Finally finalized final finale.

2003-12-10 at 8:53 a.m.

So my Society and Education class final--you know, the class where we learned that schools can tend to screw minorities? and women? I hope you were sitting down--had a final yesterday.

I'd like to point out that the prof hadn't lectured since the midterm. It's all been student presentations and videos and blahblahblah. We hadn't had discussions, debates, or any kind of interaction that might give us an opportunity to work with what's in the texts we had read (one of which I highly recommend, by the way: Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen). And there was a lot in those texts. They covered Cold War America, and Supreme Court judgements limiting religion in the classroom and the voucher debate and acheivement gaps and the GI bill and debates on the merits of vocational training and how the concentration of power in the media might be affecting the socialization of lower socioeconomic classes to accept the status quo and... yeah, so there was something there to talk about, and a LOT there to test us on and we had no opportunity to do anything more than read the book.

And last week, he'd refused to give us any direction. "If you've done the reading, you should be fine." Meh. What a cop-out answer.

Bastard. He was right.

You wanna know why?

We get in the classroom yesterday. He's writing on the white board:

No books.

You can use your notes.

You can use your friends.

Um. Wha?

(Three people pick up their books and come sit by me.)

The prof sits down in the corner of the room and smiles benignly at us.

So we decide that we're all friends here, and all two dozen of us do the final together.

"I think the GI bill helped more than a quarter of the veterans!"

"Well, not all of the veterans went on to college, and some already had gone to college, and some would have gone on to college, so one fourth of veterans could be right."

"I think it's only c, that the veterans did better in rigorous classes than non-veterans."

"But I think it's d, all of the above!"

"Well, you just put your little d down, and we'll see who's right."

"All right l'il miss GI Bill, I challenge you! I'll see your wimpy c, and raise it a d, and then we'll just see, won't we?"

"Oh, yes, we will. You're going dooooown."

The rest of the class picked sides like a schoolyard fight.

The professor sat in the back, laughing and wheezing.

(For the record, I was arguing D. And for the record, she was in class thanks to the GI Bill, which she was pretty proud of. And for the final record, the answer was D. I was SO right.)

Weirdest non-final final I ever took.

0 people had something to say