CONTINUING OUR ANALYSIS of a propaganda email, the next line reads:
That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
I have two things to say about that:
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The class had insisted...
I've been involved in education much of my life, I've taught classes on every level from elementary through graduate school, and I have never once had an entire class disagree with me on anything, let alone a topic as divisive as socialism.
Texas is not the most liberal part of the country. And, even if this weren't Texas, economics classes are not generally known for attracting the most liberal students on any campus.
The idea that an entire economics class was unanimous, against the teacher, and socialist, staggers the imagination. -
But there's another, more interesting, point in the above sentence.
This is where the idea of socialism is introduced, and the real argument begins in the subtext.
The word "socialism" is loaded. It's loaded because the entire propaganda machine of the right has been spending a great deal of time and effort spinning the term.
The result of this spinning is that the word, in common usage, means everything from Obama's efforts to keep the country from falling into another depression to the kind of cruel dictatorship that existed in Russia under Stalin.
The conservative spinners love this kind of conflation.
The email makes use of that conflation by simply not explaining what type of "socialism" the class was talking about, as though there were only one type. Republicans are currently making use of the same conflation by labeling a budget that is miles to the right of Dwight Eisenhower on tax policy, and miles more conservative than Reagan on spending, with the same word: socialism.
The upshot is that this word, introduced here, carries enormous emotional and political weight.
The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
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The author very subtly introduces an authoritarian world-view into the argument. The teacher is the authority, and therefore can do whatever he wants. The importance of this, as a propaganda weapon, is that he's pacing the beliefs of his intended audience.
This email is clearly aimed at conservatives. It's not going to convert someone like me, and it doesn't attempt to. Conservatives, on the whole, have an authoritarian world-view. They like the idea that there are authorities in charge, and they tend to think that those authorities should be allowed to force their will on others.
To that audience, this authoritarian behavior actually increases the professor's credibility, making it more likely that they'll justify his future erratic and dishonest actions, and believe him when he pronounces the moral at the end of the story.
In real life, of course, a professor can't just arbitrarily change grading procedures any way he wishes. While professors do have a great deal of latitude, a professor who tried to do what this professor is said to do would run into all kinds of professional problems when those students complained to the administration, which they would. -
Just a mention, but it's worth noting here that this soft-hearted professor, who never failed an individual student, tells a lie at this point to the entire class. He tells them that no one will fail. And, if he had done what he said he was going to do, no one would have. In fact, the only reason anyone in this class fails is because the professor both broke his word, and graded in a very unorthodox fashion.
One of the things I've learned over forty years as an educator is that most students, and many teachers, don't understand how grades actually work. Especially on the university level, grades are, by their nature, comparative. They don't tell you how much, and certainly not what a student has learned. They only tell you about one student's performance compared to the rest of his or her class.
Occasionally you'll run into a teacher who is convinced that they "don't grade on a curve". What they mean is something like, "90% to 100% is an 'A', 80% to 89% is a 'B', etc.". But if you watch closely, you'll notice that if all the students do badly on one test, they'll do better on the next one. The teacher notices the trend, decides the last test was "too hard" and adjusts, either consciously or unconsciously.
That isn't the only way it's done, but the fact remains that virtually every teacher gives a set of grades that mostly average to "C" over all their students. A professor who regularly gave an average grade of even 'D' would not be tolerated for long.
One may give more or fewer 'A's, another may give no 'F's, but on the whole, the mean is 'C'. And, in fact, under our current system, any other arrangement is simply dishonest , since it would be ignoring the meaning the grades have in our system.
This becomes important later on.
After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.
We'll take that one apart next time...
