Tuesday 7 April 2009

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

Back in mid-March, (ex)Professor Rancourt claimed in interview:
Q. How is it possible to give every student an A+? Don’t we need some kind of evaluation system?

A. You put “A+” in the box where it says “student grade.” It’s quite easy. And with that simple move, you remove the instrument of power and oppression in the classroom. My job description says nothing about rank ordering students for employers or graduate school. It says “optimize education.”
Pretty clear: he gave everybody an A+ because he finds grades oppressive. Of course, giving everyone a B or a C would have done just as much to eliminate the oppressive hierarchy of ordinal grades, but might not have pleased the students as much.

Now he's claiming that the University of Ottawa was unfair in dismissing him:
Rancourt also submitted his students' final exams as evidence that he was evaluating their work properly, but the committee refused to look at these, as well.

"Now my union will take on the case, and they will fight it vigorously. It will go before a labour-law arbitrator, and then it will go to court, and we'll see if their case will hold up. They will have the burden of the proof. The allegation is that I fraudulently assessed student performance in this one course. I think they have a weak case.
Surely the review committee will weight his later defense by his prior argument. It's kinda like claiming self-defense as a motive after having previously bragged about the murder you were planning.

1 comment:

  1. Aha! But that's where you're wrong, my overly clever academic friend! Brag about your diabolical plans to murder the victim so much that, acting in panic and terror, your victim decides that he must kill you first in order to protect his own life; and at the moment of his attempt, then and only then, kill your victim in self defense.

    The perfect crime!

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