Fascinating. My daughter is a graduate student in computer science at the University of Colorado. I wonder if Colorado is just like Maryland, where the TA handbook has different advice depending on your sex?
Advice to male TAs, in summary: Take charge and pay special attention to your male students, and watch out for the female students, who may be trying to get into your pants for a better grade.
Advice to female TAs, in summary: Be patient and friendly with students, and face it, people aren’t going to regard you as a professional in your career anyway.
Both sets of advice look terrible.
I don’t think my daughter is the type to put up with much nonsense, and she’s got more professional experience than any of her students, or many of her peers. Maybe UMD ought to rethink the message they’re sending here?
Fortunately, UMD recognizes the problem and has deleted the advice.
From the @umdcs Department Chair, Professor Ming Lin: The TA Handbook posted on the CS website contained highly inappropriate, stereotypical characterizations of women. The handbook has been removed from the site, and we apologize for its offensive contents.
— UMD CS Department (@umdcs) April 17, 2018
Well don’t keep us in suspense, how would you improve or change these?
Incidentally, one of my female friends did date one of her TA’s, but I don’t know if grades were involved. In any event the relationship didn’t work out.
My female teaching colleagues (high school) regularly have to deal with male students challenging their authority. In many cases, the students are from a culture that treats women as second-class citizens, so calling home to discuss the problem with their parents/father is often unproductive. Certainly I have my share of challenging students, but I don’t get parents questioning my competence when I call home to discuss their child’s behaviour.
The advice to female TAs–“friendly, firm, repeated assertions of authority”–wouldn’t work anyway. Some students will never listen to such assertions, and those who do finally shut up will resent the TA for asserting authority, and will give her low performance evaluations. Indeed, both kinds of student may take their wounded feelings to their parents, deans, and department heads, all of whom will blame the female TA.
The unversity needs to have a clear consensual-sexual-relations policy, as mine does, that covers all university faculty, students, and staff: no consensual sexual relations are allowed with someone you are in a position to evaluate, which includes everything from grades to letters of recommendations and performance evaluations. That is forbidden, and they can fire you for it (if they want to. They could also just tsk-tsk.)
The statement that women would face some challenges to their authority and perceived competency is spot-on; I’ve seen it multiple times with TAs under my guidance. The advice the guidebook gave to address those issues was about as ass-backwards as they could have written. Friendliness is a tool in the toolbox; sometime you have assert the full force of your competency and authority in the classroom.
I agree with your evaluation of the separate handbook entries, but the tweet by Annie mischaracterizes what is said in the handbook (at least the section that is included there.) Her ‘yet’ does way more work than that word should, and nowhere does it say that women should expect to face challenges to authority more than men. It is only implied if you compare both parts of the document or simply note that there are separate sections for gender. Furthermore, as essential advice, it is correct; students react differently based on their teachers’ gender (and race and height and accent and a dozen other factors.) This is a reflection of inequity in students, which is bad but shouldn’t be permitted to interfere materially in their education. To prepare people for this inequity isn’t itself sexist or whatever, especially when your audience is people who aren’t learning to be teachers and probably haven’t taught much before.The alternative (which I would probably favor simply because you have to choose something) is to give much less advice, or perhaps to offer the gender differences within paragraphs rather than sectioning the genders apart from each other. There’s a pretty broad line between practical, direct advice that incorporates responses by young people and content that is unaware and rests on stereotypes.
OK I’m ready for my punishment.
D
Those responsible for sacking the authors of the previous message, have been sacked.
My “favorite” part for the female TA’s: “Your students may experience some difficulty accepting you fully in a scientific field whey they may, for whatever reasons, associate with male activity.”
Hey, UMD, I think I see one reason. See your handbook to male TA’s.
The TAs are graduate students, right? So about 22 or 23 years old.
Does anyone here think the females will be surprised at being treated like shit by males?
srsly?
Michael
How about a section in the student’s handbook telling students that their TAs are competent people.
I mean, it’s kind of telling how both sections tell TAs to have so much more understanding for their male students while the female students are all evil succubi at best.
You can leave your not so subtle racism where the sun doesn’t shine.
Funny enough, I get a lot of parents who are lilly white who question my and my colleagues’ competence, usually insisting that we’re picking on their poor genius sons (it’s always the sons) just because they play truant, smoke in school and don’t bring their books.
David Motes @4:
Well, not in the part of the handout for female TA’s. You’ll find it, though, if you read the part for male TA’s. “You may also experience some degree of ‘testing’ or challenging of your authority, but on the whole it’ll be to a lesser extent than that experienced by your female colleagues.”
Wait…so you did compare, but your issue is about it being “implied”? As opposed to being explicitly stated, I assume.
Seriously??? It is so heavily implied that I don’t really see how it is any different than having been explicitly stated. They explicitly stated that male TA’s will receive less challenge than women. That’s logically equivalent to saying that women will receive more than men, is it not?
To an extent, yes. Saying that students will challenge the authority of a female TA more…oops, my bad. I already forgot they said students will challenge the authority of a male TA less, which I would have thought was logically the same, but maybe not?
But I repeat myself. Anyway, I don’t think this was where people are having the issue. It’s the “what to do about it” part of the handbook that is problematic. But why would an “alternative” be “to give much less advice”? How about different advice, particularly advice without gender differences??? This reads like a false dichotomy to me. Are you implying you believe the only practical advice to give would involve giving different advice to different genders? I don’t agree. I have no problem with stating that TA’s of different genders may encounter different problems (as long as those problems are based in fact), but the advice doesn’t need to be different based on gender. Note, for example, that they recognize that both male and female TA’s may face challenges to their authority. Why, then, would male TA’s need different advice for handling this than female TA’s? Why wouldn’t there be advice that can be given to all TA’s (of any gender) for challenges to authority?
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
You’re diverting. The post was discussing advice to TA’s, not student handbooks. I was merely pointing out that I have observed female students dating male TA’s, but not the reverse. I freely admit that it is a small sample size, so not statistically significant. If you have any data on the dating habits of TA’s, particularly showing that male students are just as likely as female students to date their TA’s, or more so, then I’m happy to retract my comment.
I work at a multicultural school, with a high immigrant population. The female (East Indian) teacher in the class next to me was discussing this exact problem the other day. The difference perhaps is that she is not a first or second generation Canadian, while the student is. If you are trying to argue that women are treated equally in all cultures or races, then you are greatly mistaken. Calling me a racist is simply an ad hominem.
Hmnnn… why might a female TA not date the students who are constantly challenging her authority or possibly making many inuendos about her. Such a mystery. So strange. Women really are bizarre because there’s no possible reason why they wouldn’t date a student who is being a dick to them.
Or maybe they are and they’re just more discreet.
Or maybe they understand the power dynamic better and therefore don’t date their students.
Or maybe they’re teaching kids barely out of highschool and when you’re 24 that 6 year difference makes them look like *babies*.
Such mystery. So strange.
garnetstar@2:
Your choice of the verb “will” at the end, rather than “may” (as near the beginning), is itself an instance of stereotyping. Is it unhelpful? Maybe, maybe not. But please note that “Department Chair, Professor Ming Lin”, whose tweet PZ quotes above, seems unlikely (given her actions here) to be one of those “department heads, all of whom will blame the female TA”. And I don’t think she’d be the only counterexample to your blanket statement. (I was chair of a department of mathematics and computer science; we didn’t have a graduate program, whence we didn’t have graduate TAs, either, so I can’t prove that I’d have been another counterexample—but I believe I would have.)
Stronger than that tweet: http://www.cs.umd.edu/article/2018/04/letter-professor-ming-c-lin-and-dean-amitabh-varshney
The TAs that the handbook was targeted at are likely to be as young as 18 or 19, undergrads themselves.
“What do you do when a student hits on you” is something that needs to be addressed, because it happens reasonably often; so does “what do you do if you’re dating your student” (likewise). Also, “don’t hit on your students”. All were covered appropriately (and inappropriately) every time I was a TA.
And I’ll go out on a limb and suspect that the authors of the handbook might be as young as 18 or 19.
Aren’t TA’s usually Master’s students? If so, they aren’t likely to be as young as 18 or 19. More likely mid-20’s.
The enumerating of the likely challenges seems relevant, and indeed, I’m fairly certain there are profound gender differences. As Pat Schroeder said in the wake of the Gary Hart/Donna Rice/Monkey Business scandal: I don’t get hit on by 19-year-old lifeguards, and if I did, I’d say no, because they’d have nothing interesting to say to me.
It’s the tone of the appropriate responses that is galling. In each and every case, reporting the offending student and providing appropriate discipline and/or downgrading them is exactly what they deserve.
Also, sunshine is the best disinfectant. I had some very flirtatious young women students, and any time they wanted to talk outside of class, I would insist we do it in what was then known as the Secretarial Pool, so that there would always be transparency, and other women around. My office hours were open door. Period. It’s not fucking brain surgery.
If a student is disrespectful and unnecessarily challenging (I don’t include honest inquiries into Why The Fuck Do We Think That, but rather ad hominem dickishness), have them stand in front of the class and present their counter-hypothesis, and accept a Q&A from their peers. If they are flirtatious, same thing, let them display in public.
“Patience”? That borders on Rape Culture Apologism. Sorry, no. Both men and women TAs and Professors should expect and enforce non-sexualized and non-sexist behavior from students, Or….else…ummm,,,,a lower GPA this semester, you impudent whelp! Yime to have your Mommy come in and harangue me for your B-minus!
Michael@15: in computer science in the US, intro courses have many TAs, mostly undergrads. There’ll also be likely one Ph.D. student TA.
Masters students don’t usually TA: they’re funded by an employer (or rich parents) to get a professional degree.
The norms differ in other departments of course, and I gather in other countries.
Michael
The fuck? You asked for alternatives and I gave you the alternative I think is preferable: Teach the people whose behaviour is the problem.
And I was pointing out that the handbook emphasises male students’ “needs” and female students’ “dangerousness”. Not exactly something that inspires confidence, especially if you consider a scenario in which someone in a position of power pressures a female student into sexual favours.
1. I didn’t call you a racist.
2. If I had, it would still not be an ad hominem.
3. I didn’t make the claim that “women are treated equally everywhere” either.
For someone who claims to be a high school teacher your reading comprehension sure is off.
I objected to you jumping to blame the problem on people from a certain background, which I called racist. Because the handbook is from the University of Maryland, and you can guess the ethnic composition of its students.
The disrespect female teachers get from male teachers may be more frequent among students from a certain background, and it may be more overt. But it is not a problem that can be blamed on “them”.
Just because somebody doesn’t explicitly say “I don’t respect you because you’re a woman” doesn’t mean that indeed they don’t.
Oh, and by the way, I taught almost exclusively young Arab men for a while. While yes indeed it was challenging sometimes, and some of them were complete assholes*, many of them were also the nicest and most respectful students I ever had.
Oh, and one of them tried to hit on me. Funny enough I managed not to fuck him or fuck him over.
*There’s a certain irony in a young Arab man with a Swastika tattoo and a love for Hitler.
Please enlighten me about how someone’s “race” determines the level of their respect for women.
Students, obviously, not teachers, though they sometimes disrespect you as well.
Michael, #1
A male TA dated one of his female students.
Michael, #1
Easy. For a start, eliminate the entire second paragraph in the “To Male TAs” section because it is misogynistic as fuck.
Saad, #29:
Assumes fact not in evidence: Michael did not state that the TA was male.
Makes reasonable guess based on the context of Michael’s post and how that comment was preceded by “Well don’t keep us in suspense, how would you improve or change these?”
I could be wrong, of course. Only Michael here would know the truth.
Apparently the texts are from the 1980s or possibly the 1970s.
I was a CS student in the 1980s. It was in Denmark, but I think the situation I the Us was probably similar.
Female TAs were very rare, very smart and very tough. They had to be..
The advice to the female TAs should read :
“You will most likely be teaching an all-male class, and you will be the smartest and toughest person in the room. Please don’t maim any of your students, even when they are being sexist idiots. Also, if possible, don’t traumatize any of your students too deeply, even when they deserve it.”
Sorry @12, but that’s my experience. In all my long history in academia, *all* of those authorities have blamed the female involved. There has not been one exception.
I’m glad that it’s different in some people’s experience of academia.
So a single section listing problems with stidents without reference to gender.
Some don’t accept challenges to authority. Some don’t respect your authority. Some will seek to use personal familiarity to their advantage.
@Giliell
I asked how to improve the advice in the TA’s Handbook. You responded instead with what to put in the Student’s Handbook (Is there one?), which is diverting onto a different subject from my original question.
“You can leave your not so subtle racism where the sun doesn’t shine.”
So you aren’t calling me a racist here? My mistake. I considered it an ad hominem because it came across as an attack on my character instead of addressing my point.
“The disrespect female teachers get from male teachers may be more frequent among students from a certain background, and it may be more overt. But it is not a problem that can be blamed on “them”.”
I assume the second ‘teachers’ was meant to be ‘students’. I would like a more detailed explanation on the second sentence though. Who is “them”? The students? Their family & friends? I would probably blame the culture they grew up in, if it treats women as inferior.
My mistake on using the term race. I was attempting to indicate various social groups around the world.
All the TA’s I had in university were Master’s students.
@Saad
Trivial point, but normally when I talk, I’ll mention someone I know before someone I don’t. eg. “My friend, Susan, met the President.” rather than “The President met my friend, Susan.” Regardless, you are right, the TA was male.