[inlink]jason,72[/inlink]
Being admitted to grad school is no indication of any sort of intelligence. It basically means you can jump through hoops, fill out paperwork, and write basic english sentences. I can guarantee you of that. I think it used to mean a lot more. Along the same lines, this is probably why an undergraduate degree is now about equivalent to a high school degree in our parents generation.
I know this will kill you
(e:jasonisback) but sometimes if students don't aggree with the material being presented they shouldn't be taking that class. The teacher obviously has an agenda which the school felt qualified enough to warrant them teaching a class about it. When students remain challenging to these positions it often disrupts the learning of others, who are perhaps already in concensus and would like to explore the topic further.
(e:shoetif) , I am not suggesting this is your situation at all.
Good Example
I have witnessed this in a biology class in SC once where the teacher was teaching evolution and the creationist student had to keep challenging it. For the other students, as well as, for the teacher it became quite annoying as we could never move past the basic tennents of evolution without constantly going over how it was only one posiiton and that other people believe that god created all the humans the way they are. That ends up being really unfair to students who accept the idea and want to learn more about the specifics. At least that was a general biology class so it is possible that the student had to take it. But "queer theory" is for sure not on anyones required class list.
Does anyone rememeber Leo from Trebor's Screen tehory class. I can't remeber the specifics of why he "left" / "was removed" but it was similar to this.
Here is also an email I received on the mailing list for media studies. It seems like liberal arts like english and media studies, etc is generally the wrong place for someone who is right leaning, at least at UB - although I have yet to see a conservative liberal arts program. Here is an email sent by one of the full-time faculty to the media studies grad list.
> Politics in the New Media Classroom
As part of: WebCamTalk 1.0
* Introduction:
Thinking about educators some may argue that there is no room for the
personal politics of the professor in the classroom. We disagree. The Greek
word "professore" means " to proclaim." It does not mean "say nothing, look
the other side when thousands die in Iraq, when civil liberties vanish under
the Patriot Act, academic freedom of speech is questioned, or when the
International Monetary Fund ruins yet another Jamaica.