At university, my Poetry lecturer detested first-year students.
On a dreary October morning, 150 of us are sitting clustered in an auditorium, clutching pencils and chatting nervously. At precisely 10am, the door is flung open and a tall man strides in, a cross between Victor Meldrew and the Star Wars Emperor, clad in a beret and red scarf.

He doesn't even bother to take off the scarf, but leans against the desk, looking at his shoes. With a reluctant breath, he raises his head, sweeps his gaze from one side of the room to the other, and sighs.

"What's a poem?" he asks in a sharp, acidic voice.

One girl puts her hand up. There's always one. "It's something that rhymes", she says, probably beaming smugly. I don't know, she was sitting at the front, I didn't see her expression. But I saw the professor's, and wish I hadn't. He raised his hand languidly and pinched the bridge of his nose, then stood up straight and walked to the white board.

"In three weeks you will submit a paper, 3000 words, answering my question", he barked to the room as he stamped four clear letters on the board. He turned to face us, staring.

Someone called out. "How are we supposed to do that?"

"Ah! A neuron fires!" he retorted with vitriolic delight. He raised his chin nobly, swept his arm to the board, and pointed at the four letters: FOFO.




"Fuck Off and Find Out", he declared, and stormed from the room.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 16:13, 10 replies)

I'd have come back 3
weeks later with a paper saying 'A poem doesn't have to rhyme'. Then 2994 words about Star Wars.

Fucking poetry.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 16:19, closed)

The point was to go off and read every famous person's work on what is and isn't poetry
so that he didn't have to explain it to us. Because he was so terrifying, we did that, never knowing what he was expecting us to do.

He forced us to take immediate control of our learning, rather than the production-line force-feeding of material we'd had in secondary school, and I've been grateful for that ever since.

Writing about Star Wars, even in a Masters Thesis about Star Wars, is inexcusable.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 16:22, closed)

Seriously?
That was at university? Not having a go at you personally but is that what this country has come to? Basic comprehension skills that were taught to me in Primary school being "taught" at University....in a fucking POETRY class. No wonder the standard of graduates these days is so piss poor.
(Bushcricket, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 16:33, closed)

this was more than ten years ago now
but it was certainly a dramatic change to what we'd had at grammar school, with the grooming for A-level passes regardless of how useful the information might actually be.

The education system has been like that for some time now.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 16:37, closed)

Yeah, I got the idea
of what he was doing, I just have a bit of an aversion to poetry.

The beret and scarf bit just makes me want to hunt him down and punch him in the face.

I suppose my list of educational achievements reflects this attitude (I got my first paper qualifiaction at age 33), but even as a first year I would not have given a teacher like that the time of day.

edit - just noticed - first year university. I was thinking 11 year olds.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 16:35, closed)

Well, he certainly picked the right job.
Probably got 20K a year back then to do next to fuck all.
It's stories like this that make people take the piss out of arts degrees. I am sure that they can be useful and I know learning on your own can be good -- but this makes me think of Stephen Fry and his three essays that alledgedly got him through universisty.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 17:18, closed)

If I was paying
£6K-£9k tutition fees for a course I would demand the fucker comes back and did some fucking teaching.

Self directed learning is a buzz thing in education nowadays, as if it is a good thing. It's not. It's just a cheap way to provide a course whilst the lecturers concentrate on their own research.
(Bitter and Twisted, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 20:30, closed)

On the other hand..
There is a point buried in 'self-directed learning' - there are many things where there is no way to teach it: the best a teacher can do is provide opportunity, and assist motivation, to learn.

With that in mind, the problem I had in university (aside from excessive laziness) was the poor feedback loop. If there are two weeks between me doing some work, and getting information on my weaknesses in that work, then a) I have forgotten what I was thinking at the time and b) I have done two weeks' work based on this flawed approach.
(Not him., Sat 19 Mar 2011, 16:10, closed)

Cambridge
This sounds like Cambridge. They do that kind of crap there - the 'teaching' comes in the tutorials, where the victims and the prof discuss the essay. Something like Socratic methods, I believe although you'd have to find a full-qualified Cambridge fag to get the full QT.
(solfhur Wibbly-wobbly, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 17:39, closed)

It wasn't far off
I had the same guy a year later for a literature course, and he explained that there's no point him "teaching" first years because they don't have anything to base his lectures on, and he believed that if he spent an hour presenting a digested version, then no-one would take the time to do the required reading.

I hated him for it at the time, but I'll admit it worked.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 17:52, closed)