Re: The Fascinating Case of Marty Eisen

In a message dated 04/17/2002 9:51:37 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:

<< On a related note, see CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION,
 MAR 29, 2000, P. A10 for the fascinating story of Marty Eisen,
 a mathematics professor here at Temple who was fired from his
 tenured position by President David Adamany. >>

Another aspect of this is that it takes only a few "celebrated" cases
such as this for the message to get through.

How would they know he had "graded too hard"?  The administrators
were not in his classroom observing him teach.  The only evidence
they could have had was (1) the grades he turned in, (2) student
evaluations of the course, and/or (3) student complaints to the
dean or other administrators.  Low evaluations are one thing,
and something to be frowned upon. But students knocking on
the dean's door and disrupting his or her day with complaints,
why, that's downright intolerable!  That's a problem that needs
to be solved! The problem is people knocking on the door and
complaining.  The solution is to get rid of the source of the
complaints.

And, my goodness, not even tenure gives protection. I don't know
the full details of this case, and am not about to get a subscription
to the Chronicle just so I can read one article, so there could be
details that are what could be called unusual or extenuating
circumstances.

Under the typical lecture-assign-and-test instructional system
you find at universities (Skinner in Technology of Teaching
discusses these systems), where students are graded "on
the curve," it is possible that you could find extremism at
the other end.  It is possible that the professor went overboard,
shall we say, in grading student performance and learning. Not
having the details at hand, I can't say.

But, in the larger context it may not matter.  The larger context
is the university environment (the smaller context is the classroom).
In that larger context what matters is the message given out:  That
tenure will not protect you from being fired for grading too harshly.
As I said, this means that professors will not rock the boat, will
not do anything that risks getting terminated.  If they have to hand
out mostly A's and a few B's, it's no skin off their rear.  "Grade high
and forget about it," may become the salient practice selected.