{"id":724,"date":"2006-10-18T09:52:19","date_gmt":"2006-10-18T09:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/18\/for-small-values-of-real\/"},"modified":"2006-10-18T09:52:19","modified_gmt":"2006-10-18T09:52:19","slug":"for-small-values-of-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/18\/for-small-values-of-real\/","title":{"rendered":"For Small Values of “Real”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Learning Curves, Rudbeckia Hirta takes a look at the myth of the “real world”<\/a>. A colleague tried to defend a zero-tolerance attendance policy by saying, “If she had a job and missed a meeting, she’d be fired.” That’s not really how it works, though:<\/p>\n

\n

We have people who don’t show up to class, people who cancel class for no good reason, and people who don’t show up for mandatory meetings, and they (all without tenure!) still work here.<\/p>\n

My friends with Real Jobs have griped about enough incompetent fools that they’ve worked with, that I don’t think that zero-tolerance firing is in wide use. My incompetent students seem to manage to hold down their jobs at TGIFriday’s and the Macaroni Grill. I can’t believe that the Real World is as harsh a place as it is portrayed by instructors who have never worked outside of a university.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In particular, this is one of the things that drives me crazy about arguments over tenure for teachers. The whole concept of tenure is often derided as a terrible distortion of the natural state of affairs in which incompetent malingerers are fired at the first sign of malingering. The educational system is in trouble, the reasoning goes, because the incompetent are shielded from the firing that they so richly deserve.<\/p>\n

The problem is, even the most cursory examination of the “real world” reveals no real shortage of bumbling idiots who hang onto their jobs well past the point when they would’ve been canned under the ideal standards that teachers are supposedly avoiding. And, ironically, the same people who complain about tenure warping the educational system can often be found complaining about their idiotic co-workers who somehow manage not to get fired…<\/p>\n

This is not to say that there aren’t people in acadeia who ought to be kicked out the door, or failing that, thrown out a window. They’re there, all right. I just don’t think they’re that much more common in the Ivory Tower than in the “real world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Learning Curves, Rudbeckia Hirta takes a look at the myth of the “real world”. A colleague tried to defend a zero-tolerance attendance policy by saying, “If she had a job and missed a meeting, she’d be fired.” That’s not really how it works, though: We have people who don’t show up to class,… Continue reading For Small Values of “Real”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}