An American teacher was fired after students complained he was struggling

He was fired after an organic chemistry professor at NYU (New York University) signed a petition against him claiming his course was too difficult.

Dissatisfaction with Professor Maitland Jones Jr., 84, prompted 82 of his 350 organic chemistry students to sign a petition, blaming Jones’ teaching methods and course outline for his low grades.

“We are very concerned about our scores and find they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort devoted to this story,” the petition said, according to a report by The New York Times.

“We ask that you realize that a class with such a high percentage of dropouts and low grades fails to prioritize student learning and well-being, and this reflects poorly on the chemistry department and the entire institution.”

Among the charges against Jones were reducing the number of midterm exams from three to two; No additional loan offers; Difficulty accessing the Zoom platform for lectures for people with Covid-19; Jones will be a professor who has a tone that is “compromising and not demanding”.

Jones defended the allegations made by the petition, saying NYU reduced the number of exams because it scheduled its first exam after six classes.

In addition, the technology in the classroom where Jones taught prevented him from recording his writing on the whiteboard.

He said the problem with students began a decade ago, when he noticed a lack of attention span in 2007, a few years after he left Princeton to teach at NYU.

After virtual learning hours during the pandemic, this problem became even worse. “Now we’re seeing single-digit scores and even zeros,” he said.

Out of pocket lectures

In an effort to help students, Jones and two other professors recorded 52 lectures, which Jones says he paid R$26,000 out of his own pocket to publish. In 2020, about 30 out of 475 students signed a petition saying they needed extra help.

“They were really struggling,” Jones said. “They don’t have good internet coverage at home.”

Zachariah Bensliman, a Harvard doctoral student and former teaching assistant to Jones, emailed NYU in his defense.

“I think this petition was written more out of unhappiness over test scores than a genuine feeling of being treated unfairly,” he wrote. ‘I realized that many of the students who were always complaining about the class didn’t use the resources we gave them’.

Other professors at the university may face the same response from faculty, Jones said. “I don’t want my job back,” he said. “I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”