College professors are the WORST!
Last night’s homily at my Catholic church started with a story about an atheist college professor (aren’t all college professors atheists?) who regularly humiliated those among his students who were willing to admit in class that they believed in God. The story ended with one student turning the professor’s own argument (“If you can’t see, feel or hear God, then he doesn’t exist”) back at the professor to prove that the professor’s brain didn’t exist. Almost everybody in the congregation chuckled. Not me, but I was almost certainly the only college professor in the church.
It was the second time in the last several months that a story about an evil college professor led off a homily at my church. That hardly constitutes a trend, but I’ve been attending mass at this church for more than 35 years, and these were the first two times college professors have been mentioned.
My fellow Christians aren’t the only ones who are sick and tired of college professors. I’ve been on Twitter (uh, X) for a little more than ten years. A few months ago, another X user blocked me for the first time. She is a chemistry teacher at a private school now, but until a few years ago she taught chemistry at a public school. She was frustrated with my observation that students who declare college majors in fields like science and engineering and who don’t have the proper high school backgrounds in chemistry, physics, precalculus and calculus are less likely to succeed than students who have the proper backgrounds. I suppose she would argue that I’m blaming K-12 teachers and counselors for the situations these students are in, and that in these post-pandemic times teachers and counselors have many more important things to emphasize (mental health and reading among them) than high-level math and science courses. And that at any rate these K-12 teachers are getting beaten up from all directions (policymakers, rogue parents, disrespectful students and self-centered administrators) as are their public schools and they don’t need more criticism from any damn college professor.
I recognize that this critic’s argument has merit. But I still believe that it is important to point out what it takes to prepare well for college majors in engineering and science because there are still students and their parents making decisions about the directions of their high school educations, and maybe something I say will help a few prepare better.
Fortunately, my own religious beliefs don’t seem to have upset my students, even though a few have caught me crossing myself as I finish praying for my students before class begins (sometimes I forget to pray, but most days I remember). But no doubt some of my students think of me as evil, anyway. After all, they’ve been told that if they want something badly enough – like a career in engineering or science – that they can have it. And every semester, I effectively tell some of my students that it is not true, that they do not know physics well enough to become the engineer or scientist they wanted to be. If these struggling students are looking for someone to blame, it will likely be me.
It’s this confluence of frustrations with college professors and postsecondary institutions in general that has me worried about the immediate future of Florida’s public universities. By March, our governor will return from a failed presidential campaign with a heart full of frustration. It would be abundantly human of him to look for a dog to kick, and our governor has made it clear that he is willing to exact retribution from those he perceives to be his enemies. The biggest canine targets available to him are the State University System’s professors, people like me. He is still a politician, so his most likely targets will be those for which there is considerable public dislike, and professors like me have lost the trust of many of our fellow Floridians, as have our institutions. There will be no downside to beating up on us.
My readers might know that I’ll soon turn 63 years old, and that I’ve been a physics professor at Florida State University for 37 years. I’m fortunate that I am a late career professor, and I’m more worried about the younger people in my department and university than I am about myself. The next three years (the governor’s term ends early in 2027) will be difficult for almost all of my colleagues. We can hope (and pray, if one is so inclined) that the governor’s successor will be a little less hostile to our universities and the professors who staff them.
Bridge to Tomorrow 