From Academe Online: Impassioned Teaching, Pamela L. Caughie

I found this excerpt from Dr.Caughie's article particularly interesting and am reminded that too many people believe talk shows (regardless of purpose or content) are journalism.

"Classrooms today seem to be more like talk shows, with the professor as host, than forums for intellectual inquiry. Students who don't read the assignment and never set foot in a library feel every bit as entitled to express their opinions on an assigned reading as those who have read carefully and researched extensively. And because administrators pay more attention to ten-point scales on student evaluation forms, and even chili peppers on RateYourProfessor.com, than to the kind of intellectual work that goes on in the classroom, too many teachers feel their job is to acknowledge any and all opinions offered on the topic being studied. Not to do so is to risk being exposed as someone intent on indoctrinating students rather than teaching them. That is the danger we must respond to, not the threat of politics in the classroom."