Saturday, January 28, 2006

the students strike back


Looks like somebody in the college world finally got smart.

Burt Prelutsky wrote an article titled “Cracking the Eggheads,” where, “It seems that a young UCLA alum named Andrew Jones came up with the nifty notion of getting students to tape their professors’ lectures. He figured that was the one sure way to discover whether or not the pedants are really just a bunch of leftist windbags using their lecterns as soap boxes, indoctrinating rather than instructing.”

It seems that this upset more than one professor. Let me ask, if you’ve nothing to hide, what are you whining about? Although Prelutsky’s article didn’t elaborate on the results of these tape recordings, I applaud these students for taking action on this issue.

However, I’m not altogether sure I can condone the action itself. Students for Academic Freedom published an article on their site, which expressed the fear that this action (taping lectures without a professor’s consent) “opened itself up to charges of McCarthyism and played right into the hands of its detractors.”

While the students' methods are questionable, I’m impressed by the action behind the complaint. It’s really not a bad idea. If students obtained permission from professors for tape recording and actually followed through, maybe professors wouldn’t be so free with their political commentary.

2 comments:

Lindsey said...

Huh. So, they did this because the professors were speaking too freely about their politcal views?

the traveler said...

Yes, this is action as a result of professors who use their classrooms to politically indoctrinate their students. I'll post an article I wrote about this to clarify what's going on.