Parents, your thoughts on politics in the classroom?

<p>It has nothing to do with politics but common sense.
If the GPA overall in all classes is a C-/D+, obviously English with the “leftwingnut” is npt the only class OP is struggling with.
Especially considering the generous grading many private schools dispense.</p>

<p>I’m curious what the OP said about the ACA.</p>

<p>There are so many lies about it that the fact-check organization Politifact has a big section on the ACA. </p>

<p>The claim that there are death panels won its prize for Lie of the Year.</p>

<p>Politifact is now considered an objective adjudicator of veracity?!?</p>

<p>Even if OP included a blatant untruth in the paper, stating “This is a lie” is provocative and pejorative. Academic professionalism would demand an instructive response.</p>

<p>FWIW, the Independent Policy Advisory Board (IPAB) is a 15-member panel created by ACA for the purpose of reducing costs. If a treatment is considered too expensive for its efficacy, they make the determination whether or not the patient will be allowed the treatment, even if this determination results in the patient’s death.</p>

<p>Even Howard Dean refers to the IPAB as a “death panel”.</p>

<p>rmldad, that’s a good example of a myth about the ACA. Just not true!</p>

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<p>given the first thing I quoted, I am not really shocked about the second. This is college, no?</p>

<p>that said, your teacher still might be out of line</p>

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<p>call it what you want, but someone will be making the calls on certain treatments for certain people. They HAVE to.</p>

<p>Also the fact that people bow down to Politifact is laughable.</p>

<p>The ACA helps people buy private insurance. Under the law, the insurance companies can’t deny insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, as they can now. </p>

<p>Government officials are not involved in deciding what treatments particular individuals get. It just isn’t a part of the bill. That’s a myth; simply not true.</p>

<p>The IPAB tells insurers what treatments they must cover and what treatments they are not allowed to cover. If the IPAB determines that a treatment is too expensive, then insurers are not allowed to offer it to their clients.</p>

<p>The American Medical Association opposes the IPAB (<a href=“http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/washington/ipab-summary.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/washington/ipab-summary.pdf&lt;/a&gt;) for many reasons, including this.</p>

<p>Howard Dean, former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee wrote an editorial criticizing the IPAB ([Howard</a> Dean: The Affordable Care Act’s Rate-Setting Won’t Work - WSJ.com](<a href=“Howard Dean: The Affordable Care Act's Rate-Setting Won't Work - WSJ”>Howard Dean: The Affordable Care Act's Rate-Setting Won't Work - WSJ)) using the term “death panel”.</p>

<p>Hopefully, OP’s professor was more well-informed than momfromme.</p>

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Well, to quote the OP"s professor, “That’s a lie!” First of all, as explained in the Dean piece, the IPAB will affect only Medicare reimbursement rates, and if a physician or facility is not happy with the rates set for Medicare reimbursement and refuses treatment on that basis, that’s the party that would be “causing the patient’s death”. But the point is that we don’t have unlimited resources for medical care. Private insurers have always limited what they will pay for various treatments (just look at any insurer’s drug formulary to see the varying reimbursement rates for favored vs. disfavored meds), and no one has accused them of running “death panels”. I don’t see why the federal government is expected to pay medical costs without a thought to whether treatments are necessary or advisable. If you expect a third party to pay for your medical care, you have to accept that the third party’s judgment or be prepared to pay a lot higher taxes to cover skyrocketing costs.</p>

<p>But all this is irrelevant to OP’s inquiry. And the answer to OP is no, nobody at your college will be interested in the whining of a poorly performing student about a supposedly unfair grade. Save your arguments for your parents, who will surely want to know why you’re redoing so badly and, if you’re lucky, may buy this tale.</p>

<p>IPAB does not make decisions about individual patients. That’s what I was saying is untrue. It assesses treatments more broadly, as do insurance companies. And I agree with MommaJ, why should any group pay for a treatment that is not effective.</p>

<p>Back to the OP: Her writing skills are demonstrably poor. Her description of her sources is confusing at best. If she should write to a dean about a professor’s grade, she won’t have credibility.</p>

<p>Hard to judge your paper without reading it.</p>

<p>Sometimes professors use strong language in their critiques to get the student’s attention.
My Dh will never forget what one of his professors wrote about a paragraph in one of the first papers he turned in as a Princeton grad student.
This is a barbarism!”<br>
His comment was definitely noticed, and remembered 40 years later!</p>

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<p>Any college student who doesn’t know the difference between “effecting” and “affecting” probably shouldn’t be complaining too loudly about his or her grades on an English paper. Regardless of the subject.</p>

<p>Oh wow… I definitely thought this was a highschooler for some reason.</p>

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This.

No one here knows whether spelling and grammar mistakes led to the OP’s grade. The OP said “my paper was looked at by a tutor” in his/her first post. Besides, comments such as “that’s a lie” aren’t usually directed toward such mistakes.</p>

<p>There are so many things left unsaid that it is hard to offer useful advice.</p>

<p>I do not believe that, particularly at university level, the prof should be “neutral”. It is useful to argue in class, to get differing points of view and develop a capacity to respond with logic and proof. However, the prof should not penalize someone for a different opinion - unless it is because of faulty methodology. </p>

<p>Also, many profs are harsh hitting, and that frankly can get you prepared for the real world, where you rarely meet much sympathy or openness. They can abuse their power, but believe, you will someday meet a boss in the real world who will do the same.</p>

<p>One of DD’s profs, who was in his late sixties, had Robert Frost (if I am remembering correctly)for a prof when he was a kid. He had written, “This is $h1t,” at the top of the prof’s paper. Yup, it made an impression.</p>

<p>And it’s not only college/grad school Profs who’d make such harsh comments on papers. Some of my HS teachers were far worse about making such comments than most of my/my HS classmates’ college Profs. </p>

<p>Heck, the latter were exemplars of tact and diplomacy in comparison. </p>

<p><em>i.e. “Nonsense”, “This is garbage”, “B&</em>&&*&t”, etc.</p>

<p>On valuable skill to learn early on in one’s educational life is to ‘read’ your professor/teacher. Most will try their hardest to be fair and keep personal bias out of the classroom and out of their grading methodology. IMHO, one can pretty easily identify those which are unable or unwilling remain neutral on subjects which are inherently open for discussion. And it is even easier to identify those using the classroom as their own personal pulpit. As with other situations IRL, one sometimes has to play the game. In the case of an English class I’d say pick the prof’s point of view and practice your English skills that way.</p>

<p>S had a particularly biased US history teacher in HS. At the beginning of the year S would be vocal in the classroom but recognized it became distracting. So, in the evenings S would send references and sources underscoring his viewpoint to this teacher - who to his credit would read and respond.</p>

<p>It got to the point where part of our daily ritual (on days S had that class) was for S to tell me what he would have said if he’d spoken up in class. It was like listening to a bit of a comedy routine during the carpool ride home. :)</p>

<p>“There should be no politics in the class room ever.”</p>

<p>Love how YOU get to put your political viewpoint in a paper, but nobody else gets to talk about politics.</p>

<p>The argument paper is a very basic assignment, and English profs have read many hundreds of them. They know what they’re looking for: a straightforward explanation of a point of view, with evidence to back it up. (It is not the same as a persuasive paper; one is expected to present at least a gesture toward the opposing viewpoint, in order to present one’s argument instead. A persuasive paper does not necessarily have that requirement.) If one uses claims, like that of death panels, that were used to bolster fraudulent arguments against the ACA, that were exposed as lies, that are identifiable as lies with the barest minimum of research, one should be prepared to have the professor respond with the true remark, that that’s a lie. A lie is a cogent reason to mark down an argument paper, which is supposed to be factual and reasoned rather than an opinion or persuasive piece (although, for my money, both opinion and persuasive pieces are all the better for factual information rather than assertion and misdirection). </p>

<p>So those of you who consider that the remark “That’s a lie!” is an unprofessional, biased response to a student’s work, are not thinking as the professor is. A lie is simply unacceptable in an argument paper, and to repeat an easily identifiable lie in an argument paper is shoddy work, that needs to be called out for such. </p>

<p>Many people who write on political issues, from both sides of the spectrum, are woefully incapable of analyzing the topics, because their viewpoints cloud their ability to see, much less present, the issue clearly. It is a professor’s job to help his or her students see the weakness of their arguments for what they are. There is a difference between arguing and merely mouthing the arguments made by others in favor of one’s chosen opinion. As others have said, it is possible to find “documentation” (i.e., published speculation or extrapolation or even misrepresentation) for whatever one wants to believe (we have seen doctors who are members of congress, for example, making statements that are scientifically untrue. That one is a doctor is no evidence of one’s probity, apparently). If one happily, and uncritically, passes on a lie, it is important that the professor point it out.</p>