Hypothetical

[kilroy]

"Ok folks, you're getting your first papers back today-- which means that about five minutes from now someone is going to be thinking, 'This sucks, Mr. D graded me down just because he disagrees with my position.'

"Let me clear something up. I disagreed with everyone's position. I disagreed with the pro-life ones and the pro-choice ones, with the people who argued for the death penalty and against it. It's my job, I teach rhetoric. I disagree with people professionally. It's not personal and it's not just you.

"I'm here to make you a better writer, and I'm going to do that by arguing with you. The proper response from you is not to go off and sulk thinking, 'This isn't fair, I'm never going to pass this paper.' The proper response is to find a way to argue back because that will make your paper better.

"Just because your topic is sacred to you personally doesn't mean it's unassailable to anyone else. Your job is to defend your position and prove your points, not just advertise the rightness of your cause. If you read my comments and are rendered speechless by outrage, you either need to get over it or pick another topic per the syllabus. If you can't handle criticism generally, I highly recommend finding another institution that's willing to take your money and tell you how great you are."

Comments

[cereta]

There is a paragraph in my syllabus that is not unlike this, which basically amounts to, "You will have to argue your point and deal with counterarguments, so if a topic is so emotional for you that you cannot handle hearing the opposing viewpoints, don't write about it." And hey, we all have those topics. There's nothing wrong with a topic being too personal for that kind of academic scrutiny. As a teacher, I have exactly twice told a student that I really could not be objective enough about a topic to assist them in writing a good paper (and I bet you can guess what one of them was). That's called being human. But a good paper will demonstrate awareness of multiple points of view.

[kilroy]

Well yeah, exactly. And probably three-quarters of all students don't actually need this warning. But every once in a while you get the "I didn't try because I knew the teacher doesn't like me because he's an atheist" kid, and I want to put this on billboards for them.