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Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Dale doubles down on dumbing down



Here's what Dale said about business majors in his own words (verbatim):

Let­ter to the Ed­i­tor: Dale Tuggy: A re­sponse to our pre­vi­ous edi­to­r­ial

A re­cent un­signed ed­i­to­r­ial here ex­co­ri­ates me for point­ing out that busi­ness and ed­u­ca­tion stu­dents are, col­lec­tively, weaker stu­dents than the over­all stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. But this is a fact, un­pleas­ant though it may be. The av­er­age SAT and GPA numbers for stu­dents with those ma­jors is lower; look it up. I know that takes longer than lazily lob­bing a charge that my truth-telling is “un­fair, un­jus­ti­fied and cruel,” but still, you should run the num­bers. Point­ing this out is not at­tack­ing those stu­dents, as if they were not try­ing or as if they should­n’t be at Fre­do­nia. Rather, it is to point out that the qual­ity of in­tel­lec­tual life at Fre­do­nia has been de­graded un­der the poor lead­er­ship of pres­i­dents Hefner and Hor­vath.

The in­tel­lec­tual abil­i­ties of your peers here mat­ters a lot to the qual­ity of the ed­u­ca­tion you get here. In point of fact, pro­fessors in many of the more chal­leng­ing dis­ci­plines have been pres­sured by both them­selves and by ad­min­is­tra­tors to dumb down the ma­te­r­ial in classes, so that not too many stu­dents fail. 

6 comments:

  1. A related problem is Dale Tuggy seems to hold a huge grudge against Steve due to how past debates with Steve have gone for Dale.

    In any case, Dale is not focusing on the actual debate which should be about Dale's exegesis of Mt 5:22 (which is the precise verse Dale himself originally brought up!).

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    1. To clarify, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with broadening the debate, but Dale shouldn't forget to substantiate his original allegation against Steve. Among other things, this would initially involve accurately exegeting Mt 5:22 in the context of the Sermon of the Mount.

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  2. Yep, no insult there, so not relevant. That editorial related to an email I sent to former colleagues, about the direction of the university.

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    1. You attacked business majors as intellectually inferior to other students.

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    2. 1. You said the author was "lazily lobbing a charge" against you, even though you would have no idea how much effort or time the author spent on their piece. It could be the author made a false charge against you, but it could also be they weren't doing so "lazily" but after careful consideration (even if it was mistaken). At the very least, to say that it's a lazy lob presumably isn't something you would be in a position to know given you said it was an "unsigned editorial".

      2. You characterized business and education students as being "weaker students" relative to "the overall student population" and that they had less "intellectual abilities" than other students. You based that on their high school GPA and SAT scores. There are several issues involved. Here's one I noticed. According to SUNY Fredonia's website, most admitted and matriculating SUNY Fredonia students do not have to declare a major on their very first day at SUNY Fredonia. Most students are allowed to declare a major at a later date, as long as it's before they reach 60 hours. Given most SUNY Fredonia students can and do declare a major at a later date, which presumably includes some or many business and education majors, then your comparison isn't necessarily comparable. It may be an unfair comparison. You're comparing "the overall student population" (i.e. undifferentiated students admitted and matriculating at SUNY Fredonia) with business and education majors who declare their majors at a later date, even though the students who later declare their majors in business and education would have presumably been part of the original pool of undifferentiated students admitted to and matriculating at SUNY Fredonia! The very fact that these students are presumably part of the original pool of "the overall student population" could skew the data. Sure, it might not, but it could, and the possibility that it could is enough to cast reasonable doubt on your comparison in the first place.

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  3. I think a key issue is Dale wants Steve to be agreeable rather than disagreeable. To be cordial rather than adversarial.

    However, a basic problem is Dale conflates being disagreeable or adversarial with being unethical or immoral.

    Not to mention Dale's positions are themselves disagreeable or adversarial positions from the perspective of traditional Christianity (e.g. Dale is a unitarian, Dale doesn't believe Jesus is God incarnate).

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