Q1. Is whether your students love you or hate you an indicator of whether or not you're a good proffie?
Q2. Is the answer to Q1 different in different fields (i.e., great law proffies are hated and feared, but great poetry proffies are loved)?
A._________________________________
Be honest, dammit.
I think it's perfectly possible to be demanding and maintain standards while also being loved by students (well, not ALL of them). Because students of demanding professors have to work harder, they actually learn more. That knowledge can be some comfort where their grades are not.
ReplyDeleteMy most inspirational professor as an undergrad terrified me greatly. At one point she embarrassed and shamed me as I have never been embarrassed and shamed since--but I learned an important lesson from it, although it still stings a bit years later. Yet her class literally changed how I looked at the world, and I was her first student to follow her into her obscure discipline in grad school, a fact that flattered her immensely.
A1: Not necessarily.
ReplyDeleteA2: I doubt it.
What matters is whether you're a good proffie. I define being a good proffie as being an effective teacher, which means your students learn and remember a lot of what you tell them, particularly most of the most important parts of what you tell them.
It's nice to be able to do this while being loved, but it really isn't necessary. I did some of the deepest and most thorough learning in my life while being screamed at seemingly endlessly, while in U.S. Navy boot camp. Other effective teachers I've had over the years were kind. I've had both effective and ineffective teachers who were kind, and both effective and ineffective teachers who weren't, and it looks to me like this is independent of their fields.
I am a physics proffie. Now that I have tenure, I don't much care whether or not I'm loved. I often am not, but of course if anyone disparages physics to my face, I can always pull out the old standby: "IT DOES REQUIRE INTELLIGENCE."
Richard Feynman was a physics proffie. He was well loved, but more by his colleagues than by his freshpersons. Although "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is still, after 50 years, the best-ever calculus-based introduction to physics for students who already know the subject well (it's exactly the right thing for preparing for qualifying exams as a grad student), the students who actually took the class hated it, because it was like drinking from a fire hose. I don't much mind drinking from a fire hose if the water sparkles, but then I wasn't in Feynman's class.
Ludwig Boltzmann was a physics proffie. He was highly effective, having had many students who went on to become distinguished physicists. He was also well loved. Most other physics proffies are hated, but then many aren't very effective. I don't think this is because they're loved or hated, though: I think it's mainly because scandalously many treat teaching as something to be scraped off one's shoe. There really aren't many incentives to be good teachers for many of them. There are also many disincentives. What motivates me is that I had a poor introductory physics proffie, as well as other poor proffies when I was an undergraduate, and I want to be better than that.
"The Paper Chase" was made in 1973. The law proffie in it was a fictional character. If I did what he did, my students would complain.
DeleteI always thought the professors I loved the most were the ones I was terrified of disappointing. On the other hand if I was too terrified to disappoint them I wouldn't bring my problems to them. So there is a fine line in there.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I went to grad school so I'm a self selecting audience as someone who wanted to be challenged.
I lived with law students for several years in grad school and I can assure you that if contracts were really taught like "The Paper Chase" they would have not just complained. They would have rebelled. Those kids were not affraid of working but they were not about to take routine and arbitary abuse. And before anyone asks... it was a tier 1 law school.
I do not care what my students think of me personally. Not at all. If they like me, that may make them feel more accountable and work harder and it may make work conditions more pleasant for all of us, but it's a completely moot point.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the field makes a damned bit of difference, either.
What Greta said.
ReplyDeleteMy most effective teachers were tough on me. Period.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by love. I have a few colleagues who are beloved by their students because they have the perfect combination of being nice and easy. They are not good proffies. The rest of us have to try to clean up their messes when their students enter our classes since we quickly discover they learned little to nothing but came out feeling great about themselves!
ReplyDeleteThere are other professors students love because they actually learned something and came out feeling as if they were challenged yet overcame it. They exited class with a sense of accomplishment, which is where real self-esteem comes from. While professors in the former category get a few who don't like them because those students came to school for an education, the ones in the latter category tend to be disliked more, even if they are nice people, simply because proportionally, more students want to get through than to learn. Those snowflakes who find themselves melting because Real Goddamn Proffie pointed out they couldn't write a thesis statement or do addition without a calculator will dislike that person regardless of how good a teacher she is.
I also think in today's environment, unless you are lucky enough to teach somewhere that still is small with small classes, it's harder to truly love a proffie. The ones I loved the most were ones I could take classes from over and over again. We used to be able to do things like have events outside class without tons of attorneys getting involved. Now classes are huge, a field trip involves a mountain of paperwork, and society has become so litigious that there's no way I'd meet my students at a restaurant, let alone a bar like some of my proffies did.
The people above me seem to be doing a good job of covering this matter. The one point that I'll add is that there is a difference between being rigorous and being a dick. I try to be as rigorous as possible, but I also try to be humane about it. In my time as a student, I had many gruff, dickish proffies who seemed to relish their power and their abilities to terrify students. Sure, some of those professors scared us into learning (memorizing, really) large chunks of information that we would uncritically regurgitate come exam time. Still, I know that I could have learned more from them had they not oftentimes scared me to the point where I didn't want to ask any questions of them for fear that I would imply that I "wasn't paying attention." (The matter of disciplinary difference might be relevant here. I majored in English, a discipline that tends to value critical insight [whatever that means] over rote memorization. Things are obviously different in other subject areas.)
ReplyDeleteSo whenever I grade anything that my students submit, I go to great lengths to supplement those grades with detailed justifications of them--and I work excessively hard to ensure that both the good and the bad assignments receive about the same amount of comments, and the same amount of suggestions for improvement.
I lecture most of the time. In that mode, being a good entertainer is part of giving a good lecture. My students like me because I make lectures bearable. I still fail about a quarter of them without too much complaining. I give study sessions and post practice exams. It helps some learn more but, based on my passing rate, not enough to make anybody think I'm giving away A's. Being nice in those ways covers my ass when students complain. They don't complain much because, I assume, they know that I provide more hand holding than my colleagues.
ReplyDeleteTo answer the questions, I'd say that it's hard for students to learn if they hate you. Love may or may not make a difference. Since the impact of love or hate on a relationship is a matter of human nature, I would guess that it is a universal effect.
The thing we have to remember in answering this question is that we are college professors ourselves. The responses of those who chose not to become college professors might differ considerably.
ReplyDeleteFor many students, a "good" professor is fun and easy. A "good" professor entertains them and is sympathetic to their wants.
So a student's answers to this are going to be different--from their perspective, if they hate the professor they are a bad professor, by default.
Then there's the question of whether you are universally loved or hated. A professor that is universally loathed is I would say a bad professor. If every single student hates you, that's a problem.
What you want is for the lazy students to hate you, and the students that actually want to learn something to love you. In that regard I am universally loved and hated, by the right people.
It's sort of a moot point anyway. As with child-rearing, it is not important that your child like you. It is important that they respect you. You can easily make a child like you. Earning a child's respect is much, much harder.
I have no idea how discipline comes into it. I'd have to think on that.
Once again, Stella, you've nailed it to the wall: "It's sort of a moot point anyway. As with child-rearing, it is not important that your child like you. It is important that they respect you. You can easily make a child like you. Earning a child's respect is much, much harder."
Delete1. I don't think so.
ReplyDelete2. I don't know.
Is this somehow tied with student evals? Some of my colleagues (the ones who don't get high scores) think they're a popularity contest. Others disagree.
FWIW, I think the proffie's enthusiasm for the subject goes a long way toward helping the students learn.
One problem with student evaluations/popularity contests is that it asks them for their opinion while they're still sorting out the material. I'd love to see an evaluation conducted five years after the class has ended. That's where you'd get some meaningful results.
ReplyDelete1. No, but it CAN be. If you're a bit of an asshole as a teacher, cavalier about your job, that will certainly show up in your evaluations. Of course it can also just be the severely skewed expectations of snowflakes that make you so hated.
ReplyDelete2. Don't us English proffies get the most love AND the most hate? It feels like it.
English proffies (I was once one of you) get affection in inverse proportion to that which they showered upon their high school English teachers.
DeleteOver the years I have noticed numerous times, in various sources, comments from students to the effect that "Professor X was great: he set aside the text and told us how things really were." Such comments are usually from business, commerce, law, sometimes political science, and the like. I also have noticed disproportionate praise for faculty in areas like art or film, where students can do a lot of their own stuff. On the other hand, I think profs. in areas where there is not a lot of practical application -- most of the humanities, for example -- have a harder time getting students to engage with areas that they simply do not find interesting because of their abstraction. Of course I don't know students who have interest in most areas of history or literature, per se, take those courses. All this is rather impressionistic, but I think it fits.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably self-evident that anyone that reads College Misery regularly would not think the answer to the first question is "yes". I agree with Nothaughty that if students come to hate you, whether justified or not, it becomes next to impossible to teach them. And Keef is right that students will not like the most irresponsible profs. But beyond that, I think love is a lot less important than respect.
Over the years I have noticed numerous times, in various sources, comments from students to the effect that "Professor X was great: he set aside the text and told us how things really were." Such comments are usually from business, commerce, law, sometimes political science, and the like. I also have noticed disproportionate praise for faculty in areas like art or film, where students can do a lot of their own stuff. On the other hand, I think profs. in areas where there is not a lot of practical application -- most of the humanities, for example -- have a harder time getting students to engage with areas that they simply do not find interesting because of their abstraction. Of course I don't know students who have interest in most areas of history or literature, per se, take those courses. All this is rather impressionistic, but I think it fits.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably self-evident that anyone that reads College Misery regularly would not think the answer to the first question is "yes". I agree with Nothaughty that if students come to hate you, whether justified or not, it becomes next to impossible to teach them. And Keef is right that students will not like the most irresponsible profs. But beyond that, I think love is a lot less important than respect.