This Story of a Prof Who Fails His Entire Class to Illustrate Obama's Socialism Has the Left Furious

[OmahaBlueDog]

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/01/107990-story-prof-fails-entire-class-illustrate-obamas-socialism-left-furious/

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”.. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that.

The story smells like BS to me, but stranger things have happened.

[lostincalifornia]

1. This professor should be fired for being a complete idiot. The President is NOT a socialist, but

this teacher sure is a fascist asshole

[Journeyman]

2. I believe variants of this story have been around since before President Obama was born. . .

[Shrike47]

3. And then the teacher and college were sued... This sounds like an Urban Legend.

[merrily]

26. "Urban legend" is a very nice term for it. And Obama is no socialist.

Glad to see that we haven't stopped fighting the Cold War, though, even though the Berlin Wall came down.

Or did it revive after Occupy got the 99% message across so well?

[Schema Thing]

4. furious(ly) laughing.

[Shrike47]

5. I Googled it. Urban legend (Snopes) discussed on DU in March, 2010.

I still would like to sue the college. My legal skills are getting rusty.

[merrily]

27. Filing a lawsuit about things that never happened?

Well, I guess that is kind of the case to re-sharpen your legal skills on.

[Snarkoleptic]

6. Snopes got a piece of this here...

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp

[Turbineguy]

7. Snopes

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp

It's one of those made up stories the right likes to pass off as fact. Since their economic policy is based on fiction it fits right in with their way of doing things. And if they turn out to be wrong, well, that's OK, it was all part of God's all-knowing bigger plan.

[DonViejo]

8. Snopes says....

BS!

LEGEND

:::snip:::

Origins: In March 2009, one of the e-mail forwards of the moment was the piece quoted above. It appeared variously titled "Excellent Lesson In Economics," "Great Experiment," "Experiment in Socialism," "Texas Professor," "A Simple Analogy," "A Great Lesson on Socialism," "Economics 101," "Something for Nothing?," "A Perfect Analogy," "Simple Economics" and "Capitalism vs Socialism."

There is indeed a real school named Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, but that school is merely one of many settings used for this fictional illustrative tale meant to explain the teller's belief that socialism does not work. (Another example of an illustrative tale used to explain what might otherwise be a difficult concept to grasp is the "How Taxes Work" item that was widely circulated in 2002.) We've encountered other pieces that expressed the same concept in a similar setting, such as the following:

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp#pESzxH7GgvRLBe2c.99

[TheBlackAdder]

9. Smells? It's being spread in the garden as we write.

1) Professors would get sanctioned for tampering with grades like that. The students can file an official complaint of misconduct against him.


2) Did the kids spend money and waste valuable educational time on an experiment?


3) Nobody in a university-level class would let their grades drop like that, everyone would tow their own weight as they normally would, either for personal satisfaction or to be used as evidence when their lower grades were challenged on appeal.


4) Very few people, at the university-level, fail the class--unless the professor is completely incompetent.


===


It's only a story, unless the university, the professor, and the class session are identified.

[Curmudgeoness]

10. This is an economics professor,

and he doesn't know 1) that Obama is not a socialist, and 2) what socialism is. He should be humiliated. What this "experiment" is based on is full-blown communism, not socialism. It is obvious that some teabagger wrote this little story up, since they are the only ones who confuse the two.

[beachbum bob]

11. idiot professor

If this true....

[Ilsa]

12. They probably run experiments like this at Oral Roberts University. nt

[unblock]

13. communism relies on a sense of community

first, yes, the story is clearly aprocryphal; and, obama has little to do with either socialism or communism.

but in any event, communism (think, actual communes) doesn't rely on a mere absence of greed-motivation, nor does it (in theory) rely exclusively on totalitarian control (though in practice that can certainly happen). it relies on a sense of obligation to your community, enforced by peer pressure and praise and such, to ensure that people are motivate to work.

this theoretical experiment takes away the greed motivation, but also takes away the other means of motivation as well.

capitalism has its advantages, and so does socialism. but this is a ridiculously facile experiment to base any real comparison of the two.

[angstlessk]

14. Who is the "Independent Journal Review"????

[OmahaBlueDog]

16. A wingnut site, apparantly

I get this stuff from extended family via Facebook.

[Festivito]

15. False analogy: lacks the inheritor class.

Also, rather than bickering, the students include everyone in a study group for which everyones understanding and grades go up. Top student may get a B but benefits from a lifetime of having even the slowest persons around him being nicely educated.

[knowledgeispower13]

30. When is a lack of effort good?

This is a direct quote from the story:

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

Are you saying because the students that didn't study are receiving higher grades they are learning more? The "slowest persons", as you refer to them, are not being nicely educated. Also, nobody in the story is actually referred to as "slow". The differentiation is about effort, "studied hard" and "studied little", not smart and slow.

Don't we want everyone to give their best effort? We all cheat ourselves when we don't give our best!

[Blanks]

17. I saw this on Facebook a few months ago...

And when I pointed out the snopes link - the guy told me that he knew it wasn't a true story, but it illustrates a point.

I guess the point is that if you are a right-wing moron - you don't need facts to prove a point.

Or something.

[OmahaBlueDog]

18. I know citing Snopes doesn't work with wingers

They throw back a liberal media argument. Leftist website funded by George Soros, etc. , etc.

[Blanks]

19. There's apparently a parody website...

That they cited (I forget the name) and when I pointed out that it was an admitted parody cite - provided a link to their disclaimer and all. The guy started dogging on snopes for being too liberal.

Another guy puts crap on Facebook from breitbart. I think breitbart is a kind of conservative 'make a wish foundation' or something - because some of the shit they come up with is way out there.

[yellowcanine]

21. After the first exam their would have been an uproar and the prof likely fired.

For academic dishonesty. Teachers can't cheat either and what the prof did was cheating.

[SheilaT]

22. More to the point,

Socialism does not work that way.

Socialism is a system in which everyone cooperates for the greater good. Usually through taxes, which is redistribution of wealth. In socialism, no one is poor. No one is rich, either, but no one starves. Or goes without education. Or heat in the winter.

The supposed (already proven false) example of socialism as averaging grades is exactly the sort of right wing bullshit that is not socialism at all.

[Al Carroll]

23. Lubbock as a liberal oasis?

Texas Tech is in Lubbock. This is about as conservative a town as you can find, mostly fundamentalists. The Mormons there are actually liberals by comparison.

The idea that a professor would need to battle these naïve liberal students is ludicrous. Likely the professor might be the only in the class NOT to believe Obama is a commie.

But yes, no economist, historian, sociologist, etc would have this complete lack of understanding of the most basic terms.

[merrily]

28. Welcome to DU.

Listen, if you are making up stuff, as the creator of this article was, you may as well go big and pretend them damned socialist professors are everywhere, even Lubbock.

Discredit Obama, socialism and higher education, all in one swell foop [sic] and, above all, fan the flames of the Cold War lest people forget what a huge success it was.

Worth every bit of blood and treasure both sides devoted to it for about 50 years.

[Biker Jim]

24. A rehash of Ayn Rand

I think this a rehash of a part of the book Atlas Shrugged, where an unemployed worker tells of his experience with a company that imposed a "to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability" regimen, (a shorthand for socialism). The company like most other companies has been forced more or less to adopt a socialist policy towards its workers. What happens next is pretty much what happens in this "professor" story. I think this is a story and not true due to no professors name being found anywhere I searched. Anyway, that's what I think. Ayn Rand was writing about her first hand experience growing up during the Bolshevik Revolution and the effects on society that she witnessed by superimposing it on a fictional future (for 1956) America. The book is kind of a right wing mantra, very long, but actually I thought it had a few good points. Every dog has their day I suppose. I try to be open minded.

[merrily]

25. Welcome to DU.

I think Ayn took even post-revolution Russia to an extreme.

But, wasn't that a Communist revolution? The words were used interchangeably, including by the "Soviet Socialist Republics," but they are not identical.