bad teaching is letting assholes like me take control of the class

not only is my online instructor, Dr. Robert Plants, prone to personal attacks (which is highly unbecoming of someone in his position), but he's also letting the class derail week after week...

here's an excerpt:

POST 1: David Molina

couz - i'm starting the chapter and it's long. but...

"For example, the evidence needed to support a set of historical claims is different from the evidence needed to prove a mathematical conjecture, and both of these differ from the evidence needed to test a scientific theory"

is this true? aren't these just all negotiations of an articulated formal-logical system? i have a hard time with these chapters when they just kind of shoot off barely scrutinized claims that don't seem relevant to the text's purpose - but which, upon scrutiny, seem more purposeful in their negation than the text itself.

note to guest expert, we're prone to "critiquing and name calling with a touch of arrogance." it's a little game we play.

POST 2: Evan Couzo

I don't exactly remember the sentence, but this is how I read it. And I don't disagree with you one bit, by the way.

Look at the the verbs used for each discipline: history-support, mathematical-prove, science-test. The best you can do in history is support a claim. History is written and open to various schools of thought. A good historian will acknowledge that. Math conjectures can be proven (well, okay, not all of them) by a closed system. Math can be shown to be true by it's own definitions. Science is interesting in that scientists can disagree with the philosophical implications, but must agree on reproduceable experimental data, or tests. Science cannot make any claims of truthiness in the sense that math can, nor can history.

In any event:

"i have a hard time with these chapters when they just kind of shoot off barely scrutinized claims that don't seem relevant to the text's purpose - but which, upon scrutiny, seem more purposeful in their negation than the text itself."

You have a way with words. This is what I was saying in an earlier post.

Dave, you're a trooper. to the death.

POST 3: David Molina

yeah - i guess understand the idea that these verbs are supposed to delineate their own quality of truth, but i think it's more an issue of the fact that we orient ourselves to the idea of truth differently in these disciplines based on our convential understanding of where these disciplines sit on the old subjective-objective spectrum. but, it seems that math it as written as history (and math does exist in history as much as history exists in math), and that supporting a claim in history invovles the same procedures as developing and supporting a theorem in mathematics. that evan couzo slept with me on june 26 2006 is about as true as the angle-side-angle theorem (inasmuch as they are consequences of a formal-logical system). also, applying the fact of our sleeping together into an analyis of couzo as being awesome is more or less the same as using the angle-side-angle theorem in an analysis of celestial motion.

you + me = us (calculus)

POST 3: Dr. Robert Plants

Well, I hope you two are wearing your hip waders because that's about what one needs when reading these posts. You know both of you are very quick to criticize the text, researchers, teacher education, those of us in Guyton Hall, the world...and of course its obvious how some on this board are very taken with themselves so one begins to question why do the teacher corps at all.

POST 4: David Molina

being critical of a system does not imply the desire not to be in it (i thought we were clear on this). sometimes it's merely an extention of the desire for re-evaluation and improvement of the system itself from within. in my experience with the teacher corps, the program has done an excellent job of responding well to the energies of discourse and criticism, and has improved drastically as an institution - both before my class arrived and while it's been there. however, it has - and will always have - a long way to go, and shouldn't rest on its laurels as long as schools are struggling (not that it is sitting pretty, but it often seems that other institutions are less concerned about the possibilities of their own ineffectiveness).

at the end of the day, these kids in mississippi deserve a hell of a lot better education than they're getting, and if part of pushing for the better education is being an asshole, then so be it. (of course, there are other ways - in their own right more political or productive, perhaps - for pushing for better education, but i'm tired of hearing that "studies" are showing nothing impressive. also, context often perscribes action, and the way i push here is a bit different than the way i push in a school building.)