“Free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five,” read the passage in the syllabus. But when the semester ended on Dec. 8, students went home and the cash was unclaimed.
“My semester-long experiment has come to an end,” [Kenyon Wilson, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga] wrote on Facebook, adding: “Today I retrieved the unclaimed treasure.”...
Tanner Swoyer, a senior studying instrumental music education, said that he felt “pretty dumb, pretty stupid” when he saw the professor’s post... Mr. Swoyer immediately texted his classmates, who also felt “bamboozled,” mostly because, he said, this was something Professor Wilson would do....
I see no bamboozling here. I've already blogged about the word "bamboozle" — complete with a quote from "The Life of Pi" — here. But, briefly, to "bamboozle" is to trick. There's no trick here. The students didn't lose or risk losing their own money. It was the professor's money, and he put it where anyone could easily take it, if they were sharp enough to see.
Let this be a lesson to everyone: What fine benefits are right there for you to take that you do not see? Jesus said:
[T]heir ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart.... But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.
A footnote:
I was surprised to see the phrase "The jig is up" again (and so soon). The NYT article ends with the professor saying he probably couldn't repeat what he did: "The jig is up... There’s no way I can duplicate that.”
Just 2 days ago, I blogged about "The jig is up," which appeared in a WaPo headline. I recommended avoiding this phrase because it can be misunderstood.
I mean absolutely nothing against Professor Wilson, whom I defend even against the charge that he's a bamboozler, but if I were editing the NYT, I would have omitted that quote. It's in the "chink in the armor" category. Or "niggardly." It contains a syllable that in other contexts is a racial slur, and it is subject to misreading, and it's not useful enough to need to save.
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66 comments:
"What fine benefits are right there for you to take that you do not see?"
Index investing. Compound interest (way back when). Regular exercise.
It's amazing how many students do not read the syllabus for their classes at any point during the semester. They depend on the professor to remind them of the reading assignment for the next class. One thing I noticed in the students that excelled was that they read the entire syllabus for all their classes prior to the first day of the semester. They did the required reading and as much as possible of the suggested readings. Therefore, they were not surprised when a quiz or special assignment was suddenly mentioned in class. These were the students who went on to obtain federal clerkship positions.
No one reads the syllabus these days?
Maybe this time we don't blame hillbillies and Black people who refuse to get vaccinated? What if it's the vaccinated people's fault? If the vaccines do not prevent transmission, can they create conditions that promote the emergence of Covid variants that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated people? Instead of "hot" strains disappearing as hosts die, they just get hotter:
https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/are-leaky-vaccines-causing-the-new-covid-19-mutations
Burger king named the whopper after Italian food.
So you are saying we should give up yet another common English phrase to the Woke? Give it up to what we used to call political correctness. Nope not gonna do it.
I’ve written an admittedly boring CAD drafting standards manual that I give to new drafters. There’s a free lunch in there that no one has claimed.
I'll contrast your "no evidence" post the other day to this "evidence before your eyes" post.
BTW, he didn’t put clues in- he flat out gave the answer!
It would border on bamboozlement if Prof. Wilson sandwiched this info between the required DEI statement and the ADA boilerplate. Everybody skips past those.
This reminds me of Van Halen’s no brown m&ms contract requirement. When the story first circulated—that they wanted m&ms in the dressing room, but they wanted the brown ones picked out, with a huge penalty for noncompliance—it was cited as an example of prima donna rock star absurdity. But the real story is there were important safety requirements for stage design in the contract and if they saw brown m&ms in the dressing room, then they knew the venue management didn’t read the contract, which meant the band couldn’t trust the safety precautions. The huge penalty was to cover the cost of bringing in their own safety team.
The syllabus is never more than 2 or 3 pages. How did nobody read to the end?
A two page syllabus?
What a dick!
On the other hand, that’s exactly the lesson that needs to be taught. Look beyond the bright and shiny rocks......grasshopper!
One of our engineering faculty, a West Indian B/black, told a similar story. To see if anyone was doing suggested reading, he put a few $20s (this was years ago) among the listed books at the library.
He said he never lost any money.
But this sounds more like one of those grade-school READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE BEGINNING EXERCISE! exercises. Which makes it all the more pathetic--less effort on both sides.
I'm pretty sure some of my students read my syllabi, especially those confused by it.
"Let this be a lesson to everyone: What fine benefits are right there for you to take that you do not see?"
I think a better lesson is: "Do the work." The benefits derive from that.
Or would that be too white supremacy?
Students are trained to not read the syllabus. They are trained not to think.
Students in today's universities are trained to take the easiest route to the credential. Particularly in the non stem major.
So who is responsible for how the University system is set up?
This is 100% on the Professors and the administrations of these certificate factories.
Of course everyone wants to say "Oh look how dumb those students are."
But how many professors are out there taking responsibility for their hand in this? The only ones who have that type of self reflection have been driven out.
We are left with professors like AA who never miss an opportunity to talk about how stupid their students are.
Part of being a professor is always emphasizing to the world just how smart you are and how much smarter you are than everyone else.
And 99% of professors accomplish absolutely nothing themselves. Those who can't do teach.
It is time to call a spade a spade. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
If they really felt “tricked”, the result of the professor’s experiment is only the tip of the spear.
Unwillingness to admit… not even perusing the required school literature?
I keep thinking about yesterday's post about words that we're not supposed to use any more. I have often used the word chink to explain why after living in a 1740's chinked log cabin I personally dislike the round log homes popular today. My horse of 19 years is named Jiggs. I had a coonhound for many years and as a fan or mules have always enjoyed competitive "coon jumping". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxREDmUSeGo. So many words have two meanings, lie, row, lead, refuse, fine, etc. Will we eventually need a new language?
This reminds me of a "quiz" a teacher in high school gave us. It started with, "Read the instructions to the end." Only two of us read to the end, which said, "Do not take the test and turn your paper over." The rest of the class answered the test questions.
The more I think about this, the more amazed I become. Who doesn't read the syllabus, for Pete's sake?
Clearly, students do not take the syllabus seriously at his school and, rather than developing a way to convey the information, he took the opportunity to shine a light on how clever he is. My view is that if a few of my students don't do something, that's on them. If *all* of the students don't do something, that's on me.
I hope he gets ticketed for going 56 in a 55 zone because, after all, it is repeatedly posted that the *limit* is 55.
I took a test in high school where the teacher had written all the answers on the chalkboard.
Less than half the students noticed.
This is a nice variant on Van Halen's "No Brown M&Ms" clause. I am still grateful to Prof. Althouse for pointing us to the video of David Lee Roth telling the story.
"Niggardly" does not come from the Latin root nigr, but is apparently a problem.
"Denigrate" - which appears in the headline just one post up, comes from the Latin roots de and nigr and means "to blacken" but is apparently inoffensive
This is very puzzling
Yes, those phases in the note at the end are easily misunderstood by graduates of our finest indoctrination status universities. Credentialed but uneducated.
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
Robert Frost
Before the NYT paywall closed I saw that the information on the $50 in a locker was on the bleeping second page of the syllabus. The clowns in his class could not be bothered to read two pages (not saying that there may have been more than two pages to the syllabus).
I mean today's college students really put in a lot of work to get their (mis)education. But they will be credentialled when they are done.
Gosh, any internet company could do the same trick with the Terms of Service that you need to read and click on before whatever. For some reason, none of us reads them that carefully.
He really believes that people will care what he put in the syllabus. Why would they?
My husband did something similar with his PhD thesis. The school kept a copy of all the PhD theses in the library. He had his bound in lilac rather than the typical red, and then put a $20 in it. This was about thirty years ago. One day a couple of years later we were short on cash at a football game. Since the library was on then way to the ATM, we stopped. Sure enough, it was still there. He was disappointed but happy to get the money back.
Those dumb kids weren't bamboozled. They were just unwilling to really look at things. Great point by the professor, but obviously the complaining students won't learn the intended lesson.
More dancing granny, please.
Tucked under the veil beat the tell-tale hearts. An old story that repeats in rhymes.
Why would any expect the students to read the syllabus? I can't get my students to read the weekly announcements that inform them that an assignment is due that week.
This NYT story references a professor's Facebook page post, and was published before a nearly identical CNN story, which was picked up yesterday on reddit.com and made front page there with tens of thousands of positive "likes."
I wonder where more people saw this story - on the internet, cable news, or in print.
Ann's biblical quotation in this context put me in mind of "Giles Goat-boy, or the Revised New Syllabus."
What it means, obviously, is that the students didn't bother to read the syllabus at all. If even one had spotted the declaration (no, no "bamboozling" about it), the money would be gone. Lazy buggers.
As to "the jig is up," you can see racism in it if you want to. And not otherwise. How do you feel, Ann, about "a nip in the air?" Am I now not to use "nip" b/c someone, somewhere, might think of WWII propaganda? I admonish my cats, when they're getting a little fresh with their teeth, "No nippy! No bitey!" Am I now to be admonished for indoctrinating them? Sheesh.
From a great Sherlock Holmes comedy, Without a Clue.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-DXbE1XaBKo
“Free to the first who claims; locker one hundred forty-seven; combination fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five,” read the passage in the syllabus
They didn't even scan the syllabus.
I hope they are all embarrassed
By not reading the syllabus, and they clearly didn’t, the students bamboozled themselves. But in my experience, students are always happy to blame the instructor for their own errors/laziness.
does ya ever get the impression, that some professors are f*cking idi*ts?
https://www.foxnews.com/us/university-of-miami-law-professor-first-second-amendments
For the First Amendment, her proposed "redo" reads:
"Every person has the right to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and petition of the government for redress of grievances, consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses. All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons."
It continues that the government must respect "the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion."
For the Second Amendment... Her proposal reads:
"All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters.
The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole."
The problem is these days are College-wide requirements to add things to a syllabus so that it's no longer class information. It's information about college services, behavioral expectations -- pages of that!! -- and then there's a little bit on the class. Easy to hide a treasure hunt within.
There is a story of a man who gave his daughter and son-in-law a Bible on their wedding day. He secretly hid a $100 bill at the beginning of each of the 66 books in the Bible. They didn't find the money till after he died. The story sounds apocryphal (there's a word), but it might be rooted in a real event.
Ha.
No one read the syllabus. Sounds like his students like to live dangerously.
Does anyone else remember the test that began "Read the test all the way first." And those who did not would start answering problems, but those who read through would be told to turn in the unwritten blue book for an A grade?
How dare the professor expect his students to read the syllabus!
Furthermore: telling the locker number and combination isn't "leaving clues." It's giving directions.
College now isn't like college in my day... when, for instance, once I failed to read and take more of the important dates in the syllabus and walked into class one day to face, completely unprepared, the midterm that had been clearly laid out in said syllabus. Our sophomore daughter (the roots of "sophomore" are "wise" and "fool," right?) didn't even know when her winter break began or ended - again clearly stated on the school's website. And she's wicked smaht.
When I went to college I thought I had to read the professor's hand outs. This may be why I dropped out.
Really just shows uncurious and unable to take risks this generation is.
From what I have seen in my daugters HS and College syllabuses, which laid out exactly what is expected of them in tests and finals.. in notes and power points..
Resulting in them needing the path ahead laid out in front of them precisely.. (All curiosity, uncertainly has been drilled out of the students (and likely the teachers/ professors)
Pretty sad the lack of curiosity..
Really just shows uncurious and unable to take risks this generation is.
From what I have seen in my daugters HS and College syllabuses, which laid out exactly what is expected of them in tests and finals.. in notes and power points..
Resulting in them needing the path ahead laid out in front of them precisely.. (All curiosity, uncertainly has been drilled out of the students (and likely the teachers/ professors)
Pretty sad the lack of curiosity..
Really just shows uncurious and unable/unwilling to take risks this generation is.
From what I have seen in my daugters HS and College syllabuses,(in the past 10 years) which laid out exactly what is expected of them in tests and finals.. in notes and power points..
Resulting in them needing the path ahead laid out in front of them precisely.. (All curiosity, uncertainly has been drilled out of the students (and likely the teachers/ professors)
Pretty sad the lack of curiosity..
I did something like that once. My office was responsible for a monthly report that I suspected nobody read. It went out to about 1200 people. I embedded a reward of $5 to the first person to call me and ask for it. It went out for several months before anyone claimed it. BTW, $5 was worth more then.
There was a running joke in my college days about the exact opposite. Students claiming to have included directions to money towards the end of a long winded exam answer (and we wrote them out in cursive in blue books). "Professor Smith - if you are still reading, call 555-XXXX for $100." I don't imagine anyone ever did this - but it was a common joke.
Reminds me of an apocryphal story from the long-ago days of my grad school. A professor wrote an exam with five questions at the top of the exam he wrote, in all caps, the following:
YOU NEED TO READ THROUGH ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS BEFORE STARTING. YOU DO NOT NEED TO WORK THEM IN ORDER.
The text of the last question began as with this: Ignore the preceding questions; your answers to them will not count towards your score on this exam, not even for extra credit. 100% of your score on this exam depends on answering the following …
My husband once put a clue in his syllabus. On the second page, it mentioned that he had two cats, one of whom had earned a "blue dot" at the vet's (that's for an animal that gets hostile/bitey in a veterinary situation -- Charlie had actually earned three separate blue dots by this point). First quiz, he gave an extra point to students who could explain what a "blue dot" meant. I am happy to report that at least some of his students got the reference and answered correctly. Maybe they only get terminally lazy in college?
MikeR said...
He really believes that people will care what he put in the syllabus. Why would they?
Because it's supposed to tell what's going to happen in the class. I would expect that any student with a functioning brain would wan to know that
On a related front, many years ago I read a story in Reader's Digest where parents gave their son a Bible to take with him to college. When he called home and asked for money, they told him "Read John 3:17." He'd say he did it, and needs money. To which they'd reply with a different Bible verse.
When he got home for Christmas, they pointed out that they'd put $20 bills by each of the readings they'd sent him
@Joe Smith—Same story with a twist: I took a test in high school where a classmate got a copy in advance and wrote all the answers on the chalkboard. The teacher didn’t notice.
This works both ways you know....
In the 70s, I was a student at a well-known Ivy, taking a History course. The professor (not an adjunct) was a silverback well known for being obsessed with the length, not the content, of the work he was receiving from his students. I wasn't terribly interested in the course, and honestly didn't care about my grade (this was a different age...), so I decided to play a prank upon the professor that I had seen mentioned in the old novel "Fail Safe".
For last of our three paper submissions, I produced four pages of my own work, then placed a 40 page essay by Thoreau (in the book it was Emerson) between pages 2 and 3. I submitted the now 54 page essay, and waited. It came back the next week with an A-, and not a single word about the contents.
I provided the material in question to the department chair the two days later, and the professor in question announced his retirement 3 days later.
I missed the "jig is up" post but allow me to turn back time to say, simply, puh-lease. A jig is a dance, has been for a long time. Dancing is (and has been, for a long time) a metaphor for avoiding the inevitable. "The jig is up" simply means "the dance is over," and therefore, also, your attempts to stall.
How is this a racial slur? Has someone yelled "jig!" at BIPOC gatherings? Or are we just going with "it rhymes with a syllable of a racist word so that's enough for us!"?
I'm putting this in the same category as the "ok" sign being a secret white supremacy signal.
25 years ago, Emory University required me to put so much unnecessary verbiage in my composition syllabi that they read like bad 1L research. Little of it was necessary; most of it was about protecting the school from lawsuits or encouraging the students to feel persecuted and act litigious about grades. So, not logical either.
I'm amazed anyone reads those things to the end. Or bothers to teach.
I read the syllabi dutifully in my first semester of college. After finding the majority were not accurate or up to date with the material, I went to scanning.
Wasn’t the use of the Biblical quote a real stretch? Jesus was speaking of discernment of spiritual truth and the professor’s experiment was addressing observation and doing the work. I fail to see the connection.
How carefully curated are comments when three identical ones in a row slip past? We all have things we read, things we just say we read, and things that aren't a big priority for us. If students can successfully navigate a class without reading a prof's syllabus, the only thing bruised is the prof's ego when he discovers his syllabus just wasn't a priority.
Kevin Rogers said...
Really just shows uncurious and unable/unwilling to take risks this generation is.
From what I have seen in my daugters HS and College syllabuses,(in the past 10 years) which laid out exactly what is expected of them in tests and finals.. in notes and power points..
Resulting in them needing the path ahead laid out in front of them precisely.. (All curiosity, uncertainly has been drilled out of the students (and likely the teachers/ professors)
Pretty sad the lack of curiosity..
Exactly.
This is done on purpose.
This is what "intellectuals" do to anything they touch.
I'm a college professor and I'm not sure you could pay me $50 to read a typical syllabus from start to finish.
When I began my university career 30+ years ago, a syllabus was typically a single page long. Now they are usually multipage monsters--I know one colleague with a 20 page doorstopper in a freshman course.Some of it is university-mandated boilerplate about 'core competentcies' and 'learning objectives'. but much of it is simply faculty indulging their inner Karen. It's hardly any surprise that no one reads them.
I wanted to see if anybody would correct my use of the wrong cliche.
I currently work at a woke corporation that is issuing guidance on "inclusive" language. We are no longer allowed to say whitelist or blacklist, we are supposed to use allow and deny list. However, we use software that uses a configuration file that has the words whitelist and blacklist in it. So Friday I had an inquiry regarding the software not functioning on a server. Checking the configuration file I found that it was whitelisted. In order to illustrate that I had to do a cut and paste of the relevant section of the configuration file. I had to say:
The server is allow listed.
whitelist.2 = somehostname
Back at State U. quite a while ago I took the standard Poli Sci 101 course. At its end the prof told us exactly what would be on the final exam, four broad questions about the philosophies and ideas of Plato, Machiavelli, Locke, and Montesquieu. IOW the basics. Our course grade would be based on the final exam.
In the run-up to the exam I wrote out answers, while consulting my textbook and notes. Two days later I wrote them out again from memory, and looked at my "gold standard" answer to see what I had missed. A day before the final I wrote out the answers a third time. Satisfied that I had committed the test to memory, I took it with the rest of the class. I filled my blue book answering those four questions.
When test results were posted I was one of two students who got an A, with about 80% of the class of fifty getting C grades, including my girlfriend, who stamped her feet in irritation mixed with admiration.
All because I took the time to write out the answers! Kind of a no-brainer, but I was stuck by how many "students" didn't bother to put in the time.
--- If the vaccines do not prevent transmission, can they create conditions that promote the emergence of Covid variants that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated people? [Spiros]
No, the huge group of potential virus victims is the VACCINATED. So many millions in a short period of time -- that virus makes variants that will seize upon that rich field. The variants that are handled by the vaccines go nowhere. It's the others that thrive. That's why first delta and now, especially, omicron are hitting the already vaccinated.
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