If he was informed that a student complained about his treatment of Christianity, I see no reason why he should not discuss that in the classroom. As for laughing at them, I wonder: Guffaws? Chuckles? Smiles? Strange as it may seem, students cannot always be depended on to tell the unvarnished truth.
no, nor can part-time community college professors. i'm quite familiar with the belief-challenging charge -- some beliefs are so shaky, and some believers so sensitive that the socratic method seems like an avenue of attack.
and sometimes, it's just a misunderstanding. my father is a professor, and was recently working to help solve a dispute between a student and another professor, that had come before the chair of the department. the student was upset that a professor had "ridiculed" and yelled at them in front of the class (plural used for gender obfuscation). this is a professor that i've known my entire life, and i can't imagine him yelling even for a second. he's about the quietest, most soft-spoken person i've ever known. apparently, all he did was insist the class move on when the student failed to understand prerequisite material.
My wife is a professor--a popular one who receives overwhelmingly positive student reviews. She teaches literature and presents many theoretical perspectives: feminist, traditional close reading, deconstructionist, Marxist, you name it. She also welcomes student perspectives.
Occasionally, inevitably, someone will write in their course review that she "tried to force [x] theory on us" and "ridiculed my beliefs"--because she insisted they master the tenets of multiple perspectives and challenged them to account for their own. To demand that a student achieve proficiency of a literary reading of the Bible, for example, is not to demand that they relinguish their religion: but some will insist that it is just that.
well, that's the thing, and something i demonstrate here on a daily basis. fundamentalism does not stand up to a proficient reading of the bible. it's the same reason that the church was so upset when martin luther translated the bible into the vernacular -- now people will know what it says, and they won't believe what we tell them anymore.
I find it especially interesting to hear the student you quote say "what we wanted" (emphasis mine). If the administration discharged this instructor because a group of students brought complaints to which he was not allowed to respond, the administration has a great deal of explaining to do. If that is the case, I'd imagine any competent attorney could overturn his dismissal and win damages.
well, like i said, we need more information. i don't know if that was the case. it's also possible that they've been hearing complaints about the professor for a long time. and it depends highly on what, exactly, he said to the student in front of the class -- something the student's comment dances around. it might have been highly inappropriate. i'm sure there are certain things a professor could say to a student that would get him fired pretty quickly.
I agree that more information is necessary for a fully formed judgement. But if the administration had attended to the normal process of faculty peer review and administrative hearings before discharging the instructor, I don't think they'd be saying, "No comment, it's a personnel issue."
what would they say? i'm not sure they'd say anything else, actually.
Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.