On Dec. 8th, the Daily Universe printed an article describing how students would like to see teacher evaluations. In it, Dacie Fowler was quoted as saying “You can’t walk into any business and demand to see employee profiles before dealing with them.” May I suggest that teacher evaluations are not the same as employee profiles. They contain nothing that the students would not tell their friends if asked. How do you choose any company to do business with? Don’t you ask your friends for feedback? Would you choose an auto mechanic without asking your more experienced friends who they recommend? Would you live in an apartment without talking to people who had lived there? Giving students access to teacher evaluations would simply widen the pool of friends whose opinions you could solicit.
As a student, I have often wished I had more information about my classes when I signed up for them. I particularly would have liked to see a copy of each syllabus in advance. That way, I could have chosen my classes based on my strengths rather than relying on blind luck. I would have liked to know what the professors based their grades on so I could focus on learning to the exclusion of time-consuming and irrelevent busywork.
Jonathan Johnson
Dunkirk, MD
