So this is kind of strange to me because I'm at a pretty reputable university in Quebec, working on my masters degree, and last Thursday, one of my teachers went full out crazy.
That's the problem with "soft" sciences, or in my opinion non-sciences, commonly known as social sciences. You don't really need to be intelligent to get degrees here - I got my BA with minimal effort, and I know complete imbeciles who got their degree too. The problem is that now, there are some PhDs that are complete nutters.
The class is essentially supposed to teach tips and tricks to better understand and write about texts that we read. In order to do that, we had to read a bunch texts that had elements in common, and we had to write about it. Typical boring class with no content, but oh well, I need credits.
This teacher had always seemed peculiar to me, and she's exposed some of her strange beliefs before, but it never really crossed into the class so I was fine with her nonsensical tangents on her misconception about quantum physics and such. The class kind of revolves around the differences between political philosophy and political science. Authors are the likes of Plato, Kant, Weber, Durkheim, Leo Strauss and a few local folks that you guys certainly haven't heard about.
But Thursday, she went full retard. I'll list some of the things that she brought up to the class as fact. Remember that those are things that she says:
*She based much of the class on this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Physics which seems to extrapolate our limited knowledge of quantum physics well into the land of voodoo bullshit. One of the things she was most fervent about was that Descartes was wrong when he confined thought to himself when he said "I think therefore I am". In fact, thought is all around us according to quantum physics, and our brains just process the "thought" that surrounds us.
*Her mother is an astrologist, and all her life, my teacher has made the right decisions and that's why she's so happy and she's never sick. She has followed her destiny. Her sister, however, has ALWAYS made the wrong decisions and that's why she's always sick. Presumably she went to her doctor once when she was sick, and the doctor asked "what have you been doing about your soul?".
*2000 years ago, we were warriors because it was the "Ram cycle". We're currently in the "Fish cycle", which is why we're so materialistic. And in 2018-2020, the "Aquarius cycle" will start, and that's when we'll be more about fraternity and love. She's happy because her son won't need to grow up in a materialistic world.
*The planets affect our lives a lot, and currently, Pluto is being a "real bitch". Mars is big (?) and therefore it generally has an important effect on all of our lives.
____
The class lasted 3 hours, and for about 2h30 of it, she was elaborating on this shit, and talking about why the death of political philosophy (from the likes of Plato) to replace it with political science is a big loss, because we need philosophy to fill our souls...
I'm currently rocking 95% in the class and I'd get a passing grade even if I didn't do the final. I'd still complain, but she says it's her last year teaching and now she intends to become a therapist for children. It's surprising to me that she's been teaching this class for 7 years, in the department of political science. I mean, we try, to the best of our abilities, to be objective - and somehow this shit is taught here, and I paid for it? I bought fucking credits, that's what I fucking did. I'm buying a Master's Degree that I'll be able to flaunt around... The fuck am I even doing?
Wow good on you for not feeling the overwhelming desire to argue with her straight up, I'm pretty sure I'd not have been able to resist the urge to prove an authority figure wrong in a classroom setting, not with material like that. Kudos!
That's rather unfortunate. While I've never experienced anything of this magnitude I can sympathize with your observation that, when it comes to the social sciences, the people that get their doctorates and teach are often rather dumb, preachy, and lacking in a basic capacity to reason scientifically. In my experience they often come off as firebrand idealists that have been spending their careers trying to confirm whatever political/economic/philosophical/scientific beliefs they settled on when they were still undergraduates, and have little interest in rigorous inquiry. Of course this is not always the case and probably isn't even the norm, but those fields do seem to attract a certain type of person...
As somebody who has studied philosophy in university I would just like to say that there are essentially zero serious philosophers that would ever assert something like "we need philosophy to fill our souls." Academic philosophers are generally highly intelligent, careful thinkers that greatly respect and appreciate quality science. That is to say, they would probably smell the bullshit that is extrapolating nonsense from quantum mechanics from a mile off, along with most other spiritual distortions of respectable theories.
I find her interpretation of quantum physics amusing. You will likely appreciate this clip:
And "Mars is big"? Really? It's significantly smaller than the Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Since Pluto isn't technically a planet anymore that means it's only bigger than Mercury...
Good luck with this. I say take the easy A and endeavor to find more challenging/interesting/sensible courses in the future.
Philosophy teachers should teach philosophy, and physics teachers should teach physics. Sadly, I think too many teachers do both (even though it was a small number in my experience). The bigger the institution, the easier it is to hide your inconsistent classes from peer review.
Classic examples involve history teachers rambling about the economy, and biology teachers rambling about how darwinism is scientifically appliable to morality.
Pretty sure the "Mars is big" comment was directed at some astrological connection, not towards its actual size. Usually Mars and Venus are considered the biggest influences in our daily lives because of their proximity to Earth and some other stuff I don't remember at the moment.
In case you're bored you could try and get some understanding about basic cold reading and go ahead and "read" her with some of those techniques. When she asks where you know all that from you can pretend you're psychic until you're bored again. It's kind of mean though, would not recommend if you somehow like her/don't want to bust her balls. =P
On September 23 2012 09:02 farvacola wrote: Wow good on you for not feeling the overwhelming desire to argue with her straight up, I'm pretty sure I'd not have been able to resist the urge to prove an authority figure wrong in a classroom setting, not with material like that. Kudos!
It's almost impossible to win those "arguments", because there is nothing to argue about. Whenever you meet really, really freaky people at first glance your best bet is to learn things from them at which they're good at and ignore all the random quirks. Arguing will get you nowhere, but sometimes you find pretty cool gems of knowledge if you translate some of their jibber-jabber into normal language.
Edit: Kind of tl;dr about what I'm trying to get at; - Make yourself some popcorn and enjoy the show. =D
On September 23 2012 09:22 r.Evo wrote: Pretty sure the "Mars is big" comment was directed at some astrological connection, not towards its actual size. Usually Mars and Venus are considered the biggest influences in our daily lives because of their proximity to Earth and some other stuff I don't remember at the moment.
In case you're bored you could try and get some understanding about basic cold reading and go ahead and "read" her with some of those techniques. When she asks where you know all that from you can pretend you're psychic until you're bored again. It's kind of mean though, would not recommend if you somehow like her/don't want to bust her balls. =P
On September 23 2012 09:02 farvacola wrote: Wow good on you for not feeling the overwhelming desire to argue with her straight up, I'm pretty sure I'd not have been able to resist the urge to prove an authority figure wrong in a classroom setting, not with material like that. Kudos!
It's almost impossible to win those "arguments", because there is nothing to argue about. Whenever you meet really, really freaky people at first glance your best bet is to learn things from them at which they're good at and ignore all the random quirks. Arguing will get you nowhere, but sometimes you find pretty cool gems of knowledge if you translate some of their jibber-jabber into normal language.
Edit: Kind of tl;dr about what I'm trying to get at; - Make yourself some popcorn and enjoy the show. =D
Some of the most interesting people require a good argumentative jolt to get them going, which is sort of what a liberal education is all about. Pick your battles certainly, but I'd know far less about far fewer people had I avoided good debates against a weirdo.
On September 23 2012 09:08 Kukaracha wrote: Philosophy teachers should teach philosophy, and physics teachers should teach physics. Sadly, I think too many teachers do both (even though it was a small number in my experience). The bigger the institution, the easier it is to hide your inconsistent classes from peer review.
Classic examples involve history teachers rambling about the economy, and biology teachers rambling about how darwinism is scientifically appliable to morality.
Out of curiosity, where do you study? Laval?
McGill right now.
On September 23 2012 09:22 r.Evo wrote: It's almost impossible to win those "arguments", because there is nothing to argue about. Whenever you meet really, really freaky people at first glance your best bet is to learn things from them at which they're good at and ignore all the random quirks. Arguing will get you nowhere, but sometimes you find pretty cool gems of knowledge if you translate some of their jibber-jabber into normal language.
Edit: Kind of tl;dr about what I'm trying to get at; - Make yourself some popcorn and enjoy the show. =D
She's pretty eloquent and extremely assertive and would cut me off in the middle of my sentences with no shame whatsoever. She's also extremely egotistical, not to mention she has a position of power over me being in the front of the class, with a fancy French accent.
She would obliterate me without ever noticing the inconsistencies in her own reasoning and the class would eat that shit up.
So I sit for 3 hours in disgust. My pop corn tastes like shit.
I'm going to try to give you the benefit of the doubt here. You've actually got it a little bit backwards. I can't speak to the average intelligence of people in each major, but you really do not have to be very smart at all to make a contribution in the natural sciences. I know some really mediocre people who have published papers. You have to be part of the cream of your generation to make a lasting contribution in philosophy, political philosophy, etc (not sociology or the 'harder' parts of economics and political science). Consequently, there's a lot of fluff even from fairly smart people.
I don't know where your interests lie or what your education is, but 99.9% of the purported 'scientists' out there do not know or care about, let alone engage with, Bacon, Descartes, Comte and others whose ideas are so pervasive in academia and beyond. Like I said, I don't know if you can tell the good from the bad and there is plenty to complain about, but if your phrase your ranting as seemingly indiscriminate against such disciplines, you risk encouraging the arrogant and anti intellectual elements of your own discipline to be content in their ignorance.
All that said, philosophy in the Anglo world is in a pretty sad state. It's been a long time in development, but the latest nail was Bertrand Russell and his ilk who reduced 'philosophy' to ignominy and are responsible for the public perception that philosophy is nothing but silly word games. You can compare the presence of bonkos in philosophy and art, disciplines dominated by relativism and a denial of objective reality. If philosophy was looked upon as a frank discipline of the utmost seriousness, people would have the stones to say that this idea or that idea is pure horseshit. But, hey, there's no such thing as truth, so go crazy.
Most of the serious thinking is going on in the political science/government department. I noticed you mentioned Leo Strauss; is McGill influenced by Chicago ? I took a class with a pretty prominent Straussian who used to teach at Toronto. I had read The Republic about 3 times before but it wasn't until I took that class that I really understood how to read it.
On September 23 2012 10:32 Jerubaal wrote: I'm going to try to give you the benefit of the doubt here. You've actually got it a little bit backwards. I can't speak to the average intelligence of people in each major, but you really do not have to be very smart at all to make a contribution in the natural sciences. I know some really mediocre people who have published papers. You have to be part of the cream of your generation to make a lasting contribution in philosophy, political philosophy, etc (not sociology or the 'harder' parts of economics and political science). Consequently, there's a lot of fluff even from fairly smart people.
I don't know where your interests lie or what your education is, but 99.9% of the purported 'scientists' out there do not know or care about, let alone engage with, Bacon, Descartes, Comte and others whose ideas are so pervasive in academia and beyond. Like I said, I don't know if you can tell the good from the bad and there is plenty to complain about, but if your phrase your ranting as seemingly indiscriminate against such disciplines, you risk encouraging the arrogant and anti intellectual elements of your own discipline to be content in their ignorance.
All that said, philosophy in the Anglo world is in a pretty sad state. It's been a long time in development, but the latest nail was Bertrand Russell and his ilk who reduced 'philosophy' to ignominy and are responsible for the public perception that philosophy is nothing but silly word games. You can compare the presence of bonkos in philosophy and art, disciplines dominated by relativism and a denial of objective reality. If philosophy was looked upon as a frank discipline of the utmost seriousness, people would have the stones to say that this idea or that idea is pure horseshit. But, hey, there's no such thing as truth, so go crazy.
Most of the serious thinking is going on in the political science/government department. I noticed you mentioned Leo Strauss; is McGill influenced by Chicago ? I took a class with a pretty prominent Straussian who used to teach at Toronto. I had read The Republic about 3 times before but it wasn't until I took that class that I really understood how to read it.
I don't think I have it backward really, I do understand that it takes smart people to make lasting, real contributions to political philosophy and such. But getting a PhD and contributing are different things even though they say PhDs extend the bounds of human knowledge. It's easy to make useless contributions. She's told us extensively about her thesis and how it was very unconventional and more of a "book" format, and that they only let her get her PhD because her mentor was a weirdo like her.
My bases in philosophy are pretty loose so I just won't comment too much. That said, she interprets The Republic as Plato's testament to how to live a good life. She says that what's commonly referred to as Plato's perfect society is just an elaborate metaphor for how people should behave. It has been a while since I've read The Republic, but there are mentions of 3 classes of people. First the philosopher-kings, who should rule, and then the fighters and workers. She says that Plato never meant for that to represent a perfect society, but rather the fact that the "philosopher" part of us, the thinker, should rule over our more basic proprieties (fighters, workers...). That seems odd to me. It seems extremely far fetched given Plato's rather extensive elaboration on the social aspects. Given that the class is meant to help us with the masters thesis through analysis, I feel like her analysis skills are, well, questionable.*
And no McGill doesn't borrow much from Chicago. Not into classical liberalism.
*: I understand that there's more than that to The Republic by the way. But I'm interested to see what you've got to say about it
I've been in university and this is my 8th year (final semester ever so 7 and 1/2 years total!), but I can happily say I've never had a teacher that was batshit insane (in class anyway). I've had stupid ones, ones that were completely unfair and couldn't do their job properly and ones that I couldn't understand when they talk, but they were relatively well formed overall (except language teachers but I don't count those; crazy fuckers all of them). The craziest I had was this crazy pervert that literally refused to answer my questions unless I brought a girl along because he hated me (I did 100% on his first quiz and he loved me, then I did 75% on his first exam and he wouldn't even look me in the eye anymore rofl). At least he knew how to teach his class correctly.
This story sounds like a true test of patience... do you argue and get on the blacklist or keep your mouth shut and endure? Tough decisions.
The best thing you can do (and it seems like you're doing it just fine) is just smile and nod until you get out of her class with that A It's crazy how such a nut can be teaching like that.
This might be completely silly and unfeasible, but did you record that particular class? The best course of action seems to be bringing up her teaching habits with the establishment after you finish her class. It would do any future students a big favor, in my opinion.
On September 23 2012 11:08 Chocolate wrote: This might be completely silly and unfeasible, but did you record that particular class? The best course of action seems to be bringing up her teaching habits with the establishment after you finish her class. It would do any future students a big favor, in my opinion.
I have 1 hour of recording on my phone. It's a shame I don't have the picture but when it starts, she had a ying and yang symbol drawn on the whiteboard and she was talking about how it's "spinning" and the era starts when the other ends. Going about how our political model is about to crash...
Student asks: We'll see the Aquarius era in our lifetime? Teacher responds: Yes you will, my mom says that around 2018-2020 we'll really be out of the crisis. 2012-2013 we're right in the crisis of the Fish era. ...
On September 23 2012 11:08 Chocolate wrote: This might be completely silly and unfeasible, but did you record that particular class? The best course of action seems to be bringing up her teaching habits with the establishment after you finish her class. It would do any future students a big favor, in my opinion.
I have 1 hour of recording on my phone. It's a shame I don't have the picture but when it starts, she had a ying and yang symbol drawn on the whiteboard and she was talking about how it's "spinning" and the era starts when the other ends. Going about how our political model is about to crash...
Student asks: We'll see the Aquarius era in our lifetime? Teacher responds: Yes you will, my mom says that around 2018-2020 we'll really be out of the crisis. 2012-2013 we're right in the crisis of the Fish era. ...
Just curious, how many of your classmates are giggling whenever she goes into her schizophrenic episodes? Because if ANY of them are taking this horseshit seriously I'm going to go jump off a bridge.
On September 23 2012 11:08 Chocolate wrote: This might be completely silly and unfeasible, but did you record that particular class? The best course of action seems to be bringing up her teaching habits with the establishment after you finish her class. It would do any future students a big favor, in my opinion.
I have 1 hour of recording on my phone. It's a shame I don't have the picture but when it starts, she had a ying and yang symbol drawn on the whiteboard and she was talking about how it's "spinning" and the era starts when the other ends. Going about how our political model is about to crash...
Student asks: We'll see the Aquarius era in our lifetime? Teacher responds: Yes you will, my mom says that around 2018-2020 we'll really be out of the crisis. 2012-2013 we're right in the crisis of the Fish era. ...
Just curious, how many of your classmates are giggling whenever she goes into her schizophrenic episodes? Because if ANY of them are taking this horseshit seriously I'm going to go jump off a bridge.
Not many people are giggling as far as I can tell. I don't know if anyone takes it seriously though. I know that a good number are like me, just listening so we can regurgitate some of it on our papers to make her happy.
There have been some resistance from people who question her but they're very very gentle about it and don't dare going at it head on because they know she won't let them talk.
There are 3-ish people who actually seriously ask her questions, but I don't know if they're "trying to learn" or just trying to understand her shit so that they use a lot of it in the test.
Pray not to become the target of her paranoia so that by the end of the last year of your degree, after you've completed all your credits, you don't have to waste months of annoying appeals like I am.
On September 24 2012 01:05 qtiehunter wrote: Welcome to College.
Pray not to become the target of her paranoia so that by the end of the last year of your degree, after you've completed all your credits, you don't have to waste months of annoying appeals like I am.
Been in uni for 4 years and I haven't had any issues like that.
EPT
