response #5

“I wonder, sometimes, at the conclusion of a course, when I fail nine out of 15 students, whether the college will send me a note either (1) informing me of a serious bottleneck in the march toward commencement and demanding that I pass more students, or (2) commending me on my fiscal ingenuity—my high failure rate forces students to pay for classes two or three times over.”
           I feel as if there is no part in this essay that drew me to a blank so I chose a passage that I felt reflected on how I thought about Professor X. To read that Professor X fails 9 out of 15 students is absolutely appalling to me because I would refuse to take his class. Because the statistics that he says about his teaching style, I wouldn’t want to take the risk. Coming from being a student with a 3.8 GPA, grades are one of my top priorities and I will do anything it takes to earn a grade I want. With Professor X, it seems like he sets up his students for failure. Since he seems like he has such a sour attitude about teaching in this essay, it makes the feel throughout the essay head south. By having him say that some students will never pass his class makes me think that he isn’t a very good teacher. I want a teacher that is willing to work with me and help me get better instead of one that just assumes that I’m not going to understand the concept and have a “why bother” mood towards me. If I were the boss of professor X worked at, I would question him and rotationally fire him because he’s apparently not doing a well enough job teaching his students. People pay good money to go to college and they deserve the resource of getting help so they can pass there classes to get a good job. That’s how I see running start and high school. Even though I know that I’m probably never going to need to know how to dissect a frog or how to find the square root of 342 in my head, I understand that that’s what it takes for me to earn a good grade, expand my knowledge, get scholarships, get into a good college, and get a job. I feel as if X doesn’t see that his class can effect the students whole future. I bet he’s had students be highly confused on why he or she failed his class and I doubt he had a good reasonable excuse. By reading this essay, it seems to be saying that college is not for everyone so Professor X tries to figure out who it isn’t cut out for. By having him make all of his rules and seeing that students don’t want to be there makes him feels the need to fail them.
                  My gut reaction after reading this article was the X is kind of an ass. Knowing that he thinks all college students don’t want to be there, makes me want to tell him that lots of people do care and do want to get something out of his class. For example, this class( English 100) I’m not taking just to get the grade, I’m taking it to become a better writer. Having him predict how the semester is going to layout, shows how he treats the classes all the same. It makes me think how science teachers want there students to learn by doing experiments so the teachers don’t give exact answers. The study behind this is that if a person logically figures something out instead of just having people tell them an answer, they will learn better. I feel like X is trying to use this method in a way by observing that some kids don’t want to take up the challenge, but others are willing to do so. This makes me question if some of my teachers do this to me. Having them look in the past and seeing that I’ve had very successful years in the past, are they grading me harder or easier? It would make sense for both because if they graded me harder, it would be because they want to push my learning, but if they were to grade me easier, it would be because they might assume that I tried my best. Professor X seems to have to high of standards for his students and maybe he should reconsider lowering them.