Faculty Surveys

Via Phi Beta Cons, I enjoyed this article by a professor who is disgruntled by various intrusive questions posed on the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement:

[How often do students in your selected course section engage in the following:]

Developing a personal code of values and ethics?

This one really lets the cat out of the bag. Apparently, we’re supposed to be promoting the latest brand of Education School religion by encouraging students to wed therapy to ethics in the service of whipping up their own ideas of right and wrong. I opt out. I’m a Roman Catholic; I believe that there is a transcendent reality outside of us that we confront and confronts us and that distinctions between right and wrong are objective. C. S. Lewis, at least, is on my side, as are all of the students who have ever complained to me about an “unfair” grade, to whom I never once have said, well, according to my personal values, that’s a “D.” But more to the point, I’m a better secularist than the people who put this questionnaire together; I don’t think that my students’ personal (the survey’s word, not mine) values and ethics are any of my damn business.

Developing a deepened sense of spirituality?

Are they serious? See answer above, but double the alarm.