23.1.07

regional variation

Things have gotten rather more unstructured and informal than I had been meaning for them to be of late, primarily through lack of timely writing. Much of this is from the disruption of a long trip into a familiar, yet foreign environment. Visiting home tends to bottom out my desire to get things done. I want to see the folks, relax, watch lots and lots of movies on the projection tv. Probably if I lived closer to my family this would be different. I'd not be so far removed from my daily life and sense of personal responsibility.

To get back into things, there was a small drama at college today. We had been told that our course evaluations would be kept anonymous. We need to feel comfortable expressing our honest opinions on classes, right? So a couple of the Americans had some very substantial complaints about a couple of our Norwegian professors, which they put into their course evaluations. Of course they did. That is what course evaluations are for. Except, they were not anonymous as it turns out. Because one of the professors apologized to those with the complaint, both in e-mail and today to one of them personally. The recipient didn't acknowledge the apology, because the comment should have been anonymous and she felt rather violated I suppose. But who is right? The one who is honestly trying to make ammends, or the one who feels both offended and now violated by the lack of anonymity?

1 comment:

Muggie said...

I'm amazed, the teacher apologized? Here they would have found a way to "take it out" on the student. That's why anonymity is so important in the US. I wish teachers here were so magnanimous.

I do understand the student's reaction but the teacher did try to make amends instead of doing something to hurt her grade. I hope she can get past the lack of anonymity and accept the apology. I can't think of a better chance at building peace, which I suspect is what the teacher was attempting.