Patronising teacher

 We had our first class in Physiology today. I have had many years of university or university level in Sweden, and never been as patronized by a teacher as today, and by the same teacher during Induction Week. Very strange. The students were repeatedly and in a light tone berated to remember to come on time, remember to study, realize that this was a very difficult course that would demand 300 hours of study at home (unspecified how this precise number could be set, but we were told that this was for those with previous good skills in the subject, for the rest, it would be more). If we didn´t have a diary she didn´t understand how we could cope; another member of staff was referred to ”as a character”, please don´t do this particular mistake and e-mail me, I don´t have time to read e-mails on this subject (and you couldn´t explain that in a nicer way, or maybe mention that you´re actually being paid to do your job?), the course itself was denigrated - ”the pass rate is 40%, which, let´s face it, is very low” etc etc. The tone was mostly patronizing, mixed with joking tones that did nothing to change the original message. This then proceeded to include a lot of jokingly patronising stabs at men by the female teacher during the (little) time we spent on physiology itself, all throughout the lecture. The topic used for illustration was sex, and was started with joking questions if we knew how it worked when children were made.

Maybe it´s a different culture here in England. In Sweden, from what I have seen, a female lecturer at university would have been reprimanded for the jokes and tone today, and told not to repeat it. If a male one had used the same jokes about women, he would most likely have been fired. The university is a former polytechnic (teknisk högskola) – maybe this behaviour doesn´t exist in lectures at Oxford or Cambridge here in England either. Very strange it is, though.

After all that patronising, the students were then given candy to eat to cement a joyous attitude towards learning. These turned out to be for placing us in tutorial groups too, but I didn´t take one, and several students around were I sat were similarly baffled and angry about the tone towards us. It had been there before, both from this teacher and from one other, and in the occasional remarks from others, so maybe this is a tolerated culture at this former polytechnic and Chinese medicine course in London to treat students as small children. From an outsider´s viewpoint, used to universities in Sweden, the tone has been astounding. The course I am in, and the courses joining with ours, are more typical to find slightly older students in: it´s not a crowd of nineteen-year olds. Average age today was probably 25. And when I was 19 and studied at university in Sweden, no-one ever used that tone with us. Very strange indeed.

Oh well. There are some courteous teachers on the course too. I guess it´s better to focus on them.