First off, as somebody who actually teaches, the whole, 'anonymous grading,' thing might be fine for law school (though methinks they damn sure don't do that at, say, Harvard), but it's absurd for undergrads and wouldn't make any sense for grad students. A prof who's any good WANTS to respond to individuals--and our society is anonymous enough as it is.
I also have to say that while I certainly understand that there are bad profs--hell, from time to time I screw up and I AM one--the thing to do is not some ******** legislation of everything in the classroom. That's just a repressive fantasy of scientific teaching (you can TRAIN people scientifically, but you can't TEACH them that way), and--as the earlier portions of this thread point out--right-wing repression.
Then there are two other questions: a) what's up with students, and b) what's up with class society.
As a student in college and grad school, I argued all the time. Mostly, I was rewarded for it--and ya know what? part of my education was in learning how to cope with jerks who knew things I wanted to know. It never occurred to me to start yakking about this professor's manners or that professor's manners (a little late, it dawned on me that I'd had a couple of profs who treated women students badly, but that's a different issue), because I had the wacky idea that they knew things I didn't, and I was there to shaddup sometimes and learn what they knew. Kinda like in martial arts.
Speaking of martial arts, here's something I learned: much of the yakking, the questioning, the complaining, the fantasizing about teachers comes straight out of the student's unconscious. Part of you doesn't WANT to learn, because that means changing, and it will seize on any defense mechanism it can to stay the same as it is. When you yak, when you obsess on the teacher's personality (about which you really don't know all that much), you are protecting yourself from learning. You are very likely fantasizing.
And when you're not, when there's a real problem, stand up and go talk to the guy privately. Or make a complaint if necessary.
Mostly, though--as in martial arts--shut the hell up and do the work. The teacher knows more than you do, or you need to find another school or at least another teacher. And it's not the worst thing in the world--provided that the teacher knows their subject really well--if from time to time, you find yourself as a student stuck with just shutting up and taking notes like crazy.
As a corrective to this, see Roland Barthes, "Writers, Intellectuals, teachers."
The second point has to do with political repression in class society. Guess what? it isn't the upper class schools where students fuss themselves like this with their teachers. There, it's the same old thing: learn to deal with it, as you're going to have to learn to deal with reality. And go out to some cool place, have a beer or three, and ***** about the man's inadequate handling of, say, macroeconomic theory.
Most of this pc, "the student is as wise as the teacher," crap hits the community colleges and the state schools. I wouldn't mind if it were genuinely coming out of, say, feminist critiques of the classroom--but it's not. It's just another way of crippling students who don't have a lot of money, of giving them a lesser education under the guise of helping them.
And above all, give up the idea that every bonehead who thumps the Bible, the Koran or whatever knows as much about science and nature as an actual biologist. Give up the fantasy that every twit who's read the Cliff Notes, looked at the "Classics Illustrated," comic, and skimmed the first chaper of, "Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale," has as much to say about Herman Melville as somebody who's been stupid enough to devote, say, 10-15 years to studying American lit and another 10-15 to writing, teaching and getting tenured.
This is the student's fantasy, as much as it is the teacher's problem. Now if you want a discussion of all the things that ARE really wrong with the teaching profession, I'm your guy.
