I get it. You are passionate about your beliefs and I can admire that. But here is the thing... I did not invest money and time in my education to have you waste my time pushing your agenda on me... especially when it is not a politics based course.
Although I know little about the world of educating and being a teacher, I believe that young, growing minds should be handled carefully. While studying psychology, I learned that our developing minds pay close attention to the opinions of those with authority. You are an authority to us and maybe you saw this as an advantage. There is nothing wrong with sharing your perspective from time to time, but you pushed it on us. How unforgivable...
I am sure it was never your intention, but I felt unaccepted and judged in your class. My values and opinions were the night to your day. If we were to sit down and talk about it, we would probably agree on very little. And that is FINE. Well, it should have been fine... but you so openly bashed those who viewed anything other than your truth. I felt like I couldn't even speak in your class...
I just wish you could see that your way of teaching could easily misguide or confuse a student who hasn't quite figured themselves out yet. I 100% believe that we should be given the freedom to figure out our own values for ourselves. College is supposed to be the place when most people figure this out.
Here, we can distance ourselves from our family's, community's or even our church's opinions and values. And here you are, pretty much telling us what we should believe. You are not the only one however, there are waaayyy too many college professors out there who pretty much only teach their agenda and forget about the course altogether.
I don't want anyone to believe that I feel this way towards you just because we have such differing views. That is not the case. Even if you would have said everything that I could agree with, I would have felt uncomfortable knowing that some people in the classroom would be too scared to share their opinions. I would never want someone to agree with me just because they felt like they had to. That defeats the whole purpose.
On twitter the other day, I saw where a professor was handing our extra credit to students who tweeted our president rude things and if he blocked them, they would receive bonus points... Maybe the goal was to be funny or provide an interesting way to receive points but this is too far. Handing out credit to bash our president is disgraceful and unprofessional. If the students disagree with him, they can do that on their own time.
I am all about talking about politics and beliefs. But I do feel like there is a time and place to do so. Sabotaging a group of young minds in to listening to your speeches and rants just because we are required to show up to class is not the proper way to come about it.
