"I decided we would do an oral exam* because it's a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren't just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers."
Yeah and it's also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn't possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This "gotcha" style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I'll ask a professor something and they'll be like "I'll have to look that up later and get back to you." Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don't do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
In a communist Utopia, people will still fail organic chemistry. When the dictatorship of capitalism is abolished, people will still fail advanced math courses.
And that's okay. Individuals have different skills, different strengths and weaknesses, not everyone is equipped to be an astrophysicist.
But when you throw capital into the mix, when you turn University into a daycare for your young adults, And you structure society in such a way that without an advanced degree you are doomed to poverty, You have created a system with perverce incentives.
This means that the person who has the resources, even if they don't necessarily have the innate skill or desire, can brute force their way to a degree.
Whereas the next Einstein, the next Newton, the next Hubble, is working at a fast food joint, their mind preoccupied not with the mysteries of the universe, but with how they're going to pay their cell phone bill this month.
This morning, our generations Lenin had to wake up 2 hours early, take three buses, to arrive on time to a job that barely pays enough to survive. And instead of pontificating on theory, they are being ground down by poverty.