A Sociology Professor

[ndrosen]

One thing that contributed to my youthful cynicism was the incident in class where neither a fifth grade science teacher nor an education student from Penn State University knew that atoms could be split. And now we can read about a professor of sociology flunking a student for writing about the country of Australia; the professor didn't believe that Australia is a country as well as a continent.

To be fair to Mrs. Y******** back in 1974 or so, she didn't fail me and she didn't insist that atoms could not be split; she simply didn't know. Also, be it noted that the university administration did correct the professor's decision.

It seems that when one reads about a real idiocy like this in academia, the perfesser is generally a perfesser of sociology or education or Something Studies, not of physics or history.

Comments

[selenite0]

I suspect the sociology prof in question was worked up about the "Africa is a continent, not a nation," meme and couldn't realize that Australia was a different place.