Everybody Wang Chung wrote:And the results are not pretty. As an alumnus and financial contributor to BYU, I find DCP's lack of teaching skills and ability troubling.
Unfortunately for DCP, over the years his students have rated him a 3.0 and only 30% of DCP's former students would ever take another class from him. Not a very glowing endorsement for DCP: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRat ... id=1362547
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your references are based upon a total 17 ratings over the past 8 years ...and so just 5 students don't want to take another class?...or is it 6 students? I feel like David Crandall is more deserving of your pitchfork, don't you? http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRat ... Profs=true
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
As an employer, I hate the "Glassdoor" website (where employees can review their company). I have dozens of happy employees that have worked for me for years, and I've repeatedly encouraged them to write a review, but they've never gotten around to it. So the only reviews are the disgruntled people who had a bad experience and left (or sometimes people who interviewed and didn't get a job!)
I'm sure their experiences are valid, but they hardly paint an accurate picture of what it's like to work here. So I'm extremely skeptical of the validity of forming general opinions from such sites. I think specific comments can be enlightening, but let's not paint with too broad a brush.
As for DCP, I've been to several speeches he's given over the years in different forums in Los Angeles, and I would gladly pay to sit through a semester hearing his experiences and knowledge about the Middle East and Islam. I don't know how things are when it comes to tests and grades and stuff like that, but I doubt it's ever a boring class.
I don't put much stock in the ratings and comments posted on ratemyprofessors (I doubt that the latest rating/comment was posted by an actual student), but I must insist that using a cherry-picked sample of negative reviews (see Dr. Shades' comment) to criticize Dr. Peterson is misleading and unfair. I object to the opening post.
“A scholar said he could not read the Book of Mormon, so we shouldn’t be shocked that scholars say the papyri don’t translate and/or relate to the Book of Abraham. Doesn’t change anything. It’s ancient and historical.” ~ Hanna Seariac
I used to teach at a university and I would go to Rate my Professor all the time to see my reviews. I even gave myself like two or three really good reviews ( i mean stellar reviews). I shared an office with another instructor and we both would visit the site together. We both received good reviews because we made our courses easy. He did get hammered in one review for his accent. He started to take speech classes in an attempt to rid himself of his accent. Anyways, Rate My Professor can be a mean beast.
or on a lighter note I was puzzled by a couple of negative reviews noting that power points got skipped and there was a lot of reading. My college experience was never infected by the appearance of power points but there was a lot of reading. Different expectations likely produce different reviews.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:I think Everybody Wang Chung's post was in retaliation to DCP's recent blog post. There seems to be a universal constant with regard to human nature. If you extend wellness into the universe it seems wellness comes back to you. If you extend hate into the universe hate comes back to you. DCP can complain all he wants, but if he conducted himself personally and professionally by extending goodness into the world I have a feeling whatever's going on with him, Scratch, and others wouldn't be happening.
- Doc
Yes, well that principle works both ways. Is Everybody Wang Chung extending “wellness” into the universe when he posts negative reviews of DCP’s teaching here at MDB? Probably not.
If we think the ball is only in DCP’s court, then this otherwise good principle becomes a mere rationalization. “If only he were nice, then I would not have to be mean!”
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
While I understand your sentiment, and trust me when I say I get what being a dick to people causes, the fact of the matter is this is just another ripple in the long-running war of words the LDS church decided to wage when they shifted FARMS' research from the historical to apologetics. Mr. Peterson eagerly joined the fray, has buttered many a bread with his lackey's work, and he's squandered away a promising career for a blog.
But hey, at least he gets to take a lot of trips and hob nob with relatively interesting people. That's actually a pretty good gig. Who wouldn't love to tour far away lands on other people's dimes when all it costs you is a humblebrag field report and a crappy fireside talk or two?
But I digress. If Mr. Peterson had been a genuinely good person and a genuine scholar he would've avoided this nonsense. He thrives on it, and clearly enjoys the attention he gets. The LDS church wanted an academic cadre in the vein of Nibley and instead got Midgley, Peterson, Gordon, and Smoot. And Schryver.
I mean you have nearly 25 years of this shtick going on with these guys and for what? It certainly hasn't stemmed the tide of apostasy. I can tell you for sure the mission those guys were given has, in my opinion, done far more damage to the LDS church's reputation than it's done good. If Mr. Peterson's sloppiness, cynicism, and unprofessionalism has bled over to his classroom and a few students have noticed what we've noticed for years now, why is it such a problem to post it here? Mr. Peterson has made a career out of crap posting. So what if Everybody Wang Chung takes a return shot at yet another salvo lobbed by a man who's paid to do just that?
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
The problem I have with this site is that anyone can post a review, even people who never took his class. DCP has a lot of people who don't like him, particularly ex-Mormons. I wouldn't put it past a lot of them if they sat home all day writing up crap reviews of the man.