Really great article

Just kidding. It has to be one of the more condescending articles I've ever seen. What is really impressive is the comments section. It comes with such gems as:

"Just by way of example, my syllabus states that any student whose cell phone rings in class will receive an automatic F in the course ... and guess what?"

and

"I had the misfortune of teaching a weedout course that many students dreaded. So, there was a fair amount of misbehavior in it, and that led me to put a statement in my syllabus requiring appropriate behavior for a passing grade. This didn’t stop one student from being extremely disruptive in class, and openly hostile to any of my directions to the class. As a result, I gave her a D for her final grade".

These professors sound pretty nasty, brutish and small-minded. But I guess one must consider the environment in which they are raised. While I have never noticed any real "misbehavior" in class, I strongly suspect that that is a function of where I go to school, and that some of the kids I know from high school are up to their old shenanigans(wherever they are). On the other hand, if grades have to be used as an enforcement device, I suspect that the class is already a failure. If you can't stimulate students, grades are not really an effective way to do so. It's not just about manners, it's about social skills, on the part of the professor.