Prof Fails His Entire Class to Illustrate Obama's Socialism | Hacker News Reader

Prof Fails His Entire Class to Illustrate Obama's Socialism

ijreview.com

13 pointssharon201211 comments

When you invent a story like this you can use it to "prove" anything you want.

Alternative ending: the smartest kids rally around those failing and hold after-school sessions to bring their grades up. In fact these group discussions help improve the understanding of the material for everyone, even those already doing well. The grades go through the roof, and at the end of the class the students climb on their desks for a rousing chorus of "oh captain my captain". Therefore Obama is great, or something.

The alternative ending is indeed more likely: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2013/04/15/why-i-let-my-st...

(I note that while this is not the exact same scenario, it also depends on students cooperating to maximize what is effectively a shared grade.)

Tangential alternative real world ending: I was a non-traditional student with industry experience. Took a class where the professor had a record of giving 2-3 A's per semester.

I saw the class was rough for a lot of these kids, started a large study group and taught them, and the class ended up with 10 A's, one of them being from outside the group.

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp

That's an interesting, though crude way to teach about the fallacies of Marxism, but what does Obama have to do with any of this?

Mostly a very common failure to understand the difference between socialism light (a mixed economy or modern welfare state), and real socialism (stalinism, fascism, communism). But then, seemingly not very many people grasp what capitalism is these days either. The counter side of this story are the people that think George W. Bush is / was a capitalist or small government proponent (har har).

I don't think fascism is a type of socialism. I couldn't find the word fascism in the socialism Wiki page.

I guess it's for getting more news coverage! #KeywordPlacing

It's weird that a whole class agree on something like that (specialy in Texas!) but that's a interesting experiment.

They didn't, it's a completely made-up story (see Snopes link above).

Why is this on HN again?

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