(no subject)
I really enjoy my periodic opportunities to talk with the professor I teach for - even if it is sometimes a half-hour process to get from, "Well, I guess I should be going," to actually walking out the door.
Today, he paused during an explanation of the bizarre wiring he'd found in his efforts to reengineeran air-conditioning/humidifier unit to talk about the state of things in the class. "You know, the great thing is, nobody has to fail for us. If you want to pass, there are options - even just sitting there, you absorb some of it. You have to choose to fail. And yet, every year, half-a-dozen do."
Which is all pretty much true - there's a policy of work that will give you a guaranteed C-grade minimum, and the doctor takes on any students who refuse even to do that after the semester ends. A few fail anyway.
"Maybe," he said to me with a little bit of a gleam in his eye, "maybe, what we need to do is just start taking points away from the top students in class, and giving it to the bottom."
"From the top 2% or so, sir?"
"Ohh, yes. They don't need all that - why should they get it, just because they worked for it? Let's give it to those who aren't working for it at all - that'll be fair. We'll teach them: why bother to work hard in life, when you can just benefit from other people who are?"
I'm never entirely sure where the doctor's politics are - I don't know that he and I align on too many things. But it's hard to argue that his life is anything other than an example of working hard to better both himself and lots of other people: among others, people he's been able to hire and put to work doing more good things because of his own success. He doesn't have a whole lot of patience with anything that suggests this shouldn't be a viable and encouraged path for as many people as possible.
It helps as well that he's self-aware about the whole thing. "It sounds cold," he said, as I finally made a break for the door. "It sounds cruel - like you're being against... against motherhood. And you aren't - but if someone has ten kids and no job, well, yeah, the only healthy thing to do is to be against motherhood!"
The political philosophies I hold to suggest that people like him should exist: that we should encourage people to do what he's done, because that is the path of maximum compassion; that to make the support of those without not merely a gift but something expected and deserved is to do more hurt than help. It's reassuring, sometimes, to get reminders that it actually works.
Today, he paused during an explanation of the bizarre wiring he'd found in his efforts to reengineeran air-conditioning/humidifier unit to talk about the state of things in the class. "You know, the great thing is, nobody has to fail for us. If you want to pass, there are options - even just sitting there, you absorb some of it. You have to choose to fail. And yet, every year, half-a-dozen do."
Which is all pretty much true - there's a policy of work that will give you a guaranteed C-grade minimum, and the doctor takes on any students who refuse even to do that after the semester ends. A few fail anyway.
"Maybe," he said to me with a little bit of a gleam in his eye, "maybe, what we need to do is just start taking points away from the top students in class, and giving it to the bottom."
"From the top 2% or so, sir?"
"Ohh, yes. They don't need all that - why should they get it, just because they worked for it? Let's give it to those who aren't working for it at all - that'll be fair. We'll teach them: why bother to work hard in life, when you can just benefit from other people who are?"
I'm never entirely sure where the doctor's politics are - I don't know that he and I align on too many things. But it's hard to argue that his life is anything other than an example of working hard to better both himself and lots of other people: among others, people he's been able to hire and put to work doing more good things because of his own success. He doesn't have a whole lot of patience with anything that suggests this shouldn't be a viable and encouraged path for as many people as possible.
It helps as well that he's self-aware about the whole thing. "It sounds cold," he said, as I finally made a break for the door. "It sounds cruel - like you're being against... against motherhood. And you aren't - but if someone has ten kids and no job, well, yeah, the only healthy thing to do is to be against motherhood!"
The political philosophies I hold to suggest that people like him should exist: that we should encourage people to do what he's done, because that is the path of maximum compassion; that to make the support of those without not merely a gift but something expected and deserved is to do more hurt than help. It's reassuring, sometimes, to get reminders that it actually works.