Professless Professors

There are things in education that I don’t understand. Before delving in, I guess I have to look at the bigger question which is why it is that people who are simply bad at teaching become teachers. This is evident in primary education as I remember a teacher back in grade school who simply didn’t like children. One would have to wonder why, if you didn’t enjoy the presents of small children, you would get into a field where you were forced to interact with them on a daily basis. This continues through high school and now, I'm realizing, right into college. Why do professors who are simply bad at “professing” becomes professors?

I can understand that sometimes this has to do with going into academia, teaching sometimes just comes with the territory. Not that I really appreciate someone coming to a university to do research and having to, begrudgingly, teach knowledge-hungry undergraduates, but I do understand. That’s not, however, what I'm talking about. I’m talking about the professor of, say, business ethics who is simply unable to adequately convey the apparent oxy moron of business ethics.

The handout I was given on day one of this class said the words “Ethics vs. Etiquette.” To which my professor explained that faults in etiquette rarely if ever lead to ethical problems. Alright. I understand. Probably could have gone without saying, but I get it. Moving on. But then he begins on an example, if you shake someone’s hand from another culture that don’t typically do that, you probably wont be acting unethically. Alright, that example was totally unnecessary, but again, in an effort to be extremely thorough I can understand. He then says, if you were at a formal dinner party, and used the wrong fork for your salad, no one will thing you are unethical. Alright, enough already! The whole class knew what he meant in the beginning and really knew after the first example but two examples?! Really?! And then, to put a finishing touch on his redundancy he asked, does everyone understand? No. No I don’t. Can you please give me another example to waste more time? Thanks.

He then moves on to the second thing on his hand out. The paper reads Ethics vs. Morality. After reading this out loud he says, we need to discuss the differences between ethics and morality…..long contemplative pause…..I don’t believe there is any difference between those two terms. What?! Than why the hell do we need to discuss the differences between them? There aren't any. And why did you write it down on this list of terms in need of discussion? He then goes on to discuss why everyone in his field agrees with him.

Day Two: Ethics needs to be based on fairness. If you are cutting the birthday cake at a child’s birthday party and you cut the pieces different sizes, what happens? The kids get upset because someone ends up with the small piece and says that’s not fair. If there are monkeys at the zoo and they reward some with grapes and others with cucumbers, the ones with cucumbers will get upset because they believe they were treated unfairly. If you sell 5 grams of cocaine and get arrested and sent to prison for 5 years and then you find out that someone else got caught selling 2 kilos of cocaine and is sentenced to one year in prison, what would you think? No, not that they’re Paris Hilton. You would think that it was not fair. I swear on my life, he actually used all of those examples, in succession, just like that! I get it! I understand! I know what fairness is!!! Leave me alone!

The Bill of Rights he says very dramatically. Who knows what that is? Really?! REALLY?!! You’re really going to ask an entire class of sophomores, juniors and seniors living and going to school in Washington DC, the capital of our freaking country, what the Bill of Rights is?

I just don’t get it. I just can’t fathom where this human being went so horribly wrong in life. I’m sure he is a very nice man, but he has no business in a college classroom; arguably not even in a high school class. And he’s got to know. He has to understand by the looks on people’s faces as he talks at them that they have gone a step beyond bored into the realm of thinking, “I’m paying how much money to go to this school and listen to you lecture me for an hour and 15 minutes twice a week at the end of which I leave feeling not only as though I've learned nothing but that you may have stolen an IQ point or two?” ….Fuck!