a Sociology class this summer. Her teacher was also very left of center and he spent a good amount of class time discussing his political views instead of sociology. Whenever my daughter would bring up a counter argument to his views, he’d just change the subject. He was not open to discuss her ideas. I don’t think that your experience was unusual at all.</p>
<p>Some profs use the kingdom of their classroom as a pulpit for their personal views. </p>
<p>Some people will argue that they should, assuming there’s any relevance to the subject, so the student can reap the benefit of the learned one’s thoughts and experience. A student could then conceivably take a couple of courses from profs with different views (if they can find one to balance the left) and then draw their own conclusions.</p>
<p>Whether a prof would mark down for one writing from a different perspective will depend on the individual prof so I don’t think you can receive a conclusive answer here. You can either give the prof what you think he wants to hear, write from your own perspective while ensuring you include points related to the class/lecture material so he knows you’re paying attention in class and perhaps risk the grade, or you could meet with him and ask him some ‘what ifs’ - i.e. would he be open to students writing papers on the points with different perspectives? Some profs, even those with more extreme views, might even like to see the other perspectives but don’t assume this.</p>
<p>Pierre - Perhaps you could use this experience as an opportunity to do some critical thinking of your own. What reasons OTHER than “raging bias against any viewpoint but his own” might be consistent with your opinion of this professor? I’ve encountered a chippy professor or two over the years. But pushing personal/political views onto other people is hard work. And as any middle-of-the-road citizen knows, liberals don’t believe in hard work (jk!).</p>
<p>Well, the Marxist perspective actually is a part of sociology, and a perspective held by many sociologists; your professor seems to be one of them.</p>
<p>My thoughts:</p>
<p>-95% of the time I hear someone complain about indoctrination, it’s because they presented a counter view, backed it up with no or poor logic/reasoning, and received a poor grade for it.</p>
<p>-It may sound like “socialist indoctrination” to you for the professor to talk about how the rich and policies favoring the rich cause a slew of social problems for the poor… But that’s pretty much a basic point of sociology. Not every field is “middle of the road,” and sociology, a study of social problems, in a capitalistic society, will mainly be studying the social problems created by capitalism, and so seems more anti-capitalist.</p>
<p>-From my experience, most sociologists lean to the left and most economists lean to the right. The former deals with social problems and the ills of the less fortunate; the latter with making money. Kind of exemplifies the ideology divide right there…</p>
<p>I think you may be unfairly assigning the key attribute of business administration to economics. Business as an academic subject is expressly about making money. Economics is about human behavior, with the flow of money and goods being one of the main motivators for why people behave as they do. Studying money doesn’t make economics “about making money” any more than studying damaged brains makes psychology “about brain damage”.</p>