One day more bitter
Oh, I'm starting to hate teenagers in addition to my regular children-phobia.
Today was a bit rough on the scale of freshman-shenanigans. Right now, a gaggle of idiot teens are at panaera wasting valuble oxygen by setting off eachother's cell phones, saying nonsensicles, and knocking over chairs without any awareness of other people. But, this isn't at all the rudest thing that I've seen today...
In class today I was teaching really basic argument structure: how to pick out the conclusion and premises in an argument, the difference between arguments that are completely irrefutable if the premises are true, and those that converge to form a 'probably' statement. Sure, this is a bit dense for freshman English, but, since one of the goals is to teach students not to make stupid logical errors in writing, it seems necessary to point out what logic actually is. (I regularly get statements like 'As a result of the draft, the war occurred' or 'Stereotyping is harmful when it causes harm to others' or most commonly, 'This is a bad essay because I can't understand it'). Anyway, all throughout this class, a girl was gabbing like this was homeroom in middle school, leaning over, leaning back, disrupting other students, the works. I give her the "excuse me?" and the teachery classic "do you have something to add?" so after a while she turns her shiny blond head to the board and chimes in with an answer. It is wrong, and I'm nice about it, but she says defiantly, 'No, that's true!' I explain patiently why this inductive logical proof isn't absolute, but is more of a 'probably' statement. She replies with 'None of this makes any sense - I don't get any of it!' I tell her that she should probably see me after class to discuss this and she replies with something like 'You should probably teach this better.' Last straw - I tell her she should leave. This is a first for me - I've never had to kick a student out of class, and it felt very high schoolish - I hate that sort of confrontation. She, of course, slammed the door on the way out.
Today was a bit rough on the scale of freshman-shenanigans. Right now, a gaggle of idiot teens are at panaera wasting valuble oxygen by setting off eachother's cell phones, saying nonsensicles, and knocking over chairs without any awareness of other people. But, this isn't at all the rudest thing that I've seen today...
In class today I was teaching really basic argument structure: how to pick out the conclusion and premises in an argument, the difference between arguments that are completely irrefutable if the premises are true, and those that converge to form a 'probably' statement. Sure, this is a bit dense for freshman English, but, since one of the goals is to teach students not to make stupid logical errors in writing, it seems necessary to point out what logic actually is. (I regularly get statements like 'As a result of the draft, the war occurred' or 'Stereotyping is harmful when it causes harm to others' or most commonly, 'This is a bad essay because I can't understand it'). Anyway, all throughout this class, a girl was gabbing like this was homeroom in middle school, leaning over, leaning back, disrupting other students, the works. I give her the "excuse me?" and the teachery classic "do you have something to add?" so after a while she turns her shiny blond head to the board and chimes in with an answer. It is wrong, and I'm nice about it, but she says defiantly, 'No, that's true!' I explain patiently why this inductive logical proof isn't absolute, but is more of a 'probably' statement. She replies with 'None of this makes any sense - I don't get any of it!' I tell her that she should probably see me after class to discuss this and she replies with something like 'You should probably teach this better.' Last straw - I tell her she should leave. This is a first for me - I've never had to kick a student out of class, and it felt very high schoolish - I hate that sort of confrontation. She, of course, slammed the door on the way out.