Back to Elementary I go

I had this big elaborate blog planned out in my mind, but now I'm feeling lazy and short of time, so it'll have to come some other time.

Had a class today called 'Ethics' in which we study the ethics of specific business situations and argue if there really is a right and wrong. Must say, the prof. doesn't impress me too much. He spent the first half hour of the class going over the teacher's role in the learning process. I'm sorry, but didn't we learn this in grade 2? I'm not exactly sure whether he was legitimately thinking we'd get something out of this, or whether he thought it would justify his job more, but it really seemed very redundant and pointless. He went on to compare the relationship between student and teacher as an axe and an axewielder when you're trying to chop a tree down. The axe being the prof, and the axe handler being the student. I'm not even going to repeat the whole thing because it was so stupid and pointless. But the fun didn't stop there. He had 6 different overhead slides he went through to further explain his role as a teacher in the course. Retarded....

And then once he's done, he hands out these sheets that attempt to sum up the evaluation scale of the course. If I could scan the handout, I would. Because you wouldn't believe how retarded this sheet was. It's basically a table showing different categories like "Communication", "Efficiency", "Strength", etc. And all along the top, he has different classifications in which you would see in a report card type description (outstanding, proficcient, meets criteria, doesn't meet criteria, etc). All along this grid, where the category and report card description meet, he has these explanations of what the student should be able to do. Sounds useful right? Yeah it would be if these explanations weren't completely ridiculous and non-applicable. Here's an example of a category:

Speed:
A+ (Excellent): Leaps tall buildings in a single bound
B (Proficcient): Leaps tall buildings in more than one bound
C (Meets criteria): Leaps small buildings and buildings without spires
D (Poor): Crashes into building when attempting to leap
F (Fail): Can't even see the buildings

Now I can imagine if he was maybe using this as a joke, but throughout the lecture, he pointed out the categories as if we should be highlighting these areas and actually getting something out of the handout. Wow....

Furthermore, on top of this, he makes us fill out these sheets with questions on them. Questions like "Are you willing to put in the effort required to complete this course?", "What will you do to assist your classmates in learning?", "Name some procedures in which you will take to get the most of the class" Are you fricken serious? I remember doing this in CALM class back in grade 11, and even then it wasn't this retardedly useless. Oh my gosh...

The class wasn't a total loss though, he handed out some oreos and fudge-o's for us to eat during class. And he also had this funny little exercise where he pulls out this rubbermade container (one you'd see being used for a compost bin). He then tells us to think about a really young baby girl, 6 months or less, and to picture her in our mind. Then he pulls out a doll of a baby girl and asks, "What would you think if I took that little girl in your mind, and poured this pitcher of boiling water over her face?" Then he of course pulled out the pitcher of boiling water, and started to pour it on the doll's face. Yeah it's hard to explain, but it made me laugh a bit, mainly because it was so outrageous, not because I'm a sick bastard who gets pleasure from that.

Either way, the class started to get interested once we got into the course material. But it seems like quite the workload. He's already given us an assignment due next tuesday, which is a 5-7 page answer/essay to some ethical situations that got given to us. He gave us some kind of time frame for what's expected of us for working on the course at home, and he estimated about 50 hrs for January. Yeah.... I don't see that happening.. When prof's say that students should do 3 hrs of homework for every 1 hour of class time, does anyone actually do that? I'm interested in knowing...