My job as a columnist for Technician is to write my opinion or “viewpoint,” if you will, to evoke conversation or make others think about an important issue. Because my job description reads as above, I try my best not to stray from my duties. Unfortunately, not everyone in the working world feels this way, and many people who we must encounter on a daily basis tend to veer off this path of common decency.
Now, I understand sometimes it is good when people go beyond the call of duty and do something to better the human race. When the bag boy at the local grocery store helps an older woman put her groceries in her car when all he is paid to do is bag groceries. When someone who volunteers to tutor learning disabled children also forms relationships with them to make them challenge themselves to succeed when all he or she has to do is show up twice a week and listen to them read. When a professor spends 50 percent of a class period rambling about his or her own political beliefs when all he or she is supposed to talk about is math (almost any subject can work here).
All right, for those of you who have been paying attention, let’s play a game. Which item on the list above does not belong? Sing it with me — “The one at the end doesn’t belong!” Why, you ask? It’s simple. There is no reason or excuse for a professor to bash or praise an elected official in our government. However, there is one exception. If the class you are taking is called Modern Political Opinion 101 with Professor Get A. Life, then you should expect some of this behavior.
As far as I know MPO 101 does not exist at N.C. State, but amazingly I feel like I am majoring in it. I thought professors were supposed to be professionals who we should recognize as masters in their fields and admire them for their knowledge. I do not see verbally trashing our nation’s president to be very professional. To be honest, I would not consider relentless praising of our president professional either. I think this way for one main reason. Neither of these positions or opinions have anything to do with the subject I am paying to be taught.
I did not go through grade school, apply to college, work my butt off in college and put the rest of my life on hold to be educated on one’s closed-minded, “scholarly” opinion. I went through all that to get a degree in something completely unrelated to politics, and I do not feel I should have it thrown in my face on a daily basis. If this is the way classes are going to be for the next year I have remaining here at this University, maybe attendance policies should be done away with, so those who desire MPO 101 can attend, and I can teach myself with a textbook (which sometimes I basically feel like I do, anyway).
But perhaps what bothers me the most is the 50 percent of class time that is wasted on a professor’s political agenda. I am proud to attend this University because it is respected, because it is full of opportunity and, most of all, because it has some of the best professors in the nation. Having said that, my opinion of a truly great professor is one who has the respect of his or her fellow faculty, the community and, most importantly, the students he or she instructs. Job descriptions are usually fairly black and white. Unless a professor’s opinion is going to save a life, help the less fortunate or achieve world peace, he or she needs to keep it out of the classroom. There is a time and place for opinions to be voiced, and you have just read mine here and now.
E-mail Meghan at [email protected]
