New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

Category: Silliness not worth a FFS

Excellence, Schmexcellence Part IV*: an attempt to be clearer about the main problems with assessment.

March 11, 2014

In comment #9 at this post, Susan makes a kind of canonical case I've heard from lots of assessment people. First, I should say that I agree with 95% of the intended answers to Susan's rhetorical questions. We should be much clearer about what we want our students to get out of their degrees, and…
Even Foucault couldn’t make this up (hat-tip Rod Dreher)

March 6, 2014

Why do things like "professional development," "continuing education," "team-building," and (yes, this too) "assessment" always have to tend towards infantalizing the poor people subjected to them? It's one thing to bureaucratically humiliate people by making them waste huge gobs of time. But this business of making them engage in ritualistic idiotic performances (which always involve…
My Dad went to LSU, and all I got was this lousy pee-cup

December 17, 2013

A few days ago, while trying to open the interwebs thingy to allow me to start entering my grades, I was prevented from doing so by a pop-up menu that referenced LSU's Policy Statement 67. The text included unsubstantiated and highly dubious claims such as that most workplace problems are the result of drugs and alcohol…