Still Crazy After All These Years(WHACKO LIB PROF. ALERT)

Dartmouth Review ^ | 3/5/04 | Alston B. Ramsay

[paltz]

“It’s not that very good teaching is not going on in English 5,” English Chair Peter Travis recently told the Daily Dartmouth, “but we’ve not had the sense of mission and vision that we think writing instruction should have at an institution as prestigious as Dartmouth.”

On the second point, I’ll happily concur. But Professor Travis would be wise to sit in on one of Shelby Grantham’s English 5 classes before making his first pronouncement. Grantham is more than just a bad teacher. She’s horrific.

Prof. Grantham is the subject of a lengthy retrospective on page six of this issue. Two freshmen, who wish to remain anonymous, describe their experience with the nutty professor as she led them through a term of rants and essays on subjects like slave reparations and radical environmentalism—not William Shakespeare, not James Joyce, and not even Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Grantham does not even pretend she will teach students to write. Her biography on the web includes a list of things she’d like to “figure out with students,” which include “what to do about racism,” “how to make non-violence a national priority,” “whether it’s possible to share the planet with other species,” and finally, “where to seek words to make these questions ring and their answers sing.”

That’s all fine and dandy, but she misses a crucial point: English 5 is supposed to be about writing—not proselytizing on whatever whimsical idea is on Grantham’s mind, be it the War in Iraq or lobsters suffering at the Co-op. (Seriously, she’s “not sleeping at night” because of the latter. See page seven.)
According to the course description, however, English 5 is supposed to “hone [students’] skills in expository argument.” Professors have a relatively easy task: “Instruction focuses on strategies for reading and analysis and on all stages of the writing process.”

Nowhere is Grantham’s disdain for this mandate more obvious than the final “Long Paper” she assigns to each of her English 5 classes. Rather than a critical essay, as one might expect, Grantham has students author a ten-page “account of [their] experience trying to change the world.” But the assignment is not quite as open-ended as you might imagine:

The subject of the paper is the experience of trying to change your world to make it more racially inclusive. What the thesis will be is anybody’s guess. Don’t try to outline this paper before you have executed the plan, because you can’t know where that will take you. Execute the plan without thinking about how it is going to appear in a paper. (Otherwise, you’ll limit the experience and the paper.)

Somehow, this task is supposed to introduce students to the rigors of college writing. Luckily for Grantham’s class, however, “it is not necessary to achieve conventional ‘success.’” Students don’t actually have to change the world in order to fetch an A. They just have to try—and then write about the “experience.” I may be missing something, but I’m unclear what this assignment has to do with refining an “expository argument.” Of course, I could be out of my element: I did not change the world in my English 5 class. No, our final assignment was just a comparative essay on mimetic desires in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and the Gospel of Mark, but I digress.

Grantham is obviously free to do whatever she wants on her own time—no matter how bizarre. The problem is that her outrageous views underpin every lecture, writing assignment, and reading in the class. Students last term had to study “Agree About Abortion,” “White Anti-Racists,” and “Colorblindness Personified” from Lifting the White Veil, to name just a few. Her syllabus fittingly urged the class to “save trees” and to “save more trees.”

Finally, there’s the utter lack of tolerance in her classes. Despite her exhortations to the contrary, students who speak out or disagree with Grantham are shut up. Just read the e-mail on page six sent to her class after a student suggested the lack of brown band-aids might not be the result of societal racism. This stance, apparently, originates from a “white supremacist set of assumptions.” Indeed, as she noted in class, “White culture is racism. It’s based on hate.” She’s also accepting of men: “I can’t read male authors anymore.” And she even has words of wisdom on the arcane: “Animals don’t know the rules of economics.”

I could continue, but I’d be beating a dead horse. With her four English 5 classes this year, Grantham exposed almost almost eighty freshmen to her drivel. Worse, these eighty kids were deprived of their first opportunity to think critically and to write persuasively in a college atmosphere.

There is reason to be optimistic, though. After thirteen years on the job, Grantham does not have tenure—which brings me to my final point. If Dartmouth is truly interested in sprucing up its English 5 curriculum, I have an obvious suggestion: Fire Shelby Grantham. Immediately.

[Qwinn]

Wow, good one!

Unfortunately, she'll get tenure. I'd bet good money on it.

Qwinn

[paltz]

Finally, there’s the utter lack of tolerance in her classes. Despite her exhortations to the contrary, students who speak out or disagree with Grantham are shut up. Just read the e-mail on page six sent to her class after a student suggested the lack of brown band-aids might not be the result of societal racism.

Our Ivy Leagues have amounted to this drivel?

[expatpat]

Unbelievable! In my day, it wouldn't have happened but, if it did, the students would have gone en masse to the Department Head and insisted on correction of the problem.

[THX 1138]

What are we lookin' at here; 30-40 grand a year for this crap?

[paltz]

The Quotable Grantham

On Geography:
“We don’t think of Egypt as Africa.”

On Literacy:
“I can’t read male authors anymore.”

On Flushing Toilets:
“Building codes are designed to support the unsustainable American lifestyle.”

On Roughing It:
“I have to ride a bus down to Washington D.C. to demonstrate against the occupation of Iraq. That’s just not comfortable.”

On Tax Cuts:
“Animals don’t know the rules of economics.”
On Racism:
“Only white people can be racist.”

On Waldo:
“Where were all of the pictures of his [William Penn’s] slaves?”

On Houseguests:
“I had a problem with a big black man sleeping in my bed.”

On Housekeeping:
“Grantham, you never change the sheets when white people sleep in your bed.”

On Racism:
“White culture is racism. It’s based on hate.”
On Society:
“We’re uncomfortable talking about money in this culture.”

On the Rustic Life:
“I have $15 in the bank.”

On Walker’s The Color Purple:
“I think from this we have to respect the legitimacy of same-sex relationships.”

On the Plight of the Lobster:
“I’ve got to do something about it, I’m not sleeping at night.”

A Blatant Lie:
“Feel free to tell me, ‘Grantham, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

[Bonaparte]

What a ditz...

[Qwinn]

ROTFL... whacko!

I'm sure she'll be getting quite a few awards at the next liberal hug-fest... and put in charge of the next mandatory sensitivity training seminar for evil right-wing students who dare disagree with her.

Qwinn

[JimVT]

$30-40K?

Shirley, you jest!

"The 2001-2002 average salary for full University professors was $97,300, ranking tenth out of the 16 schools it has been compared to, with Dartmouth, Swarthmore and Wellesley having the top three highest salaries for full professors. Dartmouth currently pays full professors an average of $109,100 dollars."

Figure 180 days at most....and a five hour day!

[Qwinn]

I think he meant how much does a Dartmouth student pay to get indoctrinated with this crap.

Qwinn

[mercy]

This is nothing. Merely the tip of the iceberg. If I had kids (I knew better) the last place I would ever let them go would be within the confines of ANY institution of 'higher' learning in the western world.

They are all cults ... given to absurd ideas and even crazier practices. It's not dificult to understand. It's the Michael Jackson-Ted Bundy-Barbara Streisand syndrome. Monstrous ego + complete lack of societal accountability + copious ammounts of power over individuals = psychopathy.

I know one of these types intimately. He's 60 something, a tenured prof at one of the largest universities in the world, noted, in fact highly lauded, in his field, author of twenty books, including textbooks ... and thoroughly believes what the world REALLY needs is the extermination of 9/10ths of the worlds population ... by any means necessary. He's a hermit. Lives like an animal almost. Is unkempt. Hates almost everybody. Though he lecturers in one of the sciences .... he mostly works at bending his students mind's to his ideas about humanity being a disease needing a cure.

Though he pretends to eschew politics he seems nearly always to be sympathetic to the left. His hatred of George Bush is pronounced and always at the forefront of his conversation. This man IS the intelligentsia of the left. It is to men like this man that the politicians of the Left turn to for inspiration and motivation. He claims to love the earth but he loves nothing. He just hates. Why, I can not tell. Life has given him much. He has many degrees and is a very successful member of academia. But he is as empty as a rotten hollow log. It IS a mystery. The mystery of iniquity.

One thing he has told me that could be a hint. He fantasizes about being a 'caveman' and that he believes he would have been a chief. He talks of laying down at night with two young things to keep him warm. I think this ties in with the fact that he has a wall of bookshelves with nothing but xxx rated tapes. Perhaps he is angry that he was not allowed to be a Gengis Kahn or Saladin in life. He resents the religious society he finds himself in that restricted his 'rights' as a superiour being.

I'm sure he would have fit in very comfortably in Hitler's Third Reich.

[AnAmericanMother]

Unbelievable! In my day, it wouldn't have happened but, if it did, the students would have gone en masse to the Department Head and insisted on correction of the problem.

We had a similar problem with a prof. in the history department when I was an undergraduate. He was unprepared, incompetent, and possibly in the early stages of senility. The entire class as a unit (NO exceptions) went to the dean of students and dropped the course, telling him why.

Why don't these kids speak up?

[somniferum]

As a college student, I would like to weigh in my 2 cents on the subject. Not ALL institutions of higher learning are liberal indoctrination centers. I attend Mississippi State, a public university, and the atmosphere on campus is surprisingly (refreshingly? :)) conservative. This is my third year, and I have yet to run into any extremely liberal professors. Of course, most of my professors do not express any opinion one way or another (as they actually teach the subject at hand.. my physics or chemistry professors did not discuss anything remotely political). I did have a slightly leftist leaning comparative politics teacher last year, but she was actually a good teacher. She let everyone express their opinion and didnt discourage anyone from speaking their mind (even the guy who said Isreal needed to send the pals on their own "trail of tears").. on the other hand I also had an extremely conservative business law teacher who would harp about judicial activism in his lectures (right on!). I dont really know what the point of this post was, except to illustrate that not all universities are bastions of extreme liberalism, and I think I am getting an as good, if not better, education than I would at the ivy league institutions (and at only $2000 tuition per semester).

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

Dartmouth's motto is "vox clamantis in deserto" - "The voice of a one crying out in an isolated place." -- This motto surely does describe the insightful Dartmouth students who are decrying the fraudulent, attitude driven, mushy minded Dartmouth hack professor Grantham.

I'm not from Hanover, New Hampshire, but, like other Freepers, I cry in the wilderness for Dartmouth and all the Ivy League schools, which have lost their bearings, their lustre and their integrity. It's time for some new alma maters. The first one should be called "Free Republic University." Hell, if people can get government and foundation money to set up elementary and secondary charter schools with empty, politically correct curricula, it's time to create universities that will once again teach people to think critically, in contrast with today's universities whose students graduate with little more than a head spinning with angry, parroted sound bites.

[Atchafalaya]

Tigers Sweep Bulldogs. Headline in the Morning Advocate sports page next Monday AM.

[Desron13]

"Grantham does not even pretend she will teach students to write. Her biography on the web includes a list of things she’d like to “figure out with students,” which include “what to do about racism,” “how to make non-violence a national priority,” “whether it’s possible to share the planet with other species,” and finally, “where to seek words to make these questions ring and their answers sing.”"

Riiight, as I unobtrusively begin to remove the sharp objects from the desktop between us.

[AnAmericanMother]

Dartmouth's motto is "vox clamantis in deserto"

Matthew 3:3
Mark 1:3
Luke 3:4
John 1:23

All referencing Isaiah 40:3

Dartmouth used to be a fairly religious place.

[Cultural Jihad]

Such proselytizing professors who only want to make little mental clones of themselves in the minds of their students are traitors to the ideal of the university, which is open inquiry into all the issues.

[THX 1138]

I meant that's how much the tuition is.