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February 27, 2006, 12:13 PM ET
When Griping Goes Too Far
Professors have plenty of reasons to hate Web sites like Pick-a-Prof and RateMyProfessors, which let students critique their teachers' classroom performance. Commentary on the sites can be coarse and unconstructive, and anonymous posters often make inaccurate claims that are nevertheless hard to rebut.
So it's understandable that some professors might get a short-lived sense of catharsis from contributing to Rate Your Students, a snarky Web site that lets them anonymously kvetch about their students' poor paper-writing and short attention spans.
But there's no excuse for faculty to gripe about students on a public Web page, argues Emily Schwartz, a student at Elon University. "Why fuel this demon?" Ms. Schwartz asks in a published debate on the controversial rating sites. "You're much more mature than to contribute to such ridiculous vulgarities."
Michael Skube, a professor of journalism at Elon, agrees with Ms. Schwartz's assessment of Rate Your Students. But Pick-a-Prof and RateMyProfessors, he argues, have done more to corrode academe -- by advancing "the unexamined assumption that students are in any position to judge how well they are taught." (Los Angeles Times)
Categories: Student-Life, Teaching
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