We keep being told that the adolescent brain doesn’t stop maturing until well after teen years. They are still kids medically speaking. I mean, what adult would take the time to put a vehicle on top of a building’s dome? Smart doesn’t equate with maturity. Having extra help and passing, isn’t the same as passing without help, but who’s going to police that?
By the way, I have more contact with medical people than I would like. The best doctors are people who listen to and discuss with the patient. Maybe instead of weeding premeds out by giving them organic chemistry, the schools could weed them out with a course on compassion?
In every country young adults in their late teens and early 20s are considered mature enough to study medicine; many in this NYU group were and did fine
No one is asking to lower the bar. Those teachers I mentioned have had their students tested against their peers (in California or the UK). They all improved and no one was dragged lower.
I am reasonably sure that most kids can be pulled over the state level of math courses for high school, for example. I am also reasonably sure most can not pass the threshold for medical courses, regardless of which teacher they have.
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How do you tell which students are more compassionate than others in a class (or a similar setting)? If that were the course premeds must pass to gain entry to medical schools, I’d bet nearly all of them would, whether they’re truly compassionate or not.
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If you expect that level of hand-holding, make that a consideration when selecting which colleges to apply to.
Teaching is only a fraction of the job for professors at R1 universities. Research and publishing is a primary role, along with seeking grant money. They also advise, mentor, and supervise graduate students. They are required to take on service roles for their departments and the university.
I think the dual role of teacher-researchers makes for a stronger undergraduate experience, but many disagree. It’s part of finding the “fit” so often discussed on this forum.
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I’d certainly love to see a class on compassion. Tests could be a lot of fun, a sort of psychology lab test where they think they know what the test is, but it turns out to be something else. I’d watch that as a tv show.
I took orgo with Prof. Jones at Princeton in the 1980s, and his grading was certainly brutal back then. In the first semester the grades were curved so that the median grade was a B, and for the second semester the curve was even worse – the median grade for the course was C. A friend who is now a major medical researcher – he’s been an author on literally hundreds of scientific papers, has had lots of big NIH grants, etc. – got a B+ one semester and was positively thrilled. (In case you’re wondering, I was not so fortunate, which in part is why I am not Dr. TigerInWinter. 
)
I find it interesting now that at the time I never questioned orgo’s status as the main weeding out course for those of us in the premed track. But over the years I’ve come to suspect that my subpar performance was due in part to my lousy visuospatial skills (my wife gets very nervous when I’m navigating during a trip 
), and it isn’t clear to me why the ability to visualize the 3D structure of complex molecules should play a role in determining who becomes a doctor. (In contrast, I understand the relevance of being able to solve novel problems, which is also important in orgo – and was absolutely vital in Prof. Jones’ class.) That said, there are a lot of premed students and not a lot of slots at medical schools, so there needs to be some method of thinning the herd.
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You and others assume that these students viewed his office hours and classes as useful and productive, yet stayed away because of some character flaw on their part (laziness, etc.) An alternative explanation (and one that I believe fits better with the facts) is that a significant portion of the students found his office hours useless and/or demeaning. As one student put it, Jones, “was not receptive to questions, and I didn’t want to open myself up for him to be rude to me.”
Effective professors get good attendance and busy office hours. Ineffective and/or rude and condescending professors get empty classrooms and no one asking questions. When students lose faith in professors and their ability to teach, they check out. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do. In a cumulative class like Organic Chem (especially one which offered only two mid-terms) this happens early on. Probably about the time they get back a 20 on the first mid-term. It is hard to come back from a 20 when you are already lost and the teacher doesn’t seem to want to help.
Many here have said this, though, and they continue to say it. For example, those who repeatedly comment on attendance don’t acknowledge that Jones may have been one of the drivers behind the poor attendance.
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In a large class like this, you typically have several TAs also having office hours. Word quickly spreads among students on who the good TAs are. Yet few seemed to attend.
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I do not doubt that some students did not enjoy attending his class, and that may have been the professor’s fault. Many people do not enjoy attending work, but do so if they wish to get paid. It is part of being an adult. It is quite likely that not all classes will be enjoyable. Adults will attend anyway if they want the rewards that come with class attendance, even at the risk of incurring a professor who is “rude”. If service workers didn’t go to work because of fear of encountering a customer who is rude, we would have no restaurants.
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Can you post your statistics on attendance for the various TA sections? I don’t recall reading anything that would support your blanket assertion. I do recall some self-serving anecdotes by the professor and a couple TAs, but nothing that would come close to supporting your blanket assertion. I also recall reports that some TAs wouldn’t even take questions.
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Isn’t the quote below a “blank assertion” and “self-serving”? Isn’t it an anecdote even if it’s true?
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No one, except @mtmind, appears to have questioned the assertion by both the professor and TA regarding attendance.
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@1NJParent, had you had bothered to quote the entire sentence you would see that I am not offering it as a statement-of-fact but rather an “alternative explanation (and one that I believe fits better with the facts).” You don’t have to agree, but IMO the record supports my explanation.
I didn’t question their assertions regarding class attendance or office hour attendance. I take the professor and the TAs (and the students) at their words; a significant portion of the students didn’t want to attend Jones’ class or office hours. I did suggest that the reasons for poor class attendance and office hour attendance may have had something to do with the quality of instruction at both. That seems a pretty obvious proposition, but not with this crowd I guess.
As far as attendance at TA sections, I don’t recall that being much of a topic and I don’t remember much of anything supporting @hebegebe’s claim. But it’s been a long thread and I may just not remember it. If @hebegebe would like to provide the support I’d appreciate it.
Added: Looking back at their post, @hebegebe’s assumption seems to be based on the idea that students could freely choose their TA section, but this is very often not the case.
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I suggest that if some students are not attending class or office hours, it is reasonable to assume they aren’t attending TA sections either, or seeking assistance from other TAs. Surely if that were actually the case that students sought aid, the students or their TAs would have brought it up by now.
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Some students did complain about TAs not answering questions or helping students. See the student outline you erroneously insisted was a petition.
Regardless, my guess is the students who have completely check out aren’t doing much of anything. But this begs the question: Why were so many students checked out? Did the quality of the teaching have anything to do with it?
Why is it so hard for so many to accept that this professor may not have reaching a substantial portion of his students? Maybe you are okay with this. Maybe not. But surely this is at least part of what happened here.
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I do understand that. The question is whether those students expected to be entertained rather than educated. If the students he failed to reach had unreasonable expectations, then that is their fault, not his.
An example syllabus for Maitland Jones Organic Chemistry in Fall 2020 is at https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/chemistry/documents/undergraduates/course-syllabi/fall-2020/Organic%20I%202020_Syllabus.pdf . The syllabus states the following. This syllabus makes it sound like he expects a 65% on his exams to = B. The article says the average grade on his midterm was 30%. The mean is 30% when the mean was likely >= 65% in previous years.
Most Important: In this course, you are not in competition with your neighbor. What he or she gets has NO - repeat: NO - bearing on your grade. There is NO curve, which simply means two things: 1. There is no pre-set number or percentage of A’s, B’s and so on. There can be a year in which everyone gets an A. 2. Exams will not be scaled to some pre-set number. We aim for a median of about 65 on all exams. Historically, 65 has been roughly the B – B minus divide. "
This raises the question what changed to cause such a sharp decline in student scores? I expect the change is largely COVID-related – students struggling with transition from remote to classroom, students wanting to continue to use remote learning tech/teaching that was not offered, and the professor not adjusting as well as others to the transition from remote learning.
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I see no reasonable justification for your extraordinarily skeptical view of these students, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point.