BROTHER in law? I’m kind of surprised he didn’t get lynched honestly. Or at least poisoned. I’ve lived in three different Latin America countries. My first thought if I see a white, foreign male traveller alone, trying to get close to kids is... well, you know where this is going. Seriously, that’s the OTHER reason…

Exactly. Jezebel, as always, is confusing. They first state that there was no consent and then sample an article that make it sound like consent was given, but is compromised by the fact that its not informed.

You obviously know nothing about SAT scores. Having actually taught students who achieved near perfect scores on the SAT, I can tell you that they are not a predictor of academic success. You can easily learn to score highly on the SAT if you are “prepared.” That is why SAT prep tutors will actually guarantee certain…

No. These people don’t outgrow their sense of educational entitlement. I can tell you, because I’ve had to teach them once they got to college and they only feel further victimized when their brilliance isn’t immediately recognized there. This feeling of victimization leads to entrenchment. To be clear... they are a…

As someone who was a TA for six years at an Ivy League school, and paid a lot of attention to the metrics of admission as they changed over the years, seeing the demographics of my students change from year to year, I can tell you... you will not get into your dream school on the basis of your GPA and SAT scores. Not…

Yeah. Unfortunately our evaluations are electronic so the professor isn’t there, even to give instructions before leaving the room.

I also wanted to add that, to me, the assignment of Huckleberry Finn to children is wildly inappropriate. Because its a great novel, for adults. But the themes are not ones that are accessible to children. It’s a novel about moral relativism, judicial relativism and religious extremism and clan violence. It’s really…

That’s a book where you’ve got to give a lot of explicit explanation. Especially for younger children. You’ll have kids who’ve been called that word. You’ll have people who’ve never heard it. And you’ll have people whose parents use it. All in one classroom.

Empathetic professors have always given “trigger warnings” in just the way you’re describing. I don’t like the idea that certain “triggers” have been formalized: Sexual assault, eating disorder, suicide... Ironically, these formal warnings have the effect of prescribing a limited set of experiences of discomfort as…

Some evaluations are just ridiculously poorly written too. I actually think that my departments’ are pretty good, and pretty fair. But I recently took another instructor’s class, for fun, and while I know the students loved both him and the class, I worry about his evaluations just because of the way they were…

I recently completed my PhD in the humanities at an Ivy League. Over the course of the last half decade, I taught almost a dozen courses. Mostly good evaluations. One set that really burned me. I identify most with this statement: “When I taught Antigone, my students were less disturbed by the material than I was by…