Dan, Harold, Perhaps for those of us not in academia, these stories of getting fired or in "very hot water" for teaching seemingly innocent topics appear to be exaggerated and/or missing critical facts. Otherwise, on the surface, there seems to be no reasonable cause. But you've got me curious! Since there is clearly other interest in this thread, could you give a little bit more detail on how someone might get in trouble for such seemingly innocent transgressions. For example, Dan, you did a nice job of attacking the credibility of this one colleague, but didn't say what his specific objection was to teaching limits in calculus or how that got you in hot water. Sorry, but I fail to see how anyone could object to what you did. Nick Dan Asimov wrote:
Harold writes:
<< I once got into very hot water (fired, in fact) for showing a similar derivation to a *college* trig class.
I once got into very hot water for teaching my college calculus students the definition of a limit (limit as x -> c of f(x)) in my supposedly autonomous class. At least with one influential colleague -- a prof who had successfully kept Complex Variables from being a required course for an undergrad math major, on the stated grounds that they had earned a Ph.D. without ever taking such a course.
Oh, yeah -- a few months later this very same math dept. was (re-)accredited by the Western States Accreditation Commission, who managed this task without ever once visiting the math dept. or interviewing even one student.
--Dan
_____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele
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