Comment by jazzpush2
2 hours ago
I had the opposite experience, as it were, teaching in the UC system. The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem.
Most of the students were always great. But it seemed like every quarter, there would be 5-10 problematic students whose, for lack of better term, entitlement, resulted in far more hours of work than worthwhile.
And don't get me started on the false disability claims (see [0] for a taste). If you even verbalize questioning one, you're eligible for discrimination.
I had a student claim, in the classroom forum for a STEM course, that making attendance optional (which I was pressured to do because of the high disability rate) was itself discriminatory, because it resulted in different lecture outcomes/attention profiles for students.
0: https://fortune.com/article/rise-in-elite-students-seeking-a...
Give teachers authority again. It shouldn't be their problem if a student wants to fail the class.
The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal.
My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years.
I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me.
Activist teachers are also a thing.