The Plagiarist vs. The Play Jurist
In theory, committing plagiarism is supposed to be the surest way to get yourself expelled from college. (The second surest way would be joining Duke’s lacrosse team…) But believe it or not, plagiarism often goes unpunished or lightly reprimanded. Let’s have a look at some of the people who make this situation possible:
The Professor. If the professor discovers plagiarism, he will have to spend an extraordinary amount of time moving the case through the proper administrative channels. He knows full well that his time is much better spent on editing the 52nd annual Yearbook for Frog Intestinal Studies. Kermit’s wrath is far greater than what the professor can expect from the department chair, and if the plagiarists give him good course evaluations as a reward for being lenient, he might receive a small pay raise from the university.
The Department Chair. This person spends his time counting the number of students enrolled in his department’s courses. He has no motivation to push his professors to crack down on plagiarism because the students would no longer be able to enroll in his department’s courses… and that would cost his department money. To maintain the appearance of upholding academic standards, the department chair may ask the student to complete the plagiarized assignment “a second time.”
The Judicial Committee. If a case somehow makes its way to the administrative powers-that-be, there are still reasons why a plagiarist might come away unscathed. The committee members know that tuition dollars pay their salaries and keep their employer afloat, so why hurry to deprive themselves of a source of income? It is mandated that they punish the student now, perhaps with a reduced course grade and a notation of “plagiarist” on the transcript. That notation can often be removed after a year or two if the student figures out how not to get reported again. (The students who get caught often aren’t the brightest, so I wouldn’t hold out too much hope on that one…) Exception: students who receive scholarships quickly lose out on some payments.
Potential Employers after Graduation. Yeah… try telling students that they shouldn’t plagiarize because the corporate world looks down on cheating. Students might believe you if you tell them that businesses look down on getting caught cheating, but professors usually can’t afford to tell students the truth. And if students would want to work for an ethical business, they probably wouldn’t be considering plagiarism, right?
Classmates. If you report your classmate for plagiarism, his friends will sneak into your dorm room, strangle you with a tube sock, and burn the place down. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
“Oskar Schindler was my Grandfather’s Great Uncle and That Makes Me a Special Student”
Dear Readers,
Please don’t get your hopes up. Here at Necrotic Hijinks, we do not stoop so low as to joke about genocide. When American college students become the victims, we will reconsider our policy. (Legal disclaimer: we do not condone murder of any kind.) Thank you.
Signed,
The Management
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Dear Readers,
Here at Necrotic Hijinks, we do not think it is funny that so many students have no idea who Oskar Schindler was, or that Adolf Hitler spoke German, or that the Nazis killed millions of innocent people, or that genocides continue to take place today. Please excuse the misleading headline for this post; few students would ever claim to be related to Oskar Schindler because few colleges care enough to teach their students anything of importance. You can’t claim to be related to someone you’ve never heard of.
Signed,
The Management
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Dear College-Age Readers,
We at Necrotic Hijinks extend our heartfelt apologies that your professors banished you from class when you informed them that Adolf Hitler spoke German. According to most professors, Adolf Hitler speaks a funny form of English and lived on a ranch in Crawford, Texas. That other Hitler guy is an unimportant detail to them.
Signed,
The Management
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Dear College-Age Readers,
Even though it is important to have important topics like genocide included in the curriculum, it is not appropriate for you to hold up the nude photographs of Holocaust victims as a reason to offer the course. Even though the nude photos are what most professors will find interesting about the subject, it would be disgraceful for professors to prance in front of the classroom with the photos saying “Looky! Looky! Looky!” And you know they’d do it, don’t you?
Signed,
The Management
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Dear Readers,
Here at Necrotic Hijinks, we pride ourselves on historical accuracy. Contrary to what you had thought, the man’s name was spelled O-S-K-A-R. While we appreciate that you took your professors’ advice not to use Wikipedia as an authoritative source, please consider making use of legitimate reference materials before going ballistic over someone else’s spelling. Thank you.
Signed,
The Management
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Dear Readers,
Despite what you may be thinking, this post was not designed to be gratuitous humor based on a tragic historical event. You would be amazed to hear what some college faculty have to say about this period of history and its aftermath. Many of them only care about dead people if they were killed because of their race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, or sexual orientation… and Jewish (and Christian) genocide victims usually don’t matter unless they were critical of their religious traditions, or of capitalism.
Signed,
Lou Tafisk
Shake Your Booty and Don’t Give Pop Quizzes
When I was in 2nd grade, my teacher was new and she obviously hadn’t spent much time around young children. One day she was feeling especially out of her comfort zone and thought she needed to find a way to entertain the class. So… she walked to the front of the room and said, “kids, I am now going to spin around for you.” I don’t know why she thought this would be entertaining, but approximately half the class was clamoring for “more! more!” And the teacher kept spinning until one of the female students called out “they just want to see your underwear.” The teacher promptly stopped.
Teaching second graders is a completely different game from teaching college students. Sort of. In college, students (or their parents) are paying tuition and believe that they deserve to get whatever they want. The other big difference is that college students are above the legal age of consent, so it’s no longer entirely illegal if you give them the lingerie shots they clamor for. Of course, college kids won’t be satisfied with just seeing your underwear; they get that all the time in the dorms. Today’s students need to see you strut your stuff so they know you’re their equal. (This must be why ratemyprofessors includes a chili pepper for students to identify their “hot” teachers.)
Always remember that egalitarianism must come first when it comes to teaching. Shaking your booty shows them that you’re as dumb and horny as they are; the best teachers are always the ones that students can relate to. And forget about all those pop quizzes; testing students’ knowledge implies that you know more than they do, and that’s an absolute no-no. You are fellow explorers on a quest for knowledge and the most valuable knowledge you can discover together is disco butt exercises.
Can Heroin and Vodka Help Students Learn?
Imagine for a moment that you are a kindergarten teacher. Today you are going to begin an educational assistance program for your students and they’re going to love it. (As we all know, “they’re going to love it” is the best way to judge the effectiveness of pedagogical techniques.) It’s even easier than all the hard stuff associated with memorizing and learning.
Here is the plan: you are going to shoot each student up three times with heroin. Although you know that this won’t help them developmentally, your professors told you that heroin is the best way to motivate student learning. As long as the kids’ teachers continue to give them heroin through the years, students will learn anything you give them. If you stop injecting the heroin, they won’t learn anything.
Let’s have an honest show of hands: how many of you wish school had really been like this? Sounds fun, doesn’t it? (Legal Disclaimer: don’t try this at home.)
Unfortunately, we all know that heroin does not assist learning even though withdrawal from any drug (including alcohol) can cause a person to lose knowledge or skills gained while under the influence. The same goes for the incessant boosting of the students’ self-esteem and curricular dumbing-down. It starts early, so teachers of older kids run the risk of losing their students’ cooperation if they don’t coddle them. These teachers are informed that the student audience has changed; this is coupled with demands that teachers change their methods to “adapt” to the new student shortcomings. I don’t mean to imply that everything was perfect in Education Land 75 years ago, but these demands miss the mark. To see why, let’s go back to Kindergarten:
You just gave your kindergartener a shot of vodka today and he’s a little dizzy. What’s the solution? Correct! You give him another shot of vodka.
Now he’s throwing up, but he likes the taste and wants more vodka. What do you do? You guessed it! Two more shots!
And the little boy passes out in a puddle of his own vomit. When he wakes up in the morning, you tell him that you’re proud of him because he handled the vodka very well. He asks for more, so of course you’re supposed to give it to him. You might as well hand him the whole bottle because he’s just so talented.
An hour later, his liver has decided that this isn’t funny and it’s no longer functioning. Junior is now a dazzling shade of yellow. (It makes him look so handsome!) Unfortunately, you’re out of vodka so you decide to go see a doctor to ask about Junior’s lack of hand-eye coordination. But you’re not looking for real medical help because you already know the right answer: a prescription for vodka!
And so it goes with inflating students’ grades and self-esteem while ignoring their reduced skills and ever-shortening attention spans. The solution parents demand, the one colleges demand of professors, and the one students expect is MORE VODKA! Um… I mean more dumbing down and more fueling of students’ self-esteem.
I think we can all see how that turns out. In the end, the self-esteem addicts face the same results as the heroin addicts and alcoholics: their brains are fried.
The Swedish Chef Performs Neurosurgery
People sometimes need to be told what their talents aren’t. I have seen students sucked into majors in which they had remarkably little talent… just because the professors needed more butts in the desks. Of course, you can’t have half of your department’s majors flunking out of your classes, so you have to constantly tell them how good they are at the subject and give them grades to match so they’ll continue. First rule of college teaching: if you inflate your students’ self-esteem, you can inflate your department’s budget allocation. And maybe you’ll even get a pay raise in the process.
And then sometimes you end up with professors who passed through the system in this manner, acquiring lots of self-esteem but very little knowledge. The experience of taking one of their courses is a lot like watching the Swedish Chef perform neurosurgery. You’ll see lots of colorful things flying through the air, but they’re all disconnected from any sort of larger body. Brain cells get slaughtered, but onlookers get a good laugh. After all, the Swedish Chef keeps his job by making his audience happy. In the end, the entire experience is a bloodbath and a brain is left wishing that it had some real sustenance.
In spite of this, there are some benefits to having the Swedish Chef perform neurosurgery. I’m sure that those brains, when tossed with the Chef’s favorite ingredients, would put any hospital’s food to shame. Waste not, want not.
Niekrophilia: The Love of Dead Cultural References
Phil Niekro is a Hall of Fame baseball player who was active from 1964 to 1987; he was quite popular in his day. If you’re at least semi-conscious, you will immediately understand how flat a reference to him would fall with a group of today’s undergraduate students. And let’s be honest: is this the kind of history you’d prefer these students to spend their time becoming more knowledgeable about? I thought not… but if it is, I think you may suffer from Niekrophilia.
Niekrophilia is the love of dead cultural references and of information that ought to be left for dead when compared to the more important information today’s students lack. Unfortunately, many of today’s professors don’t understand the difference between what is really significant and what is not. And it goes without saying that many students, when given a choice between an intellectual corpse (such as “Critical Analysis of Baseball Personae”) and a living, breathing body (such as Judicial Philosophy and Constitutional Analysis), choose the corpse when both appear in a course catalog. Students love corpses; the way some students behave, it’s as though they want to become corpses sooner rather than later. The problem with corpses is that they aren’t very useful or enlightening, unless of course you’re stranded on a desert island and light one up on the campfire for dinner.
But I digress.
The love of corpses has taken over the American academy. If it were simply aging professors who forget that today’s students aren’t into their old favorites, it would be less of a problem. Dead cultural references aren’t dangerous when they’re thrown around in passing. But instead, some professors are obsessed with these corpses and they haven’t quite realized that corpses don’t reproduce knowledge very well. Knowledge is, and has always been, the professor’s baby. Unfortunately, babies aren’t being made any more and many professors seem fine with that.
Postscript: My apologies go out to Phil Niekro, who is still very much alive. This post was not meant to reflect badly on him in any way.
You’re Pretty When You Weep
I see you walking towards my desk with your mascara already starting to run. It was a difficult night with the homework, I know, and you want to have a little “chat” with me. At least this is an improvement over the whining and yelling I’ve seen from you already…
And so you proceed to explain that the problem set was just so impossible and it took you a whole hour to get through the first half. And it made your life last night so difficult because you had swimming practice for two hours and there just wasn’t enough time to get everything done. Your mascara is history by now, but you don’t seem to care. And neither do I.
You’re pretty when you weep.
And so I calmly remind you that the problem set had been assigned a week earlier, and you suddenly stop crying. It’s such a shame because you’re not as adorable when you’re angry. I remain emotionless and ask what prevented you from doing the problem set earlier in the week. I guess you realized that you had lost control of your charade because your eyes conveniently start welling up again. I never did get an answer to my question, but your tears make my heart sing.
And so I do what any responsible teacher would do: I offer to make an appointment with you to review the material so the second half will be easier. You finally realize that your little act isn’t working and you just sigh and say “yeah.” I don’t know if you’ll really show up for any appointment we make, but you’ve figured out that I’m not going to let you get out of the assignment. And so you give up and walk away. You finally realize that I’m not stupid, or maybe you just think I’m too stupid to realize how dumb the problem set is.
And then I almost start to feel bad for you. Almost. I was a little tough on you as you were crying in front of me. Have I become too jaded to be a compassionate presence for my student? But by now you are walking out and you close the door behind you. In the hall, your friend is waiting and you forget that there is a nice large window I can look through. The door closes and I can see your facial expression shift immediately as you say to your friend, “It didn’t work.”
You’re pretty when you weep because it’s the only time you look human.
Pyrotechnics: The Next Big Thing in Classroom Technology
Universities love to advertise their instructional technology resources. In the flashy brochures they send out to high schoolers, the trumpet the educational benefits of the high-tech classrooms and computer labs they offer on campus. All this technology is said to have an inherently positive effect on student learning. Behind the scenes, it is said to increase student engagement and allow students to get more up-close-and-personal with the content they’re studying.
I couldn’t agree more. Because more technology is always better, I think universities should go for the flashiest equipment possible… and that would be pyrotechnics. The fire mimics the media students so often take in during their free time, so it’s obviously logical to incorporate that into the classroom; we should never expect students to expand their attention spans in the classroom. And for instructors who have to teach at 8:00 AM, what else could possibly rouse students from their slumber more effectively than a raging inferno before their eyes? Just imagine how many students the university could attract with a giant fireball on its advertisements.
Of course, there is more to teaching that grabbing the students’ attention. I truly believe that pyrotechnics offer a way of understanding course material that no other teaching method can beat. If your class is studying Dante’s Inferno, you could simulate the experience for them in the classroom. (Okay, okay… I know that many students think sitting in class is like being in Hell. This would just improve the experience.) Pyrotechnics also can allow students to witness, first hand, the horrors of book burning that have taken place at various points in history. Trust me, books will burn (intentionally or not) if you put pyrotechnics in a classroom building.
Pyrotechnics also have one additional advantage over other instructional technologies: they are cost-efficient. If you use the method just once, you no longer have to pay for utilities or maintenance for that ash heap your class formerly took place in. And then you can pass the savings on to students in the form of a tuition reduction. See? It really is a win-win situation for everyone.
TUI (Teaching Under the Influence)
I never showed up for class drunk, although I was sometimes tempted to. While it might have made me a more entertaining teacher, I doubt that the students would have been eager to sit in the classroom for another 30 minutes after my unfortunate little vomiting spells.
In spite of this, I have come to believe that TUI is an excellent way to improve your student evaluations. Who among us has not had students show up drunk for class, and who could believe that being drunk together wouldn’t increase camaraderie? If you’re drunk, you can’t cover as much information in an hour; that makes the tests so much easier for the students. On second thought, it makes the tests much easier unless you’re someone who remembers what he said when he was drunk. The correct answer on a test should always match what you told the students in class, so you could end up with something like:
Q: Who was the 3rd president of the United States?
correct answer: BLAAAAAAARGH
And then you could fail all of those annoying industrious students who did their homework and gave an answer that the book thinks is correct. Since books are an outdated technology and no one pays attention to them anyway, you have no reason to accept what the book says. Then again… if you want to keep your job, you probably should give the students inflated grades to make them happy. So, maybe you ought to bite your tongue and say that Thomas Jefferson is an acceptable correct answer.
It’s so much easier to accept an answer like that when you’re already drunk.
Why I Was Always Jealous of Dentists
Students often feel that sitting in class is like being in the dentist’s chair. I, on the other hand, wished I could reap the same benefits as dentists.
Teaching and dentistry are not much different if you look at the pain inflicted on paying “customers.” The biggest similarity may be homework. When you go to the dentist, you will often be given things you need to do at home: brush longer, floss, use Listerine, and so on. And much like students, patients often don’t listen to the person giving them instructions. And so the patients come in to their next dentist’s appointment with yellow teeth and cavities. This doesn’t create many problems for the dentist. It drums up business and fattens his paycheck. A patient knows better than to blame the dentist for getting cavities.
Teachers have it tougher. When a student fails to do his homework and enters class with a yellow and rotting brain, the teacher is sometimes expected to do extra tutoring for no additional pay. Unlike the dentist’s patient, the teacher is blamed if the student hasn’t reached his goals. But most disappointingly, teachers don’t get the chance to drill inside their students’ mouths. When a teacher or a dentist comes across someone who is especially obnoxious or difficult to work with, finding something cathartic is a great way to stay sane. Dentists get to inflict pain intentionally and teachers don’t. Sometimes life isn’t fair.
So why did you think your dentist was always running out of novocaine?
Cannibals in the Classroom
I always enjoyed slicing open a student’s torso, exposing the tense and writhing stomach inside. If you crush a student’s heart by telling him that his work isn’t wonderful, it’s much easier to puree the heart and stuff it into his bleeding stomach. (An intact heart does not puree as easily.) You then have a nice plate of haggis, which still needs to be be prepared in a pressure cooker. If you’re doing your job correctly, your classroom may just do the trick. I find that this dish tastes especially good with mustard.
Students love to complain that some of their teachers are cruel, and the ones who earn this label can often count on not keeping their jobs for very long. There’s a point where a teacher’s behavior crosses a line, but”cruelty” to students is not the most significant problem we face. So I’d like to discuss a different kind of cruelty and a different kind of cannibalism.
Contrary to popular belief, most college educators do not enjoy a guaranteed “job for life.” There are certain conditions that must be met. Most importantly, you have to maintain a high number of students in your courses. Students pay tuition and the college loses money if the student fails out of school. Similarly, your department can lose funding from the school it it has low enrollment numbers. At some schools, tenured professors (the ones who are guaranteed to have jobs for life) have been losing their jobs because of this. What happens to teaching when you are forced to choose between keeping your job and telling students what they need to hear? Simple: The student is the customer and the customer is always right unless he asks for vodka. (If the student asks for pizza, it is okay to bribe him.)
It sounds like a great deal for the student, unless the student is studying something like nursing. Just imagine the student’s future:
Doctor: “Nurse Schmidt, could you please take the patient’s blood pressure, shave his pubic hair, and give him this shot of local anesthetic?”
Nurse: “Sure, doctor.” (And two seconds later, she administers the anesthetic to the area she’s shaving because she does not remember that the anesthetic is supposed to protect against pain from the operation, not from the shaving. Of course, since the patient’s blood pressure was taken incorrectly, surgery never took place because he was rushed to the emergency room for circulatory problems.)
I exaggerate somewhat, but it should go without saying that reduced standards can have a dramatic effect on the student and the people that student will eventually work for. Students receive diplomas but often lack the knowledge one would expect from someone with the diploma, a situation that can have dire career consequences. Colleges also judge teachers on how well they contribute to this end result. Student evaluations are practically the only way colleges measure teaching “effectiveness.” If you give good grades, research has shown that you get better student evaluations. It also helps if you don’t assign homework. Teachers who are not appreciated until years later do not survive in this environment; they have to be loved today to keep their jobs. But if students love them today and all night long, they can lose their jobs.
It is cannibalism to devour students’ futures to preserve your own career. While students occasionally thought I was cruel, I regret that I was never fired from a teaching job.
For further information, check out the recent book Academically Adrift.
