EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Blame the rubric: The assignment ‘merely required that the student engage with the course material based on their current beliefs and experiences’
It was sadly hilarious to read comments from progressives regarding University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky’s essay that critiqued gender theory (in large measure) from a Biblical perspective.
It isn’t surprising, as the Left maintains an advantage when it comes to the news: It controls legacy media, and what’s said there then filters down to “lesser” outlets, then social media.
Headlines often are the only thing people read … and maybe a few lines of the actual story. In this case, either folks simply went with what was told to them, or they’re being quite disingenuous — as evidenced by the following:
As yours truly noted last weekend, one of the more overlooked (or ignored) parts of the Fulnecky story is that the assignment for which she received a zero was a reaction paper. And a zero means no credit, not “failure,” “flunk,” “F,” “bad grade,” etc.
The mere fact Fulnecky turned in a paper means she should have gotten some credit. What’s more, reaction papers by their very nature are subjective. They rely on opinion.
Fulnecky freely admits she’s not the best writer, but nonetheless is correct in this assessment: “I think most college students would be in agreement that if you turn in the assignment either way you don’t get a zero … as long as you turn it in.”
(In my 25-plus years of teaching I don’t believe I ever gave a student a zero for turning in something. Perhaps only if an assignment was months late, in which case it was too late for marking period credit anyway, so I’d immediately hand the assignment right back to the kid.)
Never mind, too, that with her previous assignments, Fulnecky says she received full credit.
So what’s the deal with transgender course instructor Mel Curth? For one thing, he was offended. He told Fulnecky in his assignment comments that “to call an entire group of people ‘demonic’ is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population.”
This is where we are: A college student is excoriated for not using “science” in an opinion paper … in a class taught by a man who believes he’s a woman.
For more regarding the grading issue, Professor John Kainer of the University of the Incarnate Word offers an excellent perspective. He asks “What happens when a university forgets to teach its teachers?”
Fulnecky was enrolled in a 2000-level psychology course, and this classification matters. Lower-level courses are, by their nature, the courses where students learn the basics of the discipline. In a lower-level course it is appropriate to have lower-level assignments. The response paper that Fulnecky was assigned did not require higher-order knowledge of psychology. It merely required that the student engage with the course material based on their current beliefs and experiences. True, Fulnecky’s writing is not Pulitzer Prize worthy, but it is on-par with much of the writing that I’ve seen in my intro level courses over the past decade.
The biggest issue in this case is that the instructor didn’t follow their own rubric when assessing the student’s reaction paper. The assignment specified that students should “meaningfully engage” with the reading while presenting a list of ways that students might do this. The lack of scientific evidence was stated as the justification for giving the student a zero, despite it not being part of the rubric.
While Kainer (pictured) says Curth should not have been put on leave or “blacklisted,” he believes (like yours truly, among others) giving Fulnecky a zero was “unethical.” This is due, in part, because universities don’t train grad students and new instructors on how to teach.
“Rubrics are supposed to limit subjectivity,” Kainer says, but the assignment in question “wasn’t designed to help [Curth] remain objective.”
(Ironically, PinkNews reports Curth received an “Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award” from OU’s psychology department earlier this year.)
Kainer’s right — and while I’m usually the first to criticize the content of college education courses, one of the most beneficial I ever took (a grad class; it should have been an undergrad offering) was on how to properly construct assignments and assessments, right down to how they appear visually on paper.
“If universities do not invest time and resources in training graduate students and early career professors how to teach, they should not be surprised to find out that there is a large variance the quality of the teaching,” Kainer says.
Indeed.
MORE: Yes, some professors ARE ‘out to get you’ – especially if you’re conservative
