College professor tells stutterer to be quiet

A N.J. community college professor has stirred up some controversy by telling 16-year-old dual-enrollment student to keep quiet in class. From the article, the problem isn't just the stuttering, but it's a combination of stuttering and being the kid who asks too many questions. I can see the professor's frustration, since there is a student in one of my grad school classes that drives the professor crazy because he asks a question every few minutes in the course of a three-hour class. But you can't just tell a kid to shut up, either.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/education/11stutter.html

 

Wha, wha, wha, what?

 

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

 

Wow.

 

Really?

 

My first reaction after reading the subject line was to wonder whether the stutterer's name was John.

 

I'd be curious to hear how the professor phrased it.

On the surface, it comes across as horribly insensitive and wrong.

At the same time... I heard the kid speak today. That kid has a HORRIBLE stutter. If he doubles as the too-many-questions kid, I can absolutely see why the professor would be tempted to try to say something like "please see me after class to ask these questions, because this isn't working."

Tricky thing to ask, though, and even trickier when dealing with a self-conscious 16 year old. As a professor you probably have to just shut up and deal with it.

 

Did you get the payoff of insight and dry wit?

 

What is all the fuss about?

 

I'll tell you one thing about this story that you might not have considered. The instructor in this course is a part-timer, paid about $2,000 to teach this course. She gets to keep teaching courses here so long her classes are "generally happy" with her instruction. I'd bet folding money that "generally happy" in this institution is defined as an average teaching evaluation score of, say, 4.5 (or better) on a scale of 1 to 5. Thus, she's in a no-win situation, because at least some of the students are going to ding her for NOT telling the kid to stifle. It happens to me all the time ... Student X contributes disproportionately (maybe even in a positive way) and Students Y and Z make snarky comments about how they don't pay money to hear other students talk. I don't have to worry about it (much) because I'm judged primarily on research, but those poor adjuncts really have to walk a tightrope. Not to say that this lady's in the right, but I can certainly emphasize with her circumstance.

 

Give the kid a dry erase board to write on when he has a question. He raises his hand, shows the teacher the board, she reads the question, answers the question and everyone is happy.

Anyone with a brain solves this problem in 15 seconds.

On a side note, I find it ironic that the kid has a fish named Wanda.

 

The teacher can also hold comments until the end of the lecture and invite those with questions to stay.

These are not hard problems to solve.