If one of the students accidentally botulizes the class, does it mean they fail the course?
Sacramento State professor George Parrott walked out of his Psychology 101 lab class Thursday morning because his students didn’t bring any snacks.
Instead, he says, he went to breakfast with his teaching assistant.
The professor said students are told of the requirement to bring snacks on the first day of class. A handout from the teacher is clear – “Not having a snack = no Dr. Parrott or TAs. Now you are responsible for your own lab assignment.”
He said the snack obligation is his way of encouraging students to work collectively. It connects students who might not otherwise interact on a commuter campus, said the professor.
“Having these goodies in the class breaks down some of the formality and some of the rigidity in the class, which is one of the most stressful for students,” Parrott said.
But students are crying foul, saying the teacher left before a review for a midterm to be given Monday. The test accounts for a good portion of their grade.
“Our education isn’t worth food, it’s for us,” said Francisco Chavez, a student in the class.
It’s also not clear why homemade baked goods would teach teamwork better than a box of Oreos. The handout offers suggestions and pictures of which snacks are preferred. It lists homemade or bakery items and vegetable or fruit platters under “Good Ideas” and Nabisco products or pre-packaged items under “Bad Ideas.
Supposedly this instructor has been doing this for almost 40 years. But I don’t care. If I got a syllabus on my first day of class that said I was required to bring homebaked foods for everyone, including the Professor and his TA’s, to eat, I’d drop the hell out of that class and use my full refund to take a Psych course taught by a sane person.
As an aside, this guy is an academic leech. He “retired” in 2006 but still teaches classes here, collecting approximately $44,000 for his “part-time” teaching position, in addition to his pension from the state of California.
It’s the “retire-rehire” thing that really chaps my hide. It take jobs from those that NEED them (and there are a LOT of unemployed teachers), and it stresses the retirement system at the same time.
One or the other, bub, but NOT both.
I know of at least one job I applied for that was filled by such a retire-rehire; between his 20+ year maxing of the salary table AND his first-generation full-benny retirement plan (complete with COLA when there was a salary-freeze), he cost the state more than two-and-a-half times as much as I would for doing the same job (middle-school science). A bad deal for just about everyone.
see its the last line the explains this sort of madness, its in CA!
I would never suggest anyone baking with chocolate-flavored ExLax. I would never point out that it melts easily, can be used in dangerous quantities (when mixed with quality chocolate and sugar).
I would certainly never recommend signing up for the course, volunteering to go first for munchies, bringing diarrhea food, and then dropping the course immediately.