A long time ago, at a law school far far away, a certain law professor (hint: he has an eponymous blog) objected to hiring a candidate for a faculty position on grounds that said candidate had gotten a "B" in law school in the course s/he now intended to teach. Others said that the candidate's PhD cleared the slate, which pissed off said professor even more, because he thinks the first requirement for being a law professor is having exemplary legal skills, and that the first indicia of good legal skills are an exemplary law school record and things like law review editorships, clerkships, and the like, not a degree "piled high and deep" from some other discipline. At this point, however, one of the powers that be at said law school took said professor to the wood shed and told him to shut up because he was hurting peoples' feelings. And so the professor went off into the sunset, grumbling inaudibly about slipping standards and what it was like back in his day and what he would do if he ever got stuck on the appointments committee again.
Even though that epsiode should have prepared him for more of this sort of thing, the professor was nevertheless stunned when he saw that the Harvard Law School Student Government is now celebrating the fact that lots of its professors got lousy grades in law school and some even got really lousy grades in the courses they now purport to profess. (HT: Caron)
As the professor understands the logic, Harvard students will be less anxious about grades if they know they're learning from people who got lousy grades. Setting aside the question of whether law students should be encouraged to not be anxious, the professor thinks the student government's effort might well backfire.
After all, if the professor found out that he was learning to fly from a guy who got a D- in Landing 101, he'd be pretty damned worried! But YMMV.
