To Sir, With Cat Head

I've read a study that showed evaluations of teachers by students to be basically fair, and I believe it.

Without discomfort, I also believe the testimony that evaluations are an extortionist distraction from the real job of education.

1. Studies use statistical methods, whereas normal human judgment is based on stereotyping from extremes and an exaggerated notion of cause-and-effect. Results differ.
2. I'm familiar with a parallel situation: I'm sure my grades were mostly fair. Nevertheless they were a distraction, and nevertheless I mostly remember the times they were abused.
3. I know that if I'd been offered a chance to evaluate my own teachers, there would have been no clear correlation with grades. But I also know I would've taken special pleasure in writing the worst evaluations.

As long as students are paying to be insulted, why shouldn't they share the pleasure? Intuitively, tit for tat seems better than 100% tat.

But only if tit meets tat on common ground. Merely providing new opportunities for injustice doesn't make an institution more just, and powers can't be balanced when they're measured by different coordinate systems.

In my high school, for example, woe unto the teachers who counted on the power of grades to balance the power of physical and verbal aggression. (Woe including beatings, nervous breakdowns, and deliberately engineered epileptic fits.) And the uncorrelated rankings of the athletic department and academic standards twine like old ivy over the largest universities.

To pit evaluation against grading is like saying, after an earthquake, that the building attacked the sidewalk. Under the rubble lies a spectacularly active fault line between two incommensurate value systems: money and scholarship.

• Union-busting, overseas labor, and other concessions to corporate power have eroded the tenability of blue-collar, shopkeeping, or farm careers. For even lower-middle-class status to be attained or maintained, a college degree is required, no matter how little the student may otherwise care for one.
• With the decimation of public aid, less wealthy students must sacrifice both their potential earnings and their parents' savings toward a chance at a degree. Higher education becomes a high-stakes small-payoff gamble, and the kitty's ravenous lifespan begins earlier with each private school voucher.
• Meanwhile, the university workforce's shift from tenured faculty to adjuncts and unpaid GSIs has reduced teaching income and benefits, and the diversion of funds to know-nothing-ist sectarian schools undercuts any respect teachers might merit as scholars.

Non-tenured teachers are most vulnerable to negative evaluations, while students see grades as the only return on their investment and the only way to stay in the game. In neither case is the purported mission of education a factor.

To stereotype from extremes: Whether financially desperate or pampered, today's students flame with the righteousness of the betrayed consumer, quick to attack as "elitist" anyone who would have them become less comfortable, understandably resentful of anyone who gets in the way of their loans. Today's teachers still wield nominal authority, but, given their low wages and job insecurity, may be treated more like surly bungling servants.

Today's -- and yesterday's as well, this innovation being more or less a return to the upper-class 18th-century educational stereotype of mocked tutor and abused governess, a stereotype which held even in the American university of that time....

In 1870, the political career of Henry Adams detoured into academia.

Characteristically, he made himself at home on his new perch by sawing at the limb. Having become a Harvard professor and the editor of a leading scholarly journal, for his first major article in that journal, he ransacked his distinguished grandfather's diaries and printed, with acidulous glee, the most embarrassing notes he could find from John Quincy Adams's two years at Harvard College:

However that may be, the syllogists all got together this evening and drank till not one of them could stand straight, or was sensible of what he did. A little after 9 they sallied out, and for a quarter of an hour made such a noise as might be heard at a mile distant. The tutors went out and after a short time persuaded them to disperse. Mr. —— had two squares of his windows broke.... Borland, it seems, was the most active of them all; he collared Mr. —— and threw an handful of gravel in his face, and was rather disrespectful to Mr. ——.

This excerpt may help to explain the hostility:

May 3d, 1786

We had after Prayers a Class meeting, about making a present to our Tutor. It is customary at the end of the freshman year to make a present to the Tutor of the Class: but it has been delay'd by ours to the present Time, and many would still delay it, and lay it wholly aside. The Custom, I think is a bad, one, because, it creates partialities in a Tutor, because it increases the distinction between the wealthy, and the poor Scholars, because it makes the Tutor in some measure dependent upon his Class, and because to many that Subscribe it is a considerable expence, but the Salaries of the Tutors, being so low, and it having been for many years an universal custom, I am sorry to see our Class so behind hand, and several, who could well afford it, and have really subscribed, meanly endeavouring, to put off the matter from Quarter to Quarter, till they leave College.

Here are a few additional Harvard memories which escaped publication in 1872:

May 16th, 1786 After commons as Hale, was going through the alley, an universal hiss, was heard from the juniors. This is almost the only way, that the Students here have, to keep the Tutors within any bounds. With all their pedantic despotism, they affect Popularity, and I believe the fear of hissing, or shuffling often prevents them from being so arbitrary as they would otherwise be.

August 17th, 1786

Drank tea with Mead in his Chamber which is contiguous to mine. The Club are quite in a Dilemma, how to do since the boys are sent off. They are unwilling to send Freshmen, and think it beneath their dignity to go themselves for what they want. At about 10 o'clock this evening, Stratten, a crazy fellow came, and knock'd at my door; just as I was going to bed; I opened it, and he ask'd me for some water; I told him I had none, and shut the door upon him: "Damn you, says he, do you refuse a man a little water." After thumping two or three minutes at the door, he went away, knock'd at all the doors in the entry; ran up and down stairs, came again, to my door and stamp'd at it, and finally ran to the window in the entry, push'd it up, and leapt immediately out of it. I instantly got out of my bed, went to my window, and saw him lying on the ground. After 3 or 4 minutes he began to groan "Oh! I've broke my leg." Charles had not gone to bed; I desired him to go and call up Dr. Jennison; who immediately came out. The fellow complain'd in the most doleful manner. However, after examining his leg, (for he was not at all hurt any where else) the Doctor said, there might be a bone crack'd but that none was displaced. It was with a great deal of difficulty that we were able to get Stratten, into one of the lower Rooms which is empty. He persisted for two hours in attempting to walk, for in addition to his State of mind, he was then as drunk as a beast.

November 24th, 1786 This evening, just after tea, at Chandler Ist's chamber, we were all called out by the falling of a fellow, from the top to the bottom of the stairs. He was in liquor, and tumbled in such a manner, that his head was on the lower floor, and his feet two or three steps up. When we first went out, the blood was streaming from his head, his eyes appeared fixed, and he was wholly motionless. We all supposed him dead. He soon recovered however so as to speak, and was carried off, about an hour after he fell.

May 30th, 1787

Election day. About two thirds of the Students went to Boston. Those of us who remain'd pass'd the day, in amusement; I was at Cranch's chamber the whole day. The Sophimore Class with their civil Officers at the head march'd in procession to the Hall, and as soon as they came in a pistol was fir'd by their governor. The same ceremony was repeated after commons were over. In the evening they were at Thomas's chamber, much intoxicated and very noisy. Dr. Jennison paid them a visit at nine o'clock, and sent them all to their chambers.

May 31st, 1787 The Sophimores are very fearful that their yesterday's conduct has brought them into difficulties. Mr. Reed, who found his door broken through, when he return'd from Boston, is very much incensed and will probably, take measures to discover the persons who offered the insult. Mr. Williams gave us a lecture upon a number of optical instruments. I trifled away this day.

The younger Adams claimed that his goal was to help the reader "obtain a correct idea of the gradual steps by which the standard of high education in America has been slowly raised," and I suppose I must have something similar in mind.