Hemant has a scary post about a student threatening to sue a school because she was doing poorly in philosophy. Specifically, she alleged she was going to be given a bad grade just for believing in God. This is a good opportunity to expand on my introductory philosophy lecture, which, since I was trying to actually imagine myself teaching a class, included my thoughts on how a philosophy class should be run.

The key comment from the professor:

At no time did I tell her she was in danger of failing. When I had to project a grade for her earlier in the semester, I projected a ‘C’ and that was when she was most resistant to providing any reasoning to support her assertions.

You see, in philosophy, very little is settled. This means you can’t grade on correctness. But you need something to grade on, so you grade on the ability of people to back up their claims.

Thus, a student unable to back up their assertions is going to fail. Period. That’s not a matter of having a different position from the teacher’s on anything. It’s a matter of developing a skill. Even a fideist can be expected to explain why they find fault with the arguments of rationalistically-inclined theists, and fend off criticisms of fideism.

Broader point: it seems like professors having to worry about offending delicate religious sensibilities is becoming a problem on college campuses, as evidenced by this NYT article by professor Mark Taylor.