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    %STUDENT EVALUATION PROFESSOR TEACHER OBJECTIVE+940426
  %REFLEXIVE PARADIGM CHALLENGE EMBARRASS BIAS FEAR 940426

    It is useful to ask why professors who are supposed to
be  dedicated  to  the dispassionate search  for  unbiased
truth  are so often opposed to  procedures  whereby  their
students  in  colleges and universities might inform  them
and their administrators of their (the students') views of
the instructional quality of the institution.    There  is
often  some  suggestion  that the students  are  not  well
informed, knowledgeable, unbiased, competent, or otherwise
qualified  to  offer  an opinion.   We  will  do  well  to
consider some of the possible alternative explanations:

    1.  The professors are dedicated rather exclusively to
an  objectivist paradigm which entails  collusive games of
mutual  self  deception about the transcendence  of  bias.
Taking students'  views  seriously  is a challenge to  the
exclusive objectivist's paradigm.   Doing so reveals  that
the  student-professor   relationship   is   a   reflexive
relationship.   The professors' emotional responses to the
threats   of  evaluation   clearly   indicate   that   the
relationships  between  them   and  their  students  is  a
reflexive relationship---in spite of all pretense.

    2.  Not all truths are equally welcome.   Truths  that
the professors are not as successful as they would like to
think  are  not  welcomed  truths.   The  truth  that  the
students are not as satisfied with their relationship with
their  professors as their professors would like to think,
is not welcomed news.  The truth that the  students do not
value  what  the professors value  is not  welcomed  news.
Avoiding evaluation  procedures is one way of avoiding the
receipt of the unwelcomed news.

    3.  By insisting that only properly trained and  fully
qualified   adults  be  allowed  to  participate  in   the
evaluation of  faculty procedures, the  professors  insure
that  only  people who have been  properly  qualified  and
accepted  into  their  collusive  games  of  mutual   self
deception  have a chance to evaluate them.   This strategy
becomes  problematic  as  more  and   more  adults  become
students in colleges and universities.

    4.  Insisting  that  evaluations  be based upon  fully
objective  criteria,  is a way  of  postponing evaluations
indefinitely---because  it  is  impossible to  agree  upon
meaningfully   objective  criteria  in  terms   of   which
evaluations  of  faculty  can  properly  be  carried  out.
Teaching  and  professing  are  not  objective  processes.
Professor-student    relationships   are   not   objective
relationships.   Central to the educational processes  are
ideals,   values,   attitudes,  assumptions,  beliefs  and
personal   relationships   which    are    reflexive---not
objective.    This  makes  it  impossible  to  generate  a
meaningful  consensus regarding  what  objective  criteria
should  be  used  in the evaluation of  the  non-objective
processes and relationships  which  are  essential to true
education; educement which is  the drawing of students out
and into reflexive dialogue.
                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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