Those Who Can't Do, Teach.Those Who Can't Teach, Administrate

Where I feel I should be if my old professor wins

Much to my horror, the person who I regarded as one of the worst educators in my academic career is running for the Wake County School Board. I'm comparing him to all the teachers I had in elementary, junior high, high school as well as undergraduate, graduate and law school. He was my inorganic teacher for about 6 weeks until I dropped that motherfucker after receiving a 28 on an exam. I was absolutely stunned.

I did some serious soul-searching. Was it me, or was it him? I looked at my performance in the other 2 classes I was taking: physical organic chemistry and physical chemistry. In those classes, the tests I took there were almost 4X greater than what I got in the inorganic course.

I then went over my notes and compared them to the test. I also compared our text book assignments to our test (oh yes, we didn't have a textbook in that class. In an upper level course, that may be acceptable but not in a first year graduate level course). Not a damn thing from my notes and "textbook" matched what was covered on the test. The man played a classic game of "Hide the Ball" and succeeded splendidly.

I then reviewed what I learned in that class and what the professor had taught me. The answer in both cases was NOTHING. Even to this day, I don't know what the hell the guy was trying to teach. His ability to effectively communicate was awful. I kept asking "Is it me or is it him." Had I flunked my exams in my other courses, the trend line would easily show I was the dunce too thick-headed to learn. The inorganic exam was a sorely obvious outlier. It was him.

I've never got anywhere near that grade again after I dropped his class. I had never gotten anywhere near it before I dropped, either.

I thought for sure he would never get tenure. He did. The man is a full professor now. He even moved up in the administrative ladder. Now he's running for the Wake County Board of Education. If his teaching abilities indicate his ability to sit on the Board, I hope like hell the man loses.

I looked at the "awards" and recommendations on his website. Who are these people giving him such praise? Have any of them actually sat in on his classes?

That man nearly wrecked my graduate school career. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to drop his class. Had they not let me drop his class, I would have dropped out of grad school. That man's class resulted in about a 1/3 of my class being placed on the academic probation list. These were smart and capable people, and this guy's piss-poor teaching caused their predicament.

Now this man wants to set the agenda for the Wake County School System. I saw how poorly he taught and this bodes ill for him to be in such a power of authority. Even worse, since the man has a PhD, people will most likely not stand up to him and instead kiss his ass whenever he proposes whatever cockamamie ideas that are whirling around in his clueless head. I can't believe he is on the verge of being unleashed on the largest school system in our state.


The silver lining to all this is for private schools. Dipshits like that guy make private schools more and more desirable.