"Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus" <schwa at cc.gatech.edu> replied my points:
	> An important problem is that tertiary-level lecturers are not trained
	
	I'm not sure what you mean by tertiary-level lecturers.  The two
	lecturers I have in mind taught mid- and upper-level CS classes, and
	were both tenured professors.
	
"Tertiary" means "after primary and secondary".  That is, Community Colleges,
Polytechnics, Universities, TAFEs, any kind of institutional formal
education you get after school, really.

	Of course, that's not to say that they had any training about how to
	educate.  Most CS professors probably don't.
	
No.  Most lecturers (in this country, "professor" is a very advanced
job description indeed, professors don't actually get to talk to God,
but they do get to talk with His representative on earth, the
Vice-Chancellor) in *all* subjects don't.  CS, EE, physics, chemistry,
you name it.  Oh, many tertiary institutes have an education department or
something that runs several 2-hour sessions on this topic and that, and
some of them are very helpful (like dealing with students from another
culture, or how to use some courseware system, or whatever), but it's
like giving a starving man a jelly-baby.  One exception is music: a
colleague here who has been a professional musician keeps on about how
musicians have a much better idea how to go about teaching, and he informs
me that it is possible to actually obtain a PhD in music teaching (AND be
a really good music teacher afterwards).

	I appreciate your point that aggression will be met with
	defensiveness, and will be counter-productive in cases where the
	lecturer wants to improve.  However, in those cases where the lecturer
	does not care, I reserve the right to take pleasure in my petulance,
	since I've been denied the opportunity to take pleasure in what I
	learn from the professor.
	
Fair enough.  To be honest, I've come across one tenured lecturer who
I would not have enjoyed studying under, but thankfully, that was not in
this country.  This University, and many others, have a system of class
representatives, and regular consultative meetings between the head of
department (and selected others) and class representatives.  If one
student is unhappy, chances are others are too.  Inform the class
representative, and they can pass it on, and then the department will find
out that there is a problem.  Even if a lecturer is tenured, the head of
department can still talk to them about unsatisfactory behaviour, and
while the job can't be taken away there _are_ boring jobs they can be
"promoted" to, and they can certainly be put onto other papers where they
will do less harm.