bironic

I tried to talk with my professor about it but he wasn't in the least sympathetic. If only I'd had Rauch's work on hand to understand what was going on and arm myself with the vocabulary to challenge my professor's methods at that office hours visit. (I still imagine from time to time how that talk would have gone, and think he would have countered with the argument that journalists need that sort of trait to survive in the profession.)

Yeah, I have to admit, I'm conflicted about that. I hate being called on out of the blue - and my being at a loss for words, like yours, isn't an indicator that I haven't been paying attention or don't understand, which a lot of teachers haven't realised. And I can't believe you were graded on your ability to insert your own opinions into a complete free-for-all discussion; that's incredibly unfair! That just seems to reward noise and aggression over ideas, eloquence, or even persuasiveness. It's like telling you your paper can only be graded once you've pushed your way through a line of yelling, shoving varsity athletes to hand it in.

But in a broader sense, do you think that it's ever a teacher's duty to train introverts to behave more like extroverts, if they know their students will be heading out into an extrovert-friendly world (and particularly an extrovert-friendly profession)? It seems kind of unfair either way: on the one hand, if you make participation mandatory and part of the grade, you're judging your students based on something that's not strictly an academic skill (because you're not judging them on their ability to articulate their ideas, the way an oral exam, a presentation, or a formal debate would; you're judging them on their ability to articulate those ideas quickly and aggressively in a social setting). On the other hand, if you don't force the introverts in your class to participate in more extroverted way, you risk leaving them unprepared if that kind of participation will be expected of them later (and it probably will). I still hate class discussion, especially free-for-all. It's never going to feel natural for me. But I might not be able to do it competently at all if several bastards of teachers hadn't made it a large percentage of my grade. :)

Incidentally, a friend of mine who was in a management program at school once told me that they were being trained to wait a certain number of seconds (down to an equation!) at a meeting after asking a question and before moving on so the introverts present would have sufficient chance to respond.

See, THAT makes a lot of sense, particularly as the company wants to get its money's worth out of the bright introverts it hired, so it's in the company's best interest to make sure those people are able to contribute.