i can't seem to help it, especially in this intro to sociology class. am i being short sighted for clearly displaying familiarity with, and affection for, marx? like..what happens to these discussion posts, and our papers for that matter? where do they go? do the capitalists get them?

  • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
    ·
    3 years ago

    Political Science. I'm not actively teaching classes atm but last year I taught a "capitalism vs communism and everything in-between" class on comparative political theory, which I mostly spent having to repeatedly re-explain what communism actually means, why it's not just "is a dictatorship with red" and that anarchism isn't just "heehoo chaos" to random boomers sitting in on the class without actually being enrolled.

      • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
        ·
        3 years ago

        Virtually all universities allow people to audit classes, and it's not exactly as though there's a keycard or an armed guard at the classroom door preventing people from just walking in. A pretty significant number of universities, including the university I teach at, allow people to audit classes for free, all you have to do is just walk in and sit down. You're not graded, and you're not getting homework or anything, but you can just sit down and learn. Some universities have started allowing older people, 55+ or usually 65+ just go right on in and take classes at a significant discount, or even for free.

        There's this little cadre of boomers on campus that has a great little time taking a bunch of free classes here, but they also don't really give a shit about anything and will just also badger student orgs or random classes they don't like the idea of. A couple of them have gotten banned from the student union building because they kept harassing minority student orgs. They're like fat, balding middle school bullies. My experience with them is mostly just having a couple of them sit in the back of my classroom and try and crack jokes. I swear to god, it's like something out of a sketch comedy show or something.

        • gaycomputeruser [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Shit sucks cause its really cool to be able to just go and learn without stress but I guess the only people with free time are jackasses that don't care that everyone that paid for the classes is really fuckin irritated by the dumbshit disruptive questions.

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
            ·
            3 years ago

            I mean, I generally teach and want to teach mostly grad-level courses for political science, public policy, and public administration students, primarily on political theory and connections and applications with economic theories, which isn't often super helpful for the average person, but I've had a couple of undergrad econ majors and even one person who wasn't enrolled in any classes take courses I taught, and all of them were super polite.