← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

‘It hit me one day as I sat in my 8 a.m. financial accounting class. The professor was clicking through his PowerPoint rapidly (a PowerPoint he had not written), pausing for seconds on each problem, answer, problem, answer, saying, “Yes, well you can all do these at home…”, when a student raised his hand. “No, sorry,” said my professor, holding up his hand to his student. “I don’t have time for questions. I need to get through these slides.”‘

Ah, the morgue classroom. This Brandeis student is experiencing, in “four out of the five classes that I am taking this semester,” what UD calls the morgue classroom, where the professor gazes earthward and intones, while the students gaze at their laptops and drift off.

The morgue classroom is as silent as the grave – more silent each class session, since, as this student goes on to note, there’s no reason to attend.

****************************

Yes, those who attend the dying body, that drifting keening Greek chorus, become fewer and fewer, ultimately stranding the designated mourner at the front of the congregation, humiliated by her aloneness.

Of course you know – don’t you? – that most morgue classrooms feature mandatory attendance policies. How else can you keep them gathering, again and again, at the dark silent river?

Shall we gather at the river?

Give me one good reason.

******************************

You’ll flunk the course if you don’t.

Margaret Soltan, March 1, 2015 7:30AM
Posted in: powerpoint pissoff

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=47690

3 Responses to “‘It hit me one day as I sat in my 8 a.m. financial accounting class. The professor was clicking through his PowerPoint rapidly (a PowerPoint he had not written), pausing for seconds on each problem, answer, problem, answer, saying, “Yes, well you can all do these at home…”, when a student raised his hand. “No, sorry,” said my professor, holding up his hand to his student. “I don’t have time for questions. I need to get through these slides.”‘”

  1. Dr_Doctorstein Says:

    To be fair, four years of Brandeis tuition is only $184,088, which barely covers the price of the Brandeis name on a diploma. For actual teaching, students would have to pay extra.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Dr_Doctorstein: That’s the part that always puzzles me: Doesn’t it bother students that they’re paying enormous sums of money for a robot to read to them?

  3. dmf Says:

    imagine it would only bother them if it keeps them from getting the grades they want/expect, just as they don’t protest when teachers cancel classes and don’t reschedule them, most students are playing the give the teacher what they want game that they have been socialized into. As for the robot aspect these people type/talk to machines all day and night…

Comment on this Entry

Latest UD posts at IHE

Archives

Categories