BYU Students Rate Daniel C. Peterson (Part I)

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_Kishkumen
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Re: BYU Students Rate Daniel C. Peterson (Part I)

Post by _Kishkumen »

My primary concern is not whether DCP meets up to certain standards, but whether I do. In this case, I sympathize with DCP as a fellow academic, and I think of my obligation to others who share my lot. I do not see how posting DCP's teaching reviews from RateMyProfessor bears on his apologetics. My opinion is that we should adhere to the rules of the board, and limit the amount of in real life exposure we inflict on others, just as many of us prefer to remain mostly anonymous.

On a different note, I think it doesn't hurt to imagine DCP as he views himself and his own actions. You interpret his motivations as being almost entirely self-interested and mercenary. You take no account of the fact that, from his perspective, he has chosen to sacrifice personal academic accomplishment in order to serve his fellow LDS folk and the Church by defending it. His motivation is not simply plane rides and nice meals in exotic locations. Yeah, I am sure he enjoys that stuff, but he could have enjoyed that, and more, perhaps more easily through other means.

So, we disagree with this guy. A lot. But do we have to paint him in such cartoonishly villainous terms? I am sorry, but this looks unhinged. To the degree that we are engaging in a playful kind of spoofing here, I get it, but at a certain point this play can get out of hand. I can only tell others what I believe to be true and the right way of comporting ourselves. Everybody Wang Chung has crossed the line here. Others have done so too, on occasion, including me. It is one thing to be rambunctious in our criticisms of apologetics, but it is another to get deeply personal and become habituated to seeing our opponents as fundamentally bad people.

Indeed, I think the latter is really unhealthy.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: BYU Students Rate Daniel C. Peterson (Part I)

Post by _Everybody Wang Chung »

Kish,

Good Gawd! Give it a rest, man. We all know you how feel. Now please go away and leave this OP alone.

In the link I cited in response to your feigned outrage we find this comment to DCP:

I suspect that the problem is less that "most students in school aren't very good," but that contempt breeds contempt and shuts down any incentive to be invested, even if they are paying tuition for it. Your experience is less likely a reflection of the students than it is of your attitude toward them. I'm sorry to hear it. I know Rate My Professor isn't exactly a scientific survey, and that you probably get much more detailed feedback from the student course evaluations, but your contempt for students is reflected in the comments on the website, so what I'm observing here is consistent with what others observed in your class.


DCP then responds:

DF: "what I do know is that 1) it's obvious when professors have contempt for their students, and 2) contempt seriously undercuts students' willingness to participate, pay attention, or care."

And you're absolutely welcome, DF, to inquire whether I have a reputation for holding my students in contempt. If you would like, I can perhaps put you in contact with some of them. Seriously. If you're in the area, come and visit one of my classes. Or linger around just before or just after one or two of them and ask the students.

DF: "I suspect that the problem is less that 'most students in school aren't very good,' but that contempt breeds contempt and shuts down any incentive to be invested, even if they are paying tuition for it."

Your suspicion is without merit, without any basis in fact, and completely unjustified.

And the problem is precisely what I said it was. You just don't understand what I was talking about.

DF: "Your experience is less likely a reflection of the students than it is of your attitude toward them."

My students do fine, and I don't hold them in contempt.

DF: "I'm sorry to hear it."

I'm sorry to see how completely you missed my point.

Candidly, I'm astonished by your comment. I never saw it coming, it's so remarkably tangential, gratuitous, and weird.

DF: "I know Rate My Professor isn't exactly a scientific survey, and that you probably get much more detailed feedback from the student course evaluations, but your contempt for students is reflected in the comments on the website, so what I'm observing here is consistent with what others observed in your class."

You're right. It's not scientific.

I would never use "Rate My Professor" as a weapon against an academic with whom I differed. It would be rather like using comments on Amazon.com as if they constituted a scientific sample.

My BYU student evaluations are generally at or near, and often above, department, college, and university averages.

DF: "You're obviously intelligent. But having had a variety of teachers and my own variety of successes and failures, I can tell you that intelligence is not mutually exclusive with humility and kindness."

Obviously.

You misread and misrepresent me in the deepest and most offensive possible way.

DF: "If they were, I'd take humility and kindness any day, for the long-term and inspiring impact. People forget calculus and Arabic and the nuances of Shi'ite beliefs in the return of the 12th Imam and how that influences some extremists' decision-making. They sometimes forget the people who treated them with scorn. But they never forget those who were kind."

And you believe that you're justified in accusing me of being scornful and unkind toward my students and others.

Good grief.

DY: "At least, I don't. That's what I take with me, and that's who inspires me to become better. Judging by your reputation (from FARMS and Maxwell Institute and your public response to your disaffiliation from the same), I doubt you'll take any of this seriously, and will instead come up with some witty sarcastic retort."

Another scientific sample, no doubt.

DY: " It needed to be said, regardless."

No, it didn't. Your personal attack is off -target and irrelevant, completely unwarranted, and extraordinarily unkind.

And you missed my point.

Perhaps your high school was different from mine, but not everybody in my graduating class went on to college, let alone to top universities. Many were relatively bad at things like English and math. I don't think that my supposed contempt for them had even the slightest effect in that regard.

Not everybody in my undergraduate university classes did extremely well, either. Some didn't get A's. Some wrote bad papers. Some misunderstood textbooks. Some just didn't work very hard. I suppose that my alleged contempt might have been a factor, but I doubt it. I didn't know most of them, and they didn't know me.

In my classes today, not everybody gets an A. But many do. Some of the papers that I read are quite good. Some aren't. Sometimes, the logic is poor. Sometimes people get bad scores on final exams.

I was simply pointing out that people who who weren't careful readers or rigorous thinkers as college freshmen or as high school students don't necessarily become better readers or more rigorously logical simply because they age into their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond.

I think about this from time to time when, for example, I read really poorly-reasoned letters to the editor. I think about it, too, when I read some of the comments on my blog.

Finally, let me say once again that I deeply resent your unwarranted personal attack on me. I'm quite confident that, if you were to speak with people who actually know me well, and even with a representative sample of my current or former students, you won't find "scorn," arrogance, "contempt," "unkindness," or "rudeness" among my most prominent characteristics.

Your slanderous public assault on my character was irrelevant and wholly without justification. How dare you? Really. How dare you?


This OP is certainly relevant to Mopologetics for many reasons. For just one reason out of many, it's a clear example of the contempt DCP holds for his students. Contempt breeds contempt.
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."

Daniel C. Peterson, 2014
_Maksutov
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Re: BYU Students Rate Daniel C. Peterson (Part I)

Post by _Maksutov »

Kishkumen wrote:My primary concern is not whether DCP meets up to certain standards, but whether I do. In this case, I sympathize with DCP as a fellow academic, and I think of my obligation to others who share my lot. I do not see how posting DCP's teaching reviews from RateMyProfessor bears on his apologetics. My opinion is that we should adhere to the rules of the board, and limit the amount of in real life exposure we inflict on others, just as many of us prefer to remain mostly anonymous.

On a different note, I think it doesn't hurt to imagine DCP as he views himself and his own actions. You interpret his motivations as being almost entirely self-interested and mercenary. You take no account of the fact that, from his perspective, he has chosen to sacrifice personal academic accomplishment in order to serve his fellow LDS folk and the Church by defending it. His motivation is not simply plane rides and nice meals in exotic locations. Yeah, I am sure he enjoys that stuff, but he could have enjoyed that, and more, perhaps more easily through other means.

So, we disagree with this guy. A lot. But do we have to paint him in such cartoonishly villainous terms? I am sorry, but this looks unhinged. To the degree that we are engaging in a playful kind of spoofing here, I get it, but at a certain point this play can get out of hand. I can only tell others what I believe to be true and the right way of comporting ourselves. Everybody Wang Chung has crossed the line here. Others have done so too, on occasion, including me. It is one thing to be rambunctious in our criticisms of apologetics, but it is another to get deeply personal and become habituated to seeing our opponents as fundamentally bad people.

Indeed, I think the latter is really unhealthy.


I'm with the Reverend. Hell, I'm a professional a-hole and I think it's obsessive here. I never had any personal clash with DCP and so it's all at a distance for me. Peterson may be laughable or contemptible but there are so many people who fit into that category that the threads would never end. Every once in a while we see a little anti-DCP ping pong between Scratch and Everybody Wang Chung. It's a reminder that Peterson is a douche but it's also a reminder that it's a loop that brings no new information, only a little debased entertainment. DCP is basically irrelevant, out of date. He is planning some last hurrah against secularism which will likely sell well and be hardly read but will give him some satisfaction and even some entertainment to some of the rest of us. :wink:
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_moksha
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Re: BYU Students Rate Daniel C. Peterson (Part I)

Post by _moksha »

Any student who would complain about DCP's travel stories would probably gripe about an American Astronaut describing his tales in space or Baron Munchausen describing his own travels and military adventures. It goes with the territory and should be accepted as such without cynicism.
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
_huckelberry
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Re: BYU Students Rate Daniel C. Peterson (Part I)

Post by _huckelberry »

Kishkumens comments make sense to me.

I am at loss at this line of criticism of Daniel Peterson. I have been away from the college world for quite some time. Is there a growing danger of the places being run by whiny students not getting what they believe is sufficient strokes?

(You are wonderful and can do whatever you desire! Repeat daily)
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