Education College Horror Stories

Scene: Introduction to Education class. Before midterm and final exams, professor handed out "review list" of 100 items. Exam had exactly these 100 items (written in exactly the same way, the order was even identical) as either T-F questions or fill-in-the-blank questions. Now that I think about it, there might have been some multiple guess questions, too. Another assignment in this class (worth 10% of our grade) was to keep a journal. Too bad blogs didn’t exist back then.

Scene: Undergraduate educational psychology class. First day of class after professor's lecture. We were assigned to work on a set of essays in class in groups (group work is really, really big in education schools). The first essay presented a classroom case study and asked something along the lines of "compare and contrast what theory A and theory B have to say about this situation and how each one might be applied to the situation" (I thought it was a pretty good question.) One student in the group proceeds to open up the book, copy out verbatim the textbook's explanation of theory A (in abstract, not applying it to the situation in the question at all) and then theory B. period. end of essay. Refused to listen to my objections that we had not answered the question. Thankfully, when I explained this to the professor, he allowed me turn in separate essays after that. Which turned out to be a good thing, since I received the only A in the class.

Scene: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! Required watching (during class time, at that) in my undergraduate methods of teaching math course (required to get certified as a math teacher). Other assignments in that class: Watch Stand and Deliver (again, in class), writing instructions on how to get from one spot on campus to another (to see if you could write clear instructions, again the writing and following of these instructions was during class), writing a poem about how we felt about mathematics.

Scene: Undergraduate methods of teaching high school class. Professor (not a bad one at all, and positively brilliant by education school standards) gave us a list of 40 essays that would be related to (but not identical to) our final exam, which would consist of 10 essays. Students *demanded* that he narrow the list to only twenty essays and reproduce ten of them EXACTLY on the final; one of them threw a serious hissy-fit when the professor refused.

Scene: Social Studies Education doctoral-level class. Class was supposed to meet 2.5 hrs a day twice a week for eight weeks (total contact hours 40 hrs). Textbook was "Scandinavian Welfare States", but let's not even touch that. This story has other places to go. The first day, professor puts students into groups (of course) to work on a presentation about the book. Class will meet for 1 hr a week on alternate weeks so that each group can make its presentation. Total contact hours: 4! Sidebar -- Total contact hours involving actual work by the professor: 0!! Total work to be graded: one paper and one presentation turned in by each group. Exams: none. Additional reading: none. Keep in mind this is a DOCTORAL course. Final grade distribution: 12 A's!! (I wasn't actually in this class; I just had occasion to observe it while working next door in an education lab one summer.)

Scene: Math Education doctoral-level class: Grade based on two assignments: (1) Undergo a personal health improvement program and quantify the results (2) Predict the population of the US in 2030. Final grade distribution: 10 A's!! Side note: Nobody's report for the second assignment (except mine) actually used statistically valid arguments for extrapolating the population. And apparently nobody realized this as their answers varied from U.S. Census Department figures, sometimes by tens of millions.

Scene: Doctoral-level ed stat course that all Ed.D. and Ph.D. candidates in school were required to take. Some of the sections of this class were taught by and Adjunct Professor of Educational Research. The reason this person was an adjunct and not a regular full-time faculty member: did not have doctorate. Why not? Because after three attempts, had been unable to pass the College of Arts & Sciences statistical methods for social scientists course that was required to get your Ed.D. Keep in mind this person taught statistics!

Scene: Doctoral-level curriculum course. Entire grade based on final exam. Questions provided ahead of time. You could bring your pre-written answers into the exam room. Only requirement was that you had to copy them into the professor-provided blue-book in the exam time alloted. And of course, everybody got an A.

For the record, these events happened between 1990 and 1996 in three different universities.