Right Wing Nation

I posted this last year. However, I have edited it, and expanded my discussion of how evaluations might be used in the public schools, as well as at the university. Of course, that means an already long article is now longer. Sorry abut that.

Let’s talk evaluations, starting with this article from Inside Higher Ed:

But what if the much derided Web site’s rankings have a high correlation with markers that are more widely accepted as measures of faculty performance? Last year, a scholarly study found a high correlation between RateMyProfessors.com and a university’s own system of student evaluations. Now, a new study is finding a high correlation between RateMyProfessors and a student evaluation system used nationally.

A new study is about to appear in the journal Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education and it will argue that there are similarities in the rankings in RateMyProfessors.com and IDEA, a student evaluation system used at about 275 colleges nationally and run by a nonprofit group affiliated with Kansas State University.

What is notable is that while RateMyProfessors.com gives power to students, IDEA gives a lot of control over the process to faculty members. Professors identify the teaching objectives that are important to the class, and those are the measures that count the most. In addition, weighting is used so that adjustments are made for factors beyond professors’ control, such as class size, student work habits and so forth — all variables that RateMyProfessors doesn’t really account for (or try to account for).

The study looked at the rankings of 126 professors at Lander University, in South Carolina, and compared the two ratings systems. The findings:

• Student rankings on the ease of courses were consistent in both systems and correlated with grades.
• Professors’ rankings for “clarity” and “helpfulness” on RateMyProfessors.com correlated with overall rankings for course excellence on IDEA.
• The similarities were such that, the journal article says, they offer “preliminary support for the validity of the evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com.”

It has been my experience that those who discount evaluations are bad teachers. In fact, I can think of many examples of faculty I know who discount evaluations and who are bad teachers, but I cannot think of even one counterexample. I do not know even one faculty member who is a good teacher and discounts evaluations. Not one. But I know lots of bad teachers who discount evaluations.

The most common statement about evaluations is that students care only about how easy the course is and what grade they get. But it takes little more than a quick perusal of professor ratings on RateMyProfessors.com to see that the assumption is a fallacy.

Let’s look at the categories RateMyProfessors.com uses to evaluate professors (1-5):

Easiness - Some students may factor in the easiness or difficulty of the professor or course material when selecting a class to take. Is this class an easy A? How much work do you need to do in order to get a good grade? Please note this category is NOT included in the “Overall Quality” rating.

Helpfulness - Helpfulness is defined as a professor’s helpfulness and approachability. Is this professor approachable, nice and easy to communicate with? How accessible is the professor and is he/she available during office hours or after class for additional help?

Clarity - A professor’s organization and time management skills can make a great difference on what you get out of the class. How well does the professor teach the course material? Were you able to understand the class topics based on the professor’s teaching methods and style?

Overall Quality - The Overall Quality rating is determined by the average rating of the Helpfulness and Clarity given by all users. An overall rating of 3.5 to 5 is considered good (yellow smiley face). An overall rating of 2.5 to 3.5 is considered average (green smiley face). An overall rating of 1 to 2.5 is considered poor (blue sad face). The Easiness rating is NOT included when calculating the Overall Quality rating.

Rater Interest - There is always that one class everyone recommends taking before graduating. As a student, how interested were you in the class, BEFORE taking it? Or how interested were you in taking this course from this specific professor.

So easiness is included, but crucially, it is not included in the overall rating. There goes the cornerstone of that major assumption about evaluations, that they are nothing more than evaluations of the ease of a course. My university evaluations are admittedly superior as rating tools: There are more questions, half of which relate to the course and the other half to the instructor, and they are more detailed. RateMyProfessors.com is by no means a rigorous tool for rating teacher effectiveness, but then, it’s a web application, and if there were twenty questions on it, nobody would use it.

I said above that a quick perusal of the evaluations would destroy the major assumption about RateMyProfessor.com, and here is an example:

We may assume that this student is a history major. Note that the student calls the professor “demanding,” and gives him only a 2 on easiness. Yet, this professor gets a glowing review. Here is another, from a different professor, at a different university, in a different field:

The first evaluation was (presumably) from a major, and an upperclassman. This evaluation is from a student who dislikes the course subject, and admits that he has a hard time with it. It also looks like this student is most likely a freshman or a sophomore, to judge from the course number (I replaced the letters, but not the first course number, because it indicates the level of the course). This student gives this professor the lowest possible score for easiness (1), yet like the last evaluator, gives the professor a glowing review. How is this possible, if evaluations are nothing more than a popularity contest, and students rate primarily on how easily they can get As?

But what this article misses is that one hears exactly the same complaints among faculty about university student evaluations as RateMyProfessors.com. It’s one of the Laws of the Faculty Lounge that if there are tenured faculty present and student evaluations come up, at least one professor will make a sneering comment. As a group, tenured faculty give little concern to teaching (which renders the whole “I want a real professor to teach my class!” argument ludicrous.). Don’t believe me? Here it is from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Colleges are quick to argue that a college education is more about enlightenment than employment. That may be the biggest deception of all. Often there is a Grand Canyon of difference between the reality and what higher-education institutions, especially research ones, tout in their viewbooks and on their Web sites. Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. At many colleges, only a small percentage of the typical student’s classroom hours will have been spent with fewer than 30 students taught by a professor, according to student-questionnaire data I used for my book How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University. When students at 115 institutions were asked what percentage of their class time had been spent in classes of fewer than 30 students, the average response was 28 percent.

That’s not to say that professor-taught classes are so worthwhile. The more prestigious the institution, the more likely that faculty members are hired and promoted much more for their research than for their teaching. Professors who bring in big research dollars are almost always rewarded more highly than a fine teacher who doesn’t bring in the research bucks. Ernest L. Boyer, the late president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, used to say that winning the campus teaching award was the kiss of death when it came to tenure. So, no surprise, in the latest annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, 44.6 percent said they were not satisfied with the quality of instruction they received. Imagine if that many people were dissatisfied with a brand of car: It would quickly go off the market. Colleges should be held to a much higher standard, as a higher education costs so much more, requires years of time, and has so much potential impact on your life. Meanwhile, 43.5 percent of freshmen also reported “frequently” feeling bored in class, the survey found.

Ha! Students are idiots! What do they know? Read on:

College students may be dissatisfied with instruction, but, despite that, do they learn? A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below “proficient” levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.

Unbelievably, according to the Spellings Report, which was released in 2006 by a federal commission that examined the future of American higher education, things are getting even worse . . .

There follows a lengthy discussion of what to do about the problem. But one thing that can be done, the one thing that is relevant here, is to start taking student evaluations seriously, and not just for teaching faculty.

Student evaluations are by no means perfect. Yes, there are students who care about nothing but how easily they can get As. But at least our evaluations, and the ones at RateMyProfessors.com, can be filtered. Our evaluations are done on a scantron, and on the back are four short answer questions:

1. What did you like most about this course/instructor?
2. What did you like least about this course/instructor?
3. What could the instructor do to improve the course or his or her teaching effectiveness?
4. Other comments?

The comments are linked to the evaluation scores on the other side of the scantron. Non-serious comments indicate a non-serious evaluation. In other words, one can safely ignore the evaluation of a student who answered, say, the second question with something like, “Give us all As.” And yes, you do get non-serious comments, because as I admitted, there are students who care about nothing but how easily they can get As.

However, that some students care about nothing other than the ease with which they can get As does not imply that all or even most students care about nothing other than the ease with which they can get As, nor does it discount the student evaluation as a rating tool. One would assume that somebody with a PhD would have enough basic intelligence to grasp that, but far too many do not — or they do, but would rather discount evaluations rather than face up to the fact that they might not be the brilliant teachers they think they are.

Tenured or teaching faculty, if you are a good teacher and get good evaluations, you have no reason to sneer at them. In fact, if you get good evaluations, yet claim that evaluations are nothing more than a popularity contest, then you are admitting that you are a poseur who does not take your career seriously and that you hand out As like candy. And how stupid would you have to be to do that?

Again, some evaluations are crap. But many of them can be filtered, because they are accompanied by crap comments. This is a useful, but sloppy filter, since not all students bother to write comments on the back. Still, one may filter some of the, ahem, less than useful evaluations.

Note that the same is true on RateMyProfessors.com: Each evaluation is accompanied by comments, and non-serious comments indicate non-serious evaluations. But also note that by no means are all comments non-serious. Neither are the comments on our evaluation scantrons.

At my university, student evaluations were required to be given in all classes. However, the results were largely ignored for tenured and tenure-track faculty, but used as a major employment criterion for adjunct, or teaching, faculty. There is a certain amount of logic to this, except that it relieves tenured faculty of any review of their teaching skills. And unsurprisingly, it is always tenured faculty who sneer at evaluations. Teaching faculty do not, because if they get bad evaluations, they are not re-hired — and they shouldn’t be.

Of course, neither should the university harbor tenured faculty who consistently get bad evaluations, but that’s another topic, and addressing that problem would require at least a major redefinition of tenure, if not abolishing it altogether.

But back to student evaluations. They serve two major functions: They provide teaching effectiveness feedback for the department, school/college, and university; and they provide teaching effectiveness feedback for the faculty member. I, at least, would hold that both are equally important. At the university, they provide yet a third function.

Evaluations as school/university feedback

If evaluations are to be used administratively as teaching effectiveness rating tools, a number of issues must be addressed. Evaluations are subjective, after all. As I said earlier, some students care about nothing other than ease. Also, a statistician should design the evaluation, and not, say, a committee of teachers or the school board. Some outside agency should administer, or at least design and process, the evaluations.

Because of the nature and purpose of student evaluations, there should be no “undecided” option available to students on any question. That is, the available options should force students to make either a positive or negative response of some degree. Student evaluations are not political polls, where “undecided” can often give useful information. Student evaluations are rating tools, and as such, should force a rating.

Alternatively, including an “undecided” option can be used as a filter. After all, a student who, after a whole semester, is “undecided” about the difficulty of the course or some aspect of the teacher’s effectiveness obviously doesn’t have much of value to say about the course. Evaluations with “undecided” checked can then be discarded from the results.

Evaluations have to be controlled for non-serious ratings. As I said above, one method (admittedly sloppy) is to use the comments as a context for the evaluation. This is not really possible when the administration is using the evaluations to rate teacher effectiveness, however, and not all students write comments, so it only acts as a defective filter. Another option would be to trim the evaluations, that is, remove the top and bottom scores from a teacher’s evaluations when calculating overall scores. The problem with this method is trimming too much, easy to do if one is teaching small courses of, say, only forty students (removing the top two and bottom two from forty evaluations is the maximum). The problem is that with smaller classes — say again forty students — you aren’t trimming enough data to control for the variable (but for larger classes, like 240 students, this works well).

Perhaps the best solution is to rate all faculty after all of the evaluations are in and analyzed. Calculate population means and confidence intervals for the different criteria, and compare faculty member scores not to other faculty member scores, but the population means. This will neutralize the “lazy/disaffected student factor” and rate all faculty members on the same scale.

But because evaluations are subjective, it is also important not to use them as a sole measure of teaching effectiveness. Use them, yes, but use them along with another, more objective, measure, such as test scores. If you are an administrator and you do this, I suspect you will find, as our department did, that there will be a high correlation between student evaluations and test scores.

Evaluations should be processed individually by class, and should not be processed by instructor. John Smith may be teaching Algebra and Geometry, and may get very different evaluations in the two classes. He should therefore receive evaluations for each of his classes, instead of an overall evaluation. Even if he is teaching three Algebra courses, and all are the same content, the three should be processed individually. Excessive aggregation masks differences in data, and obscures the results of the evaluations. Aggregating evaluations by class also allows the administration to spot faculty members’ strengths and weaknesses.

Evaluations as faculty feedback

Student evaluations can provide faculty with crucial information. Remember that perceptions differ on either side of the desk. You may believe that you are being clear, but that doesn’t mean your students find you clear. The same holds for almost any criterion you can put on an evaluation.

The biggest problem with student evaluations is their infrequency. Only once at the end of the semester really isn’t helpful for your current classes, although you can use the information to improve your teaching for future classes. Another problem is that they provide too little data. As an example, let’s say you read your evaluations and find that students don’t think you’re as clear as you could be. The evaluations do not tell you much about how you could become clearer.

For these reasons, I administered informal, short-answer only, evaluations three times throughout the semester: A quarter of the way through, around midterms, and three-quarters of the way through. I explained to students that the evaluations were only for me and them, so I could find out from them how I could better present the material, and I encouraged them to be as detailed as they felt they needed to be. I got some crap, certainly, but I also got some valuable feedback about where and how I was being unclear or unhelpful, and adjusted my teaching accordingly.

I also always asked my students when they came to office hours (after we had dealt with their problems) how I could have better presented the material they had come to ask about. After all, if they didn’t have a problem, they would not have come to my office for help, and if they have a problem, then I assume I could have done more to prevent it in the first place. Never miss the opportunity to ask your students how you’re doing. Your students are not idiots. If you ask, they will have some important things you need to hear. Stop and listen.

Also, take evaluations into account along with your students’ test or assignment scores. If your students’ grades are consistently low, even if you teach a difficult course, you could be more effectively presenting the material. Poll your students even more frequently, and find out what they think you could be doing. Use the test or assignment results to tell you what your students are not getting. Keep your thumb on the pulse of the class — and you can’t do that if you’re not paying close attention.

Evaluations as consumer information

The university differs in one crucial way from the elementary, middle, or high school: University students have the luxury of choice. The student can choose his major and degree program. The student can choose his courses based in part on which faculty members are teaching them. After all, if you have to take M125 and three faculty members are teaching it, why not take it with the best of the three, or at least not take it with the worst?

When I was an undergraduate, that choice was mitigated by a lack of technology, and we were limited to word of mouth. Now we have the web, and RateMyProfessors.com, and many universities have their own forums for rating faculty. Today’s university students is far more informed about faculty than we were, and can make better choices.

Of course, there is that silly objection to students as consumers, but face it, that’s exactly what they are. The course is for them, after all, not your ego. That alone makes them consumers, and you, the provider. If you’re a godawful teacher, but your colleague is a really good teacher, then students have every right to avoid you and take your colleague’s class instead, and you would do exactly the same.

Student evaluations are, if anything, underused. They are certainly underused in public schools, particularly where teachers’ unions block any kind of teacher evaluation, and just as underused by universities with respect to tenured faculty who should be seriously evaluated on their teaching skills, but even more importantly, they are underused by well-meaning teachers, who could be using them as a powerful tool for improving their own effectiveness. If you teach, and if you care whether you are a good teacher, start asking your students for guidace, and take their answers seriously.

But how useful would student evaluations be in the public schools? Certainly not as useful as they are at the university. The older a student is, the more capable he is of judging how well he is learning the material. Student evaluations would be of very little use in the elementary grades, but more useful in high school. Still, they could be used, along with other, more heavily weighted measures, like scores or even peer or adminstrative review, to give a more complete picture of a teacher’s effectiveness.

As with any measure, the larger the sample space, the more reliable the results. This points up one difference between the public schools and the university: Class size. While there are a great many smaller university classes, particularly at the upper levels, there are also a great many large classes. Few, if any, public school teachers have over 200 students in a class.

This implies that student evaluations could be used more effectively as filters in the public schools, since smaller classes are more likely to exhibit non-normally distributed learning than large classes (the same is true at the university). That is, a teacher who teaches five small classes (40 students or fewer) is more likely to have, say, one class significantly below the others than is a teacher who has five lecture halls full of students (200 or more in each). Properly designed, student evaluations could be used to identify non-serious students who would otherwise pull down a teacher’s rating.

I dare say there are many more ways in which student evaulations could effectively be used. They are undoubtedly underused, and even where they are used, used poorly. If we are to become better teachers, and if our schools and universities are to become more effective places of learning, student evalutaions provide a unique and powerful assessment tool.

First, a note to the idiot: A simple search on my blog will reveal that I don’t take polls very seriously. That’s just so you don’t make an ass of yourself again. Oh. To search the blog, scroll down to the search box, and type in poll, or click here (nobody can accuse me of not being helpful, particularly to the mentally challenged).

So as a point of interest only, here are the results of this AOL straw poll:

Total voters: 38,316

Obama: 10,495 (27%)
McCain: 27,821 (73%)

Megan McArdle is requesting recommendations for good introductions to Sci-Fi, for female readers. I agree with one of her commenters:

Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game. The most beloved SF novel of the last 30 years. If you don’t like it, well you probably just won’t like SF, period.
Robert Heinlein, Future History series and Starship Troopers. Classic, core SF
Isaac Asimov, the Foundation Series. Again, classic SF
Arthur C Clarke, Childhood’s End, The City and the Stars, The Deep Range.

But it’s summer, the time of year for something you can really get your teeth into, and anyway, I’m really not very good at recommending books for beginners, as it were — although I highly recommend the above to anyone. So for those who want a really good read, and not just a good narrative, here are my Sci-Fi suggestions.

Dune, Frank Herbert. (Note: Herbert is a one-hit wonder. I don’t recommend anything else he wrote. His first two sequels were, as far as Sci-Fi goes, entertaining, but came nowhere close to the first novel. Reading his other books does give you additional appreciation for Dune, if only because you wonder how he managed to write such a novel.)

Dune is not a book you can whizz through. In fact, I’d suggest that you read it, then immediately start over and read it again. You are plunged into an alien, yet familiar, feudal world far in the future, where everything is political, and the politics are extremely complex. The first time through, you may not understand all of the motivations. That’s fine. A novel this complex can’t be absorbed in a cursory reading (although it’s also a large novel).

Dune melds the scientific with the deeply spiritual, in a novel of massive scope for any literary genre. It’s unfortunate that Herbert only had one great novel in him. His writing style is not dense. It’s the content that gives Dune its complexity — and once you’ve read it, you will understand why any attempt to film it is doomed before it begins.

Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe.

Wolfe is the most literary Sci-Fi author, more so than many who write literature. This is a long novel, which used to be released as four books; it is now released as two: Shadow and Claw, and Sword and Citadel. Like Herbert, Wolfe plunges you into a complex world with no explanation of what’s going on, or what anything is. Unlike Herbert, Wolfe will send you running for the dictionary.

Wolfe writes extraordinarily beautiful prose, and New Sun is a book whose prose you will savor. Herbert’s world is feudal. Wolfe’s world is dark and medieval, even in ways barbaric, yet full of wonder.

As you read, it will slowly dawn on you what Wofe described some hundred pages ago, and you’ll say, “Oh, that’swhat that is! I get it!” When you begin, all is mysterious. When you finish, all is clear, and you will wonder why it seemed mysterious in the first place.

Beautifully written, beautifully executed, and beautifully crafted, Book of the New Sun belongs on every bookshelf. You couldn’t read it quickly even if you wanted to, and you won’t want to. It’s a book to be enjoyed as it very slowly gives up its secrets.

But if a rollicking good time is what you’re after, try Cities in Flight by James Blish, or The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle.

Arrested for DUI — riding his lawnmower on the road.

Joe Huffman: How Gun Control Lost.

Cherry pie will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll make it early, so when I get back, I can have a piece or three.

and the store. Cherry pie in the works.

Pics below the fold.

Went to the Peoples’ Choice at Boalsburg yesterday (pics to follow). Scott’s was there, but I only got one sandwich, instead of my customary two, since I wanted pirogies and fries. And a milkshake.

I was expecting a couple of pirogies. I got four, floating in melted butter and onions. The fries were top-notch, too, but I came home swearing I’d never eat again.

Went to the farmers’ market, and picked up sour cherries and Hungarian wax peppers. Have to go back to Meyer today because we forgot half of the empty milk bottles.

The Peoples’ Choice Festival is this weekend too, in Boalsburg. We’ll be going today. Scott’s will be there, with their roasted pork sandwiches. Here are some pics (click the pic to hugefy, but you knew that), below the fold.

This was in front of the Obama headquarters, and I knew if I didn’t take a picture, nobody would believe me (clicky for biggie):

So they’re selling water — but not just any water, it’s Magic Obama Hope water!

Other arts fest photos will follow. This deserved its own space.

Scott’s is at the Boalsburg Arts Festival this weekend, so I got a cheesesteak (not bad), real fries, apfel strudel at Helmut’s (brought home), and of course, stopped at the creamery and got an ice cream cone. Pics later.

Nittany Meats had bacon (of course). I usually don’t buy ground meat (I grind my own), but there was this bin labeled, “Bacon Burger.” I asked. Yes, it was hamburger with bacon ground up in it, and you know, we had to have some of that. And I picked up some loose country sausage while we were there.

Doctor appointment at 3.

First, to Nittany Meats for bacon (and maybe other things). Back here to toss the food in the refrigerator, then into town to the Arts Festival (and food!)

The festival here is about the same size (and same kinds of things) as the 4th Street Festival in Bloomington. However, this one is spread out over a larger area, and there are booths only on one side of the street, which I find to be a great idea. It makes moving around much easier.

Oh. And they have more (and better) food.

Not only did this idiot take the pet poll seriously — he actually hunted me down to leave a comment, showing off his stupidity.

Amazing.

McCain has 22 pets:

• 2 dogs
• 1 cat
• 2 turtles
• 3 birds
• 1 ferret
• 13 fish

McCain leads among pet-owners, too.

I made potato soup last night. Today, we’ll hit the Arts Fair (I think it started yesterday), for Scott’s roasted pork sandwiches and apfelstrudel, then Nittany Meats to try their bacon. They make and smoke all their sausages. I’m hoping they sell their own bacon, too.

And I didn’t mean to single out Sam’s. Any bacon you buy in the supermarket is waterlogged.

(I got this on an email list. If you want to look up the story, all the information is below.)

Neil Boortz is always talking about the Atlanta Journal-Constitution being a liberal paper. I don’t read it, but here’s an example of the kind of left-wing idiocy that has real consequences:

‘Men At Work’ signs to disappear in Atlanta
Decision follows complaints by magazine editor

By ERIC STIRGUS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/09/08

In the battle of the sexes, women’s magazine editor Cynthia Good said this was a skirmish she had to fight.

Across Atlanta they stood, orange signs with black letters that read “Men At Work” or “Men Working Ahead.”

Sometimes, the signs stood next to women working alongside the men.

Good demanded Atlanta officials remove the signs and last week, Atlanta Public Works Commissioner Joe Basista agreed.

Score one for gender equality, Good said Wednesday.

“They get it,” Good said about the city in a telephone interview.

What could possibly be wrong with this? Why, those awful signs hurt peoples’ feelings! What’s wrong with it (other than it’s just stupid) is what they don’t tell you here:

Public Works officials are replacing 50 “Men Working” with signs that say “Workers Ahead.” It will cost $22 to cover over some of the old signs and $144 to buy new signs, said Public Works spokeswoman Valerie Bell-Smith said.

See what they did? They reported the per sign cost, which makes it sound like there’s next to no cost involved! So do they tell us either approximately how many signs there are, or what the approximate total cost of this feel-good idiocy is?

No.

So what else do they tell us? Not much, other than that these idiots are on a crusade to force everybody across the US to pay up to change the signs so their feelings won’t be hurt:

“We’re calling on the rest of the nation to follow suit and make a statement that we will not accept these subtle forms of discrimination,” said Good, 48.

Good pressed the issue after Atlanta police came to her office last month on a complaint that she spray painted “wo” onto a “Men At Work” sign.

Did she do it? Good replied by complaining about the signs.

Good fired off letters complaining about the signs to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Gov. Sonny Perdue.

State transportation officials said they will ask contractors to remove signs specifying just men are working at a construction site.

Atlanta union leader Gina Pagnotta said some women employees of Atlanta Public Works complained about these signs years ago.

“It is a little bit bias to say ‘Men Working,’ ” said Pagnotta, president of the Professional Association of City Employees. “Women are working, too.”

FOAD.

is that unless you’re a full-time blogger on the specific topic, you may not have something topical to submit when the deadline rolls around. And me, I’m just not the kind of person to torment myself trying to think up some crap to send in just because the deadline is nearing.

Anyway, I watched Hard Times at Douglass High yesterday. All I can say is alien environment. What we at the university call discipline problems, well, the teachers in the documentary would just laugh. Sure, we get disengaged students (although most of those don’t come to class, so we don’t have to put up with it), but for the most part, the considerable amount of misbehavior on university campuses happens outside the classroom.

And that started me thinking. I always had a policy: Any time any colleague in the department needed a sub, I volunteered. I didn’t do this because I wanted to be altruistic. My motivation was purely self-interest. You see, I had everybody in the department owing me big-time and when I did go out of town — and while rare, those trips tended to be for a full week — I would always be able to get subs.

As a result of this policy, I have more experience than most in seeing other people’s classes. What was striking was how some people (no names) always had unruly classes. I never could figure out why.

I’m no storm trooper in the classroom. I don’t yell at students (even when they are being unruly), and I don’t get nasty. The thing is, my classes were never unruly. Never. Here’s my untested hypothesis to explain it.

Way back when I started teaching, I was overly familiar. That was no doubt because I wasn’t that much older than my students. That didn’t work, or at least, I wasn’t at all effective at controlling the classroom.

As the age difference between me and my students increased, I became more formal and authoritarian. I swung way too far in that direction, and found that it didn’t help me control the class. I also wasn’t comfortable with it.

Over the years, I found an effective balance between the two extremes. I am warm and cordial with students, but I maintain a professional distance. I am not on a first-name basis with them (although I don’t insist that they address me in any specific way). I address all of my students as Mr. Jones and Ms. Wilson — not to be cold or formal, but respectful. I never talk down to students, even when they are being stupid (and yes, they are sometimes incredibly so). I made sure that they understood that my highest priority was not only to teach the material, but to do everything I could to see that they learned it, and succeeded.

I treat my students like adults. Not peers, because we are not peers, but adults.

The surprising thing is that they respond to that. When I walk into the room, students stop talking. Well, that’s my classroom. When I walk into many of my colleagues’ classrooms, the talking continues until I have said, “Let’s start,” four or five times. In my classroom, when I ask a question, students respond. In those other classrooms, I have to ask repeatedly, and often have to threaten to “volunteer” somebody.

Students come to my office hours, sometimes just to talk. They greet me in the hall or the library. Until I left the university, ex-students frequently dropped by my office to chat and let me know what was going on in their lives.

My hypothesis is that while students may not be adults in the fullest sense of the word, they appreciate being treated like adults, and they appreciate being treated with respect. If you set a respectful tone, students (in my experience) will rise to it. I had only a very few students that could be termed discipline problems. Some of my colleagues, on the other hand, at least to judge from daily conversation, had troublesome, disrespectful students on their hands all the time.

At meetings, they would ask things like, “How do I keep students from walking out early?” I could not imagine one of my students walking out early, unless he had asked me if he could before class started. It just never happened. Not once.

Note that my colleagues ribbed me a lot about the way I addressed my students. The thing is, they were the ones with the problems, not me.

Thats my hypothesis, anyway.

is all the hell liberals are raising about the House Democrats trying to shut down the free speech of Congressmen.

Deafening, isn’t it?

One of the things we have been getting at Sam’s is bacon, because they sell it in 2 2-lb packages for less than you can get it in the supermarket. For the last couple of days, I’ve been snarfing down bacon for lunch trying to get to the end of the bacon.

It’s not Sam’s, specifically (they sell a national brand). It’s bacon at any store.

When did they start adding all that water?

That’s my first problem with bacon. My second (or second and third, depending on how you look at it) is the cut. These days, you can either get thick cut, which is too thick (tried to crumble any?), or “regular,” and that’s thinner than bacon used to be cut, too thin.

So this weekend, we’ll be going to Nittany Meats and trying their platter bacon.

Trooper York:

A German woman called cops on a female pal who had come over to chat and wouldn’t leave - for 30 hours.

Sounds familiar.

When finally forced to leave, Ms Weiss turned to her friend and said “I’ll be back.”

Yeah. That’s her.

Wyatt was stung by a bee (unfortunately, he’s allergic).

The last time I was stung was in 1983, well, until last spring. We decided to do some exploring, and drive around the county on the country roads. It was maybe 75 and the windows were down (have I mentioned that not once have I used the car AC since we moved here?)

My right leg — specifically, the top of my thigh — itched, so I put my hand down to scratch it, and yow! I got a hot nail in my thumb. I looked down, and there was a squished bumble-ee-bee.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anybody being stung by a bumblebee. I like bumblebees (actually, I like bees — but I hate, and take great delight in killing — wasps). We were in the boonies so I just pulled over and looked, but didn’t find a stinger, so I pulled back onto the road, sucking my thumb till the pain subsided.

About thirty minutes or so later, my leg itched again, and again, I put my hand down — and I’ll be damned if I didn’t accidentally squish, and get stung by, a second bumblebee. In the same place.

By the way, it’s no more painful than a honey bee sting. Maybe less.

We’ve been having virtual rain here all day. The internet connection has been going up and down (they’re doing something to the cable — I’m hoping it’s done now), and I just had to reboot my router.

So the signal suddenly disappeared, and I looked outside.

It’s raining. Like really raining. It never rains up here. Never.

I’m not sure who’s been signing me up for email lists over the last couple of years, but reallly, it’s getting tiresome. As of this morning, I am suddenly on the HuffPo’s Campaign Trail list.

Hi,

It’s the electoral race of the century. Political maps are being redrawn, and rules are getting rewritten across the board. Fundraising records have been broken. The candidates are even comparing the sizes of their email lists.

The mainstream media is tripping over itself to report on every last press release and campaign announcement. But do any of us REALLY know what’s going on?

With you helping from the frontlines, the Huffington Post can change campaign coverage. OffTheBus is HuffPost’s citizen-powered and -produced election site, and we’re depending on readers like you to tip us to what’s going on or, better yet, to write up the stories you think should be covered.

Look. Deleting messages gets old, okay? So whoever you are, stop.

Thanks.

That’s what’s going on here (you know, backup data, etc.)

One of the stupidest shows on television (there’s lots of competition) is Cool Fuel, which features such feats of genius as making a moped that runs on mashed potatoes.

Have you seen these ads on TV where these people are amazed! to discover that some insurance company has an 800 number, and if they call it, they can get insurance?

Seriously. Are there people that stupid in the world? Who do they make these ads for, anyway?

Well, the DVD is better than standard, but not quite as crisp and clean as the HD broadcast.

Hmmmmm:

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program _ a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium _ reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” _ the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment _ was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

No WMDs? No nuclear program? No yellowcake? Really?

Recorded Live Free or Die Hard off Cinemax HD, and burning it to DVD now. The HD picture is amazing. We’ll see how the DVD looks when the movie’s over.

Premonition is on Showtime HD. It gets about the same rating on IMDB as Perfect Stranger, but it can’t be worse than Perfect Stranger. I saw the end coming a good hour before the movie was over.

Bitter had a bitter experience with a particularly disgusting sounding pie. Chocolate banana pie.

Ugh. The bile is rising in my throat just looking at the name.

Okay, I admit, I love bananas and hate all things banana (banana bread, banana pie, banana cake, banana candy, all disgusting items that should never be eaten). But this is one of those “pies” with whipped cream on top.

Whipped cream never, ever, under any circumstances is a pie topping. Never. Meringue goes on pies. You can serve whipped cream with pieces of pie, but no, never should it appear as a pie topping.

Never.

Key Lime Pie, you say? That’s a nasty excuse for a pie, candy sweet and vile. And it has a graham cracker crust. That’s not pie. Pie has a pie crust. Graham cracker crusts are for cheesecakes and junior high home ec recipes for kids who can’t make pie crusts. That’s filth. If you like lime and want a pie, make lime meringue pie.

We now have HD, with 95 additional HD channels. All I can say is, “Wow.”

Currently on the tube: Deadliest Catch, on Discovery HD.

* A&E HD
* Animal Planet HD
* Big Ten Network HD
* Biography Channel HD
* Bravo HD
* Cartoon Network
* Cinemax HD East
* Cinemax HD West
* CMT HD
* CNBC HD+
* CNN HD
* CSN Chicago HD
* CSN Mid-Atlantic HD
* CSTV HD
* Discovery Channel HD
* ESPN HD
* ESPN2 HD
* ESPNews HD
* Fox Business Network HD
* FSN Detroit HD
* FSN Prime Ticket HD
* FSN Southwest HD
* FSN West HD
* Fuel TV HD
* FX HD
* HBO HD East
* HBO HD West
* HD Theater
* HDNet
* History Channel HD
* MSG HD
* MSG PLUS HD
* MTV HD
* National Geographic Channel HD
* NBA.TV HD
* NESN HD
* NFL Network HD
* NHL Network HD
* Science Channel HD
* Sci-Fi Channel HD
* Showtime HD
* Showtime HD West
* Showtime 2 HD
* SNY HD
* Speed Channel HD
* Spike HD
* Starz Comedy HD
* Starz Edge HD
* Starz HD East
* Starz HD West
* Starz Kids & Family HD
* TBS in HD
* Tennis Channel HD
* The Movie Channel HD
* TLC HD
* TNT HD
* USA Network HD
* VERSUS HD/GOLF CHANNEL HD
* VH1 HD
* YES HD

Sometime between noon and four pm . . .

Like I said before, the “youth vote” is at best elusive, if not illusory, and again, we’re being inundated with breathlessly excited stories about how the “youth vote” is going to sweet the jug-eared jackass into office.

Thanks to Darren, here’s that “youth vote” in action:

A University of Minnesota student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this fall’s presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn’t see the humor in the stunt.

Max P. Sanders, 19, was charged with a felony Thursday in Hennepin County District Court after allegedly asking for a minimum of $10 in exchange for voting for the bidder’s preferred candidate. “Good luck!” Sanders wrote under the eBay handle zepdrummer612. “You’re (sic) country depends on You!”

Sanders was charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting under an 1893 state law that makes it a crime to offer to buy or sell a vote.

Bowled over by the idealism, aren’t you?

Andy Roth at Club for Growth did an interesting study. He looked at 162 Senate votes, and tabulated how frequently Senators voted with Harry Reid. Senators Coburn and DeMint came in at the top, voting the least frequently with the deranged Reid, at 28.4% and 29%, respectively.

Guess who came in at number three?

John McCain, who only voted with Harry Reid 32.4% of the time.

What’s most interesting about this is that some of the “real conservatives” whom pundits suggest McCain should choose for the VP slot have voted with Harry Reid significantly more frequently than McCain. Brownback, for example, voted with Reid 45.7% of the time, Sessions 43.2%, Cornyn 46.3%, and Thune, a solid conservative 50% of the time.

My suggestion for MDS sufferers is that they start looking at actual data instead of relying on their impressions, or what the pundits tell them. Deaf ears, I know, but I can try.

Raw, undisciplined, cowardly men:

In March 1775, the British First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich, declared “Suppose the colonies do abound in men, what does that signify? They are raw, undisciplined, cowardly men.” It was an opinion that resonated in the House of Commons. (David McCullough, 1776)

The following month the British army would find out just how “raw, undisciplined, and cowardly” those men were not, when they met at Lexington and Concord in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The pyrric British victory in these opening battles of the American Revolution would set the tone for things to come, and truely were “the shots heard around the world.”

Those “raw, undisciplined, and cowardly men” overcame tremendous adversities in fighting the most powerful military force of the day. Fourteen months later, on July 4, 1776, Congress approved the wording of the most sacred document in American history—the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration laid out, in detail, the infractions of the tyrant King George against the colonists of America, and declared the thirteen colonies free of British rule.

The war raged on for five more years, but in the fall of 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis was surrendering his army to the “raw, undisciplined, and cowardly” American General George Washington.

Had I seen it yesterday, I definitely would have linked it. Surely the best 4th of July article for 2008. The only thing it is missing is this:

Faced with a dwindling supply of food and ammunition, and still awaiting relief from Clinton, Cornwallis offered to surrender unconditionally on October 17. Cornwallis declined to appear at the surrender ceremony or to surrender his sword (a custom at the time) to General Washington, claiming illness and sending Charles O’Hara instead. Washington refused to accept the surrender from O’Hara, and so the deputy surrendered to Washington’s subordinate, General Benjamin Lincoln. When the British forces came out, their drummers played the march, “The Day the World Turned Upside Down.”

:

HBO is replaying the John Adams mini-series starting tonight, and since this was one of the things on the hard drive of the dead DirecTiVO, I just set the box to record them.

Then I realized that today is the day we get the HD dish installed. So once that happens, I’ll set the box to record off HBO HD.

Except.

If I record something from an HD channel, then burn it to DVD, can it be played on a regular TV? Enquiring minds need to know.