Dogma From The Other Side

I understand the desire on the part of student who have been wronged to support such measures as the so-called "Academic Bill of Rights," but let's be fair. Some of the students who back this measure fail to recognize a few problems. Often they complain that their instructors and professors are grading them down or blocking their voices based solely upon political differences, yet these same students sometimes want their instructors or professors to agree with them. The problem here is not with the bias of the instructor or professor,but with the bias of the student. Is this any less a violation of what SAF proposes?

What we end up with is not the complaint that the person in the front of the class has wasted class time on irrelevant political discussion or that he or she has graded unfairly based upon personal views. What we end up with, sadly, is the claim that the person in the front of the class does not agree with the student. This measure of hostility can end up cloaked in the same dogmatic approach that makes both Fox News and Air America Radio bad choices for real discussion.

The basic problem here is with the refusal to hear any position with which the student disagrees. While the numbers all but guarantee there are instructors and professors who are this way, which is wrong, they also suggest there are students who will bring this low level of thinking into the classroom. I have no problem working through relevant questions in class discussion or assigning low grades to poorly written papers, we are still faced with the core problem in that situation: the person making the claims is a student who is, ostensibly, there to learn.

When such students arrive, is it not my duty to pursue the issue? to introduce reason and structure to the debate? If I throw my hands up and let the student sink, what kind of future has he or she got, provided no one else gets through?