> Yeah, I've had teachers like that, who tell you that you're a "waste of life" and "what are you doing here?" and "you're dumb", so motivational.
I'm sure GP isn't calling them dum-dum to their face. If they can't even do basic stuff, which seems to be their criteria here for the name calling, maybe a politely given reality-check isn't that bad. Some will wake up to the gravity of their situation and put in the hard work and surprise their teacher.
> Yeah you can call them names, call them lazy or whatever, but that's kinda like pointing at poor people and saying they should invest more.
They _should_ invest more because in this case, the "investment' is something that the curriculum simply demands - dedication and effort. I mean unless one is a genius, since when that demand is unreasonable? You want to work with people who got their degree without knowing their shit? (not saying that everyone who doesn't have a degree isn't knowledgeable - I've worked with very smart self-taught people).
> I'm sure GP isn't calling them dum-dum to their face. If they can't even do basic stuff, which seems to be their criteria here for the name calling, maybe a politely given reality-check isn't that bad. Some will wake up to the gravity of their situation and put in the hard work and surprise their teacher.
I certainly am not out to hurt anyone. I have a great deal of sympathy for someone who spent 18 months learning absolutely nothing, hiding behind their study group, making the LLM do the work, and apathetic teachers on prior semesters who could have caught this behavior.
But I will be blunt with them and say: "You have a very limited time before your studies end, and you have so far not learned basic programming. This means you will not be able to use your certificate for anything."
And then I will send an email to them, the teacher they will have on the next semester, and the study councillor, and say that this person urgently needs a better group and extra help. And I'll personally follow up after some weeks to see if they're actually preparing for their re-exam in a constructive way.
It usually came this far because giving a poor student the lowest grade rather than failing them resolves the teacher of paperwork and re-exams, which means they might get a day off.
Being blunt is being kind.
When I was a student, my teachers basically didn't care; I may have not liked it then due to immaturity, but a blunt teacher would have been more beneficial to me than the apathetic ones I got.