Classroom Jokes

Sometimes a professor thinks he is Funny. Often times this fantasy is reinforced by his adoring students. At one school a professor really is a comedian.

Welcome to Northwestern's sociology course "Social Problem Norms and Deviance", starring Bernard Beck, comedian extrodinaire, as the professor.

Beck also plays the lead role in a Chicago comedy, "E/R", which inspired the television sitcom with Eliot Gould of the same name.

"Am I in the right room?" Beck asked his silent 200 students when no one would define feudalism. Quickly he followed with another query, "What is unemployment?" One timid student replied, "Not having a job," and was backed up by others in the room. "Oh great, we've got a group of backup singers over here," Beck quipped.

There is a point to Becks teaching style. "I've tried to minimize all things that stand between teacher and student," he says. Veterans of the course assert this means Gut. "I could have missed class every day and still have done the work," a student wrote in Northwestern's version of the CUE guide.