Come in at ya.
Busted pencils fully let it.
Education talk, educated educators talking, education, Dr. Johnny Lupinaji, Jacob Chairman
of the boards, me, Dr. Tim Slecker, class is in session as Turkey has finally worn
off.
I am now fully engaging in the Christmas holiday spirit.
You name it.
You can't see this, but I actually took off my Santa class outfit.
Jacob and Johnny started bullying me.
And so I had to take it off, you know, sway Johnny and Jacob, Jacob, no, actually, I'm
lumping you in with Johnny, the big, you know, the bullying type of, you know, Tim, what's
with that outfit?
I think this might be a little bit of internal projection from you, Tim.
I think we were all fairly positive on the Santa class outfit.
Now, you know, it's just there, but no, hey, class is in session where it's after Thanksgiving,
we are moving towards, yeah, big holiday season, you know, black Fridays done, small business
Saturday, Cyber Monday.
I will say though for everybody listening, I got a Cyber Monday deal on a Tuesday for
a snow blower that I got from Amazon.
I'm having a 24 inch gasoline self propelled electric start snow blower delivered to my house
because the five inches of wet snow I shoveled today, I will not do that again, the rest
of the winter.
How's that for a little bit of info that maybe people don't give a crap about?
I care.
I found that very interesting, Tim, because last last week or whenever we had our awesome
Thanksgiving shows, we're talking about black Friday, small business Saturday, Cyber Monday,
and you guys were all, oh, I'm above all that stuff.
I don't care about getting my big deals and then a little bit of snow falls and Tim goes
running to the giant snow blower machine.
So I get it.
I see what's going on here.
Johnny's got that look of going snow blower, really?
I've already been accused of bullying.
I won't say anything about being young, spry and in shape and shovel and snow like a good
northerner does.
I know Tim, you know, once you get to a certain age of mobility, you know, I think it's,
it's probably a wise idea that I should have taken up years ago, but I'm stubborn.
I'm stubborn, man.
I still manually removed the snow.
We have piles of wet snow out here in Washington this week.
So yeah, I get it, man.
I'm just, you know, stubbornly not there yet, but excited, especially as like don't leave
out giving Tuesday.
Oh, yeah.
You got a lot of texts and a lot of emails about that as well.
So but here we are midweek with class and session.
And Tim and Jacob, you sent me a story that hadn't been on my radar and now it is, and
I'm like probably spinning around as much as anyone else who's been tuned into this story.
A lot of interesting angles and probably some political takes on this story that we're
going to jump into today for class and session.
But Tim, why don't we introduce the kind of the event that you sent me and then and then
let's get into it as to college educators.
Right.
Both work in universities, we both taught a number of different classes, supported graduate
students, worked with faculty members and have had plenty of shows here on bus depensals
about, you know, what's the difference between academic freedom, freedom of speech and good
responsible teaching and then, you know, what responsibilities also do students have, you
know, as they're participating in the learning activities in their classrooms.
So Tim, without keeping our listeners in the dark any longer on this, why don't you
why don't you bring our listeners up to speed with the story and then let's dive into
it.
Let's dive in.
First, the amendment free speech, I don't know, we're going to get into it.
But university of Oklahoma student in a psychology class for an assignment wrote an essay
and cited the Bible as her evidence and this drew the University of Oklahoma to kind of
respond because the student was given a zero by the graduate assistant who was teaching
the course University of Oklahoma has responded and said this student's first amendment rights
were violated by the zero.
And so here we are now trying to figure out, you know, first amendment free speech, college
education, academic freedom, Johnny, you kind of laid this out in one way.
This is actually for some people out there, especially looking at, you know, the article
I'm looking at right now is coming from the international business times University
of Oklahoma responds after student given zero for Bible cited essay sparks free speech
row.
And this site, you know, you go to X and this is of course been turned into a, you know,
university deal nasty higher education liberal leftist communists, I don't know, all of
the negative things suppressing free speech or more, you know, more importantly, maybe higher
education, university of Oklahoma being a public state run university, the, you know,
the governor, governor, stit jumping in and saying, wait a minute, public higher education
does not violate free speech.
And the instructor for this course has been put on administrative leave a full time professor
is now teaching the course and the student is back in no zero, Johnny, isn't this just
simply an issue of saying the student didn't follow the assignment, didn't like the zero
and is now crying free speech.
You know, Tim, I think it's a little more complex than that, not that I'm a big fan of this,
but this is the kind of cultural moment we're in, especially educators in Oklahoma or other
states that have centered themselves around these kinds of controversies and, you know,
like we said many times before, no matter what grade you're teaching right now in this country,
our classrooms have become battle grounds for really polarized politics and that's unfortunate
both for teachers and for students.
But Tim, I think I have a lot of questions about this, but also, you know, I think I don't
necessarily hate how this whole thing was handled.
Like I don't, I don't, I mean, we could get into the details of it.
Like I think media representation of this, you know, hence there's an important issue to report
on here, but without the depth and context of like why or how often, you know, graduate
instructors may be removed from teaching their course, you know, maybe as a protective measure
to the graduate student or, you know, a conflict of interest in that being that the university's
responsibility is to the like the education of both students, undergrads maybe in this
class, as well as graduate students who as part of their education take on the responsibility
of teaching undergrads.
So we have learners and two categories here, a graduate student instructor and undergraduate
student.
These oftentimes get messy and graduate student instructors don't have decades of teaching
experience in the, you know, in the front lines of these political battlefields.
So, you know, I'm not, I'm not even sure that the graduate instructor did anything quote
on quote wrong here, like you're saying, like they, you know, defined an assignment.
And I think I believe it was like a 600 word essay, you know, to engage with an article.
I think we have the rubric we can pull up and look at too, but, you know, and the student
wrote it in a particular way that I agree didn't, like didn't follow, so the assignment
we're talking about just, you know, a little bit more of the factual, a psychology class,
psychology dealing specifically with life span development.
The students were asked to respond to a research article about gender norms and mental health.
The student responded that we should not be messing with gender norms and cited the
Bible as her evidence for why God's original plan was not to necessarily debate gender
norms.
She's claiming she cited, therefore, her evidence was the Bible for her position, the graduate
assistant is saying the Bible and religious beliefs are not evidence that come from this
article and the science around psychology, life span development and gender roles.
And so the student received a zero, now the zero is being kind of placed on hold.
The graduate assistant has been put on administrative leave.
We're trying to figure this out.
And I said, you know, the evidence that there are the argument right now is that this
student's free speech rights were violated by giving this zero.
And I want to kind of frame it this way first.
And of course, it's me taking up contrary position, maybe just for the sake of having a better
discussion and may not be my real position.
And you know, when I was in fifth grade, and I was assigned to write an article about
the solar system and the universe, I had to actually go into my fifth grade science book
and use the science book to help me write my paragraph.
And I didn't have any ability to say, well, Mars is actually a candy bar.
Venus is the goddess of sex.
And the rest of that, you know, why?
Because hey, it's my free speech to say whatever I want.
Well, Tim, your contrary belief is apples and oranges in this context because you just
said the assignment was to write about societal social, right?
Let's talk about social, which is socially constructed in culture.
So understandings of social gender roles.
And I mean, this is, this is going to maybe also be not a contrary, but maybe a hot
take or an unpopular one.
The Bible actually is a text that has a pretty strong influence on societal norms.
Now it doesn't mean you have to agree with those norms or that you might not be opposed
to them.
But I mean, if the assignment was framed as, you know, to write an essay about societal
gender roles, the Bible is actually a text that has quite a lot of things to say, but
it certainly is also packed with, you know, influences on society's gender roles.
I mean, we'd be, we'd be bad teachers to say it doesn't.
Now we might not agree with it or it might not be, you know, categorized in our understanding
as a scientific text.
So, you know, if this is a science course like psychology, then maybe say if the prompt
was provide scientific evidence or draw on scientific consensus to write about gender
roles, right?
But also gender is socially constructed, right?
And so, you know, there is a biological component to this as well as like a social and cultural
component.
So it seems like to me a really thoughtful and thought engaging assignment for students
in a psychology class would totally fit into, hey, write an essay about societal norms
and gender roles.
And you might not get essay responses that align with your politics or my politics.
And I'm assuming the politics of the instructor.
And I would agree with you, Tim, I'm not sure the Bible would be the best single reference
for that essay.
I haven't seen that essay yet.
Like I said, I'm late to this story.
It's off my radar.
But I certainly as a, you know, as a professor of cultural studies would situate myself
that saying, well, the Bible actually is a pretty important text influencing societal
norms in culture that doesn't say, I agree or I make you agree with it.
But the assignment itself, the right to have that belief, I think it fits because it
certainly does have an influence on how we do gender and society.
But also, you know, it might not be what the intention of the assignment was.
So to get a zero on it seems kind of extreme.
Okay.
But, but, but fine.
I agree with everything you said.
I think you're 100% right.
But this is not, to me, a violation of this student's free speech, this, what you said
was saying the student had the right, had the ability, had the, even the potential to
engage in a conversation around societal's way of looking at gender and that Bible is
a perfectly appropriate evidence, but to turn this into the simplicity of, and this
is where I get, you know, coming at this, I am worried and concerned about how we very
simply turn this into, again, higher education, college, you know, professors, and we haven't
even gotten into the specifics of who this graduate assistant was or not.
But just simply saying, here we go again, colleges and universities violating free speech
rights of students because of their own ideological stances.
I don't see this as a free speech because this isn't the government suppressing speech.
This is an educational institution asking for an essay that maybe not as clearly as it
should have been, but citing empirical evidence to make the point.
So all of this, the depth of the conversation, the philosophy, the politics of where you
stand on gender and all this things, all interesting concepts, but don't go on to X and
simply say that here we go again, colleges violating free speech before you go though,
I want producer Jacob to jump in.
Well, Tim, I'm wondering, and this is what I thought as soon as I heard that this was
going to be a free speech argument over this issue, I'm wondering, is this not more
of a situation where it's just whether it's about your opinion or it's because, you
know, oh, this student cut me off in the parking lot.
And then I gave them a grade they didn't deserve is this more about, you know, perhaps
the grade being inappropriate for the work rather than it being about, oh, I have a right
to say whatever I want.
Is this more a cut and dry look at the rubric?
You probably should have got at least 10 points for being on topic and writing complete
sentences and the zero was unjustified rather than a grand big argument about, oh, you're
right to say whatever you want on an assignment.
Because I think if the wording was like you're talking about Tim, saying it needs to be
empirical, scientifically cited information, I don't think we would even be having this
fight.
Maybe some people would still bring it up, but it wouldn't be the interesting thing worth
having a big discussion that it is.
Well, or Jacob, it could be because maybe there's a political assertion here that the
Bible is science, it is scientific evidence, you know, so I think we might still be here.
Tim, I agree with you too, even though I'm a little more like shocking, you know,
complicating the issue deeper than it probably needs to be, but I agree with the sentiment
saying, like, do we have an accurate, like, like, like, line of inquiry here on why this
is a problem?
There's a, there's a few different problems and they happen all the time.
Like, we assign, we make, we, you know, having a assignment of our class, especially as
a novice teacher, it's nothing against, I don't have the facts, so I don't know that I,
I, for fact, can say that this is a graduate instructor as a novice teacher, but in general,
but instructors are learning to teach college as part of their graduate studies.
So I would hold space for the instructor as a learner, which I'm pretty, pretty, from
what I'm reading, pretty sure it sounds like Oklahoma could maybe do a little better job
with, but in their effort might be there.
But the part where you're saying, you know, is it really a free speech issue?
I think it's enough of a free speech issue that it's sort of, like, low hanging fruit
for a political agenda, which might be what you're getting at here to further turn a learning
space into a political battleground, which is, again, what we talk about, whatever age
it is, we can talk about, like, teaching about consent as a concept in kindergarten isn't
teaching kindergarteners about sacks, but it's a concept that is related to and builds
up to how you, you know, give permission or consent for what you drink for what you eat
for, like, how you interact and it builds up, but it could be categorized often as it
was, you know, in many states that, you know, liberals are trying to teach kindergarteners
about sacks.
This is similarly reminding me of that kind of thing.
It's tangent enough to it because the topic about gender norms is political, right?
It's highly politicized in this, you know, culture war, if we may call it that.
And so it centers the battleground in the classroom, which is exactly what particular
politicians.
And this is why I always cringe when I say it's because I know there are great people
and great teachers and Oklahoma.
But education keeps making the headlines in a real particular way from Oklahoma, which
is not always representative of, like, the many great teachers that are there, rather
the political landscape of that state's educational politics right now.
So I think I'm in a complicated way to get into the point where I'm saying, like, this
is a, this is a learning moment for the student to learning moment for the instructor, learning
moment for the university.
That's highly politicized around a more culture war favorite of academic freedom and freedom
of speech.
And not saying like that the student is at fault for, I don't agree with the student writing
the essay.
I don't agree with the stance in the essay.
But here we have a scenario where we learn to follow the channels of, they say, I got
a zero.
Well, I agree.
I think a zero is probably an unfair grade, but, but, but what's options does the student
have?
Right?
Or, you know, in this moment, we've turned these things into, hey, if you have a problem
in your classroom, report it, right, to this site that investigates and digs in.
So we've created this like, like super surveillance system around culture war politics, not
around learning, not around making mistakes or having different views, right?
And the student in every way has a right to have that view.
Maybe they are in full agreement with what they wrote in the essay.
They have that right.
Sure.
They do.
They have, they have that right and everything you just talked about, maybe, maybe this is
where I'm trying to go with this is what a wonderful opportunity this would be to
talk across political enemy lines about actually, in fact, let's drop the enemy lines of
politics and talk about saying in a democracy, conversations about potentially societal implications,
personal implications, religious implications, my own identity as a person in this world, an
institution of higher education, a grading situation, all of this is such a rich, interesting
conversation about religious freedom, religious potential anti indoctrination, all of this.
But the simplicity of turning it into a violation of free speech by a student who was just
pointing out how they, it's like it's so diminishes and continues to amp up negativity
to score political wins to turn people against other people to frame, you know, here again,
and for this and for us educators, this case higher education, but here we go public education
again, higher public education as really doing nothing, but insisting on some form of indoctrination
to the point that we would violate the first amendment, and it's like, no, this is an issue
that has depth, that has a learning opportunity for us, it has an ability to actually explore
legitimately, a student's deeply held religious beliefs and why they think what they think,
why a faculty member, or in this case a graduate assistant, maybe had an opportunity to be
more specific in the assignment, understanding what the intentions were, it's just we don't
want to have, or I don't say we, we've lost the ability to see opportunities to have conversations
around things that we, at the end of it, will this probably even disagree, but not see this
as, you know, a big monster trying to squash individual liberties as opposed to like, hey,
you know what, this graduate assistant, who is herself, identifies transgender, not
is transgender, identifies as a woman, she, they, you know, there's probably some points here too
that we need to consider from, from, from their point of view, the student's point of view,
we've just taken all these opportunities to get a deeper understanding of who we each are,
and it's simply now been, and you said this right, in the cultural political battlefield,
this is one more area where we can point out, you know, some form of a victim in some form of an
enemy, and if you're on the enemy side, you're happy if you're, it's, it's just a mess, and I'm tired,
I'm tired of taking something and making it so simple as, here it is, a violation of the first
amendment. Wait a minute, let's understand the first amendment, and then let's dig into this,
because this may be a deeply held great debate about students' abilities to say what they want.
The other point, we haven't even got this, and I don't want to for this, but a faculty member
or graduate assistant's rights to actually practice academic freedom and be able to say,
I'm in charge of this class, and here are these, it's, but I don't want to go there anymore,
John, I'm just, come on, stop jumping on X and, and, and scoring us cheap political win,
when the reality is, is that this is a whole lot to do with a lot of deeply held feelings and
senses of the world. This isn't just a big liberal institution squashing the first amendment rights
of students just out there trying to live their lives the way they want to feel it. That's all I'm
saying. And if I could read this real quick, it's the statement that the University of Oklahoma put out,
they said the university takes seriously concerns of involving the first amendment,
and they certainly include religious freedoms in that upon receiving notice from the student
on the grading of an assignment. The university immediately began a full review of the situation,
and is acted swiftly to address the matter. The college acted immediately to address the academic
issue, and they've been in contact ever since first hearing about it. So it sounds to meet him,
and Johnny, that this, this story of the, this big scary runaway woke liberal institution,
the actual story is that it was reported in the right way, not on Twitter, and not going to
turning point USA. The actual process seems to have worked fairly well. It seems that somebody had
a concern about a class therein, they reported it, and the university took it seriously, and the part
of this outside of the school where, oh, you know, now it's being dealt with, but I'm going to go
on Fox News and get my interview, and it blows up around the whole country in the world. That seems
extra to the actual thing that happened, which is it sounds like it's a fairly benign thing that
was dealt with in the moment, and everyone acted fairly well. As far as I can see, I'm not an
educator. Maybe you can tell me what the process should be for things like this, but it sounds like
they had something in place, and it kind of went okay. No, I, I, yeah, I agree 100 percent. In
fact, that's the story. The story isn't a violation of the First Amendment. The story is about
the process and how it was followed to address this student's concern, and to put it into an
internal process that, you know, is still ongoing. So, so yes, thank you, Jacob.
Johnny. Yeah, I'm learning about this as I'm getting information. As I said, this story was off my
radar, but I agree with, with Jacob here too, and I agree with what I'm reading as we're having this
conversation about, you know, the instructor's perspective, you know, this is the learning opportunity
for all parts. And I hope that our classrooms can be more spaces where they can be learning
opportunities to have these discussions and work their own rather than blown up into these,
like you said, Tim, two sides. There's a winner. There's a loser, and the loser better get punished.
So it's just a bad way to do any kind of, you know, education, let alone democracy. So that,
that's sort of the moment that it seems, it seems like it's ignited. But I also like how Jacob
highlighted, you know, that sometimes you feel like you get an unfair grade. And that's why
there are systems in place to look into that. Take it really seriously. It doesn't sound like
the university said anybody's wrong, right? There's space for both, like you said,
Tim, the instructor's right to do their job and responsibility, which sounds like she did
her responsibilities. I agree with her comments on the grading. I might not agree with the grade,
but that's not necessarily, you know, even my grade would still be a bad grade. So we're not,
we're not that far off from one another here on this. Like it might not be a zero. That's because
I'm a little maybe a little bit of a softy, but it would definitely be a redo or it would definitely
be like, you know, here's where you really miss the mark on the importance of this assignment
and what I need you to do. And it still made it ended up in this kind of dispute. But every university
I've ever worked with or talked to people who work at, right, has systems in place to sort these
things out democratically. I think, you know, Oklahoma University, from what I can see, great job
sorting it out, great job taking care of both of your students in this context. Maybe we could
always do a little better, but that's all of us and higher ed. So hopefully as a society,
since we're talking about essays on societal norms, can break the societal norm, Tim, that you
talked about. It's immediately a freedom of speech issue. And it's immediately that there's
someone who's right and someone who's wrong and somebody figure it out and punish the person
who's wrong, please. Yes. You know, and that and and this is again, is the context like class
in session today. You know, how do classrooms become political battlefields? This is a great example
of it, like a learning moment, a common thing that happens in classrooms where we ought to disagree.
That's sort of the essence of being in a learning space. That's as it's a democracy figuring out
where we disagree and how we disagree, right? And being able to do that together turns really
quickly into us versus them kind of stuff. The last thing I'll add to him before we end class
today, those, you know, I agree with the academic freedom and the freedom of speech for professors
and for instructors, which they themselves are also often students, right? But Tim, I also have
the point out that there is a power dynamic that we as professors have as academics, as scholars
and as teachers that, you know, we probably have a little less, I would say, free speech,
leeway because we kind of have discern these things. We have thought through them, but you can't
just say whatever as a professor, right? And you can't just say whatever as a student, but there's
a, I would say, I would argue there's a lot more leeway in place given that power dynamic, like,
I'm an expert on this topic, teaching a course that you're taking. And so, yes, I may sometimes get
things wrong in terms of maybe like what I do, or we may disagree, but I'm the authority on stuff,
like here, like I think that's what you're appointing to, like I can't just, I can't just say,
oh, I like this comic book, even though, you know, sometimes comic books can also be a source,
but I, you know, I can't just pick whatever and make it, you know, relevant to my topic and the
classroom, I have responsibility to the scientific consensus of whatever that field is, I'm teaching
the course on, right? And so, I agree with it, but I get into murky areas for me, and I always want
to emphasize like leeway to students, they're here to learn. Graduate instructors are also students,
so there's a little less leeway because they're pretty expert on their topics, but, you know,
there is a power dynamic, so as a professor, I feel like I ought to have a little bit more
regulation on what I can and can't include in free speech in my classroom, right? If that makes
sense, like I can't bring in my personal beliefs, which is why you're, yeah, and, you know,
again, we're going, you know, a lot of class in session for this one, but,
you know, and again, let's have another show because academic freedom and freedom of speech
to different things. Yeah, two different things, and we need to get that pointed out right there,
because yeah, I don't have free speech rights when I'm teaching to just say whatever I want,
I have academic freedom to be within the realm of my expertise and the scientific consensus.
Lots going on really, really, though, let's look at the University of Oklahoma and all the other
institutions, and I've been at a few, they all have policies and procedures that allow these things
to play out in ways that are so much more democratic, nurturing, conversational, than just simply
finding out who the victim and who the oppressor is, and making sure you get out to X or Fox News
and get your point out there. That's not democracy. That's not how we live in the society, but now
it's time for your moment of Zen.
History can untie our minds, our bodies are disposition to move, to engage life rather than contemplating
it as an outsider. Thank you for listening to today's class
in session. And if you want more busted pencils podcasts, just go on over to Apple Spotify,
or you can always get at us at civicmedia.com or find us on the busted pencils.com website.
Remember, you can find great busted pencils content every Monday for home room, Wednesdays for class
in session, and Fridays for producer Jacob's choice. And of course, pencil busters, you can always
tune in on Saturday and listen to the busted pencils weekend broadcast at 3 p.m. central time
across all the civic media networks for one hour of your favorite blue collar scholars,
Tim and Johnny, and keep Bustin Pencils.