Have you ever stood before a large group (50-100) of people and said something so patently, ridiculously false that even a child should have been able to call you on it? Like, "2+2=3!" or "The Confederacy won the War of Northern Aggression!" or "Pigeons became extinct when Ford introduced the F150!" (Please note the exclamation point - it is very important that your pronouncement be delivered with exaggerated confidence. Bonus points if you can use it to contradict a point that one of your students is trying to make.)
I don't know what bothers me more: the fact that I really am an idiot and was able to demonstrate this so clearly and quickly, or the fact that none of the students in the class protested.
Now I have to fix it. Maybe I can use the old "I was just testing you" ploy, or some variation thereof.
Monday, January 16, 2006
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7 comments:
Come on now, you can't just leave it at that. Tell us what you said!!
I once (apparently) gave a talk on 'suicide' when I intended to give one on 'self defense'. I was saying the things I say about self defense, but I repeatedly said 'suicide' when I meant to say 'self defense'. It could not possibly have made any sense, but no one called me on it. I would have never known except some of my better students came to me at the end of the semester, wanting me to explain their notes.
It takes a bold student to point out that the prof's not making any sense. As the class size increases, the fact that no-one else seems to be having a problem increases the impression that it is the student who is confused. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool etc.
My approach was usually to quietly confer with my friends sitting next to me. Either they could explain my confusion, or we could agree that the prof was talking nonsense again and it was worth pointing out. Of course, we were all near the top of our class at an ILU, so this may be a special case.
frenchdoc, I'm too embarrassed. Suffice it to say it was really, really stupid.
jhs, I once gave a job talk in which I had reversed the labels on a graph, so that Condition A was actually Condition B and vice versa. Somehow, I explained the portrayed results as completely consistent with my hypotheses even though it was the reverse of what my hypotheses predicted. One person in the audience protested that it should go the other way, and I even said, "No, no, this is right." I have no idea what I said. And I got the offer.
trystero, you're right. Today I'm bringing cookies to class. I wish you were going to be there.
Admit nothing, deny everything, demand proof!
JDGUT
I fixed it. I opened with a reference to this study, one of my all-time favorites, and said that while I might be a moron, at least I could recognize that fact and so I wasn't hopeless.
Unfortunately, the student who made the comment that I pissed all over was not present to receive his cookie of apology. One quiet girl in the back row was quick to identify the moronic statement, and she got the other cookie.
Doonesbury had a cartoon on that sort of thing back in the late 80s. The professor stood in the room and announced, "Black is WHITE! Jesus is the ANTICHRIST!" just to see if he could spark any sort of discussion or even reaction. All the students had heads bent over desks, busily taking notes. One student in the back of the room said to the other, "This class is really getting interesting!" And the other student said, "Yeah, I didn't know half this stuff."
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