Dear Political Science 108 Class of 07/08.

Though I’m sure many of you are unaware of being so, I would request with all due respect that you all make the best directed effort you can muster to stop being dicks. Yes, that includes all those who are enthusiastic but clueless and those that are less than enthusiastic and equally clueless.

How many in this class know what the Massey Lectures are? What the criteria are to be invited to give them? They’re hosted by our university and I doubt more than 1/3 actually know what they’re about. Who in this class knows what the Order of Canada is? What it means with regards to an individuals accomplishments? What about the Royal Society of Canada?

Have any of you heard of the following organizations? National Academy of Sciences? United States Institute for Peace? American Association for the Advancement of Science? American Academy of Arts and Science? International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development?

My guess is VERY few. Most of you probably don’t know that Prof. Stein (CM, FRSC) is a member of the aforementioned groups and society and is not only a member but is an integral part of most of them.

We’ve got one of the most prestigious academics at UofT teaching us freshman and you have the audacity to burn through lecture time discussing whether hip-hop culture is a nation?

This is not to excuse the elaborate presentation of ignorance you seem unable to withold during Professor Deibert’s lectures. He too is a man of many accomplishments whose ramifications and influence will only grow (if any of you are even vaguely familiar with his ventures you’ll know what I’m talking about - if you aren’t then you’re comfortably seated amongst a thousand others of your ilk every Monday)

By the same token, Profs Stein and Deibert, I must take issue with your techniques of leading the lecture. This is a class of 1200+ students, trying to make the experience interactive erodes the quantity of content you can fit in the lecture leading to situations where one and a half hours of lecture time is consumed elaborating that the American Military is both very large and very expensive, especially when compared to everyone else’s. Such information shouldn’t be a revelation to the class - even the most inattentive glance at a newspaper will bring home the sheer overawing superiority of the American military and the difficulties and complications of the world’s purest bureaucracy.

When compared to my other classes, the level of intellectual rigour required to keep pace is trivial. I knew probably more about Economic concepts and sociological phenomena upon entering than I did about contemporary political science - the facility in those departments has been pushed and tested thoroughly. History and Poli Sci came in at about equal footing, whereas Prof. Smyth has smothered us in reading pushed our boundries of memorization, conceptualization, nuanced analysis and understanding of research you, my venerable professors, have reminded me that Multi-national corporations are both good and bad but mostly bad (because any other message would upset the preponderantly socialist student body), globalization is important because it is global and has many dimensionsions, the trajectory and ramifications of globalization aren’t well understood and networks are the ascendant social and organizational structure in contemporary society.

That seems more the content for one lecture and readings with a follow-up, not four whole lectures.

My esteemed colleagues, the professors we have are some of the best in the field - why do you want them to take it easy on you? We fork over piles of money hand over fist to attend these classes (well, our parents do) why would you then want to lose the value by filling the lectures with babble from your fellow classmates, I go to lectures to hear the profs, not some slacktivism T-shirt wearing semi-literate yahoo.

My accomplished professors, the class is unwieldy and underinformed. As desirable as a conversational, informal lecture may be for illucidating new and interesting ideas - it is poorly suited for such setting; save it for your upper-years and graduate students who have the knowledge and comparatively microscoping class-sizes to handle such a format.

Thank you, fellow students, in advance for your most concerted efforts to avoid being pants-on-head moronic.

Yours truly,

Jeremy

Posted by Jeremy on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 4:28 pm.