Highly misleading

Peggy Venable's op-ed "It's not a priority at UT: Analysis indicates 20 percent of faculty handles 60 percent of class load" (Page B8, Sunday) does indeed illustrate the glaring need for more and more effective college instruction. Her essay is the best possible evidence that right-wing critics of higher education are in dire need of crash courses in basic logic and in how to understand statistical information. She cites a report by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity saying that 20 percent of UT faculty teach 57 percent of classroom hours and still generate 18 percent of research dollars. She writes, "… it is hard to imagine that the remaining 80 percent of the faculty could not both teach and conduct research."

This is a textbook example of what logicians call a "non sequitur" ("it does not follow"). This conclusion appears plausible only because of the misleading way that the statistical information has been presented. The teaching load she cites is in terms of semester credit hours. Semester credit hours for a given course are figured by multiplying the number of students in the course by the hours of credit toward a degree a student gains by taking the course. Thus, if there are 25 students in a course and the course is worth 3 hours of credit for each student, the total semester credit hours that the course generates is 75.

Large classes will therefore generate a higher number of semester credit hours than smaller courses. Someone who regularly teaches a large survey course will thus teach a much larger number of semester credit hours than one who teaches smaller courses. Yet a smaller course is often much more difficult to teach than a large one. Further, it often requires far more specialized and in-depth knowledge to teach a smaller and more specialized or advanced course. It is therefore highly misleading to judge teaching load purely in terms of semester credit hours. The best measure of faculty productivity is not the number of warm bodies in classroom seats. The same sort of error is involved in judging research productivity in dollar terms. Some advanced research requires large monetary support. Particle physics, for instance, just cannot be done without extremely expensive equipment. On the other hand, advanced research in, say, French literature or Latin American history just does not require such massive monetary support.

Therefore, to equate grant dollars generated with research productivity, as Venable does, is also highly misleading. The basic error of Venable and like-minded critics is to judge higher education on the basis of a "business model," which equates students to customers and professors to assembly-line workers. But producing knowledge is not like producing widgets. Trying to make public higher education conform to a free-market fantasy will simply kill it, which may in fact be what the far-right critics really want.

- Keith M. Parsons,
Friendswood

Relationships

Regarding "The goal is proficiency: Professors should provide students with a quality education they can use" (Page B8, Sunday), as an elementary public school teacher facing the possibility of an overcrowded classroom in August, I have to say that although Kristen Brustad was writing about teaching at the college level, her thoughts were applicable to all educators. She writes, "What seems to be efficient in terms of the number of students in the classroom turns out to be less efficient in terms of skills taught."

As an elementary teacher, it is imperative that I form a relationship with each student that I teach. This relationship forms a trust on the student's part that allows him/her to be open to what I am teaching. It helps me to know the student's strengths and needs. Overcrowded classrooms are not conducive to this type of relationship building/teaching/learning experience.

I, along with every other good teacher in the state of Texas, will make this work because children deserve the best that we can give them. But it will not be the same as the 22:1 ratio that has benefited us in so many ways in recent years.

- Meg Sheridan,
Pearland

Texting ban not needed

Regarding “Thmbs dwn” (Page B11, Tuesday), in admonishing Gov. Perry’s veto of the law that would ban texting while driving, the Chronicle seems to forget a basic, simple fact about auto safety: reckless driving is already illegal, regardless of the distraction.

Counter to the claim of the editorial, vetoing a bill that specifically outlaws texting while driving isn’t tantamount to saying that a right to texting while driving somehow trumps human life. Damage to property, injury or death is no less palatable if caused by a driver texting than if the driver is adjusting the radio, lighting a cigarette or falling asleep. Reckless driving is reckless driving. We don’t need new laws to — as Perry called it — micromanage Texas drivers.

— Dave Smith,
Houston

Making sense of Libya

Regarding “Libya war could be straw that breaks the U.S.’s back” (Page B7, Wednesday), Jonah Goldberg says Libya is not an important country. What makes a country important? Libya is the fourth-largest nation in Africa. And it is one of the most significant oil-exporting nations in the region.

While I like the fact that Goldberg is taking both Republicans and Democrats to task for their hypocrisy, he understates the value of Libya to our national security. Anyone familiar with economic and military history knows that the petroleum supply has been the nation’s No. 1 foreign policy priority since the end of World War I. It almost doesn’t matter what is going on in Libya; if it destabilizes the country, the U.S. has a vested interest in the proceedings.

This would appear to be one of those rare cases in which the foreign policy priorities and the humanitarian priorities line up. The legalities will continue to be an issue long after the final bomb has been dropped, as was the case in Iraq. But that in itself doesn’t mean we aren’t doing the right thing now.

— Berry Muhl,
Houston

Dads and alienation

Your editorial “Dad’s Day Sadness” (Page B11, Sunday) deals primarily with fathers who presumably do not want to play a role in their children’s lives. What you are not mentioning is that there is a large and growing group of fathers who do indeed want to be an active father to their children but have been prevented from doing so by alienation of the children toward the father by the mother and not being believed by the system of courts, therapists, caseworkers, guardians ad litem, ad nauseum.

These are the fathers who truly have reason to be sad on Father’s Day.

— Merry Foxworth,
Spring