Let us be fair to the authors: the methodology does not claim that the sum of points represents a professor's human worth, and it legitimately proposes a mechanism for feedback and development. The difficulty arises when indicators are aggregated into rankings with professional consequences. We must then ask what the result represents: the quality of an educator, the overall contribution to the institution, or scientific prestige.

At least three dimensions must be distinguished: the value of teaching and education, the fulfilment of institutional duties, and contributions to the professional or wider community. At university there is also research, with purposes of its own. All are legitimate, but they are not alike. A good administrator does not thereby become a good educator; a highly cited researcher does not automatically acquire a gift for teaching.

The specific purpose of evaluation matters too. Improving teaching requires a pedagogical diagnosis. Promotion requires standards appropriate to the position. Assigning administrative responsibilities calls for other abilities. A single ranking meant to answer all these questions would require a justification that no formula could replace.

There is another tension: the university as an institution is concerned with revenue, visibility, accreditation, and efficient operation. Society also needs people capable of independent judgment, not merely graduates or easily counted outputs. These aims are not incompatible, but neither do they always coincide. A methodology reveals the hierarchy that the institution chooses among them.

Pay, professional authority, and social esteem are different things. A teacher's work often bears fruit long afterward; its effects are difficult to attribute to one person and cannot be reduced to an economic outcome. Your historical interpretation needs qualification: communism did not eliminate every intellectual hierarchy, just as a market economy does not inevitably imply contempt for education. But both can make teachers answer to criteria external to educating students: conformity in one case, profitability and measurable performance in the other.

An institution that neglects recruitment, preparation, and support risks shifting all responsibility for the system's shortcomings onto teachers. Even so, inadequate initial selection does not render later evaluation pointless: today's students have a right to competent teachers. The question is whether evaluation aims to improve teaching or merely to name culprits. For the future, files and scores must be complemented by an assessment of actual teaching. A vocation can also develop where an institution provides examples, mentoring, and intellectual freedom.

Respect for teachers does not mean tolerating injustice or incompetence. Parents may challenge an abuse, but challenging abuse is not the same as denying professional authority. And time spent reading and reflecting is not a privilege unrelated to work: preparing a course requires selection, organization, and a continual reinterpretation of the discipline.

There is a paradox: in the name of teaching quality, administrative reporting can consume the very time on which quality depends. Reading an essential book or rethinking a course does not always leave an easily countable trace; a completed form does. Teachers need not only rest but time to think. In Recalcati's terms, how can they remain witnesses to their own love of knowledge if they have no time to cultivate it?

We must establish whether the methodology actually provides for publishing results; we cannot assume it. But even without publication the essential question remains: what do the indicators rank — the discharge of duties, performance in a particular field, or a teacher's overall worth? Society needs teachers who are accountable for their work, but also respected teachers able to exercise independent intellectual judgment. These requirements must be reconciled.

The phrase “transmission of knowledge” simplifies a more complex process. We can convey information, statements, examples, and demonstrations. Understanding, however, does not pass fully formed from one mind into another. The learner must interpret, connect new information with what is already known, and become able to use it. The teacher creates and organizes the conditions for this activity but cannot understand on the student's behalf.

We should therefore distinguish teaching from learning. A flawlessly delivered lesson does not guarantee that everyone has learned; nor does the absence of a masterly explanation rule out independent learning.

Learning outcomes are indispensable, but they cannot be attributed entirely to the teacher. Each student's prior preparation, motivation, and effort matter. We should examine both the quality of the learning opportunities provided and the progress achieved by those who use them, without confusing the two.

The teacher selects, orders, explains, and connects knowledge. He can distinguish a detail worth remembering from a concept that reorganizes our understanding of an entire field. He can identify a difficulty and change his explanation. Above all, he can reveal the significance of an idea: why is it worth knowing?

But the teacher cannot decide alone what will have the deepest effect on each student. The cognitive weight he attributes to an idea does not guarantee that the student will perceive it in the same way.

As he appears in Plato's dialogues, Socrates rejects the simple image of a teacher who possesses a doctrine and delivers it to disciples. In the Apology, his questions unsettle those convinced they know; confronting their own ignorance begins an examination of the self. In the Meno, his geometrical exchange with a young slave first leads the boy into perplexity and then guides him through a line of reasoning. In the Theaetetus, the comparison with a midwife suggests that the interlocutor should be helped to formulate and test ideas, not merely state them.

Of course, these dialogues do not amount to a complete textbook of pedagogy. The episode in the Meno also belongs to Plato's theory of recollection, which should not be confused with a modern psychological account of learning. Children must learn to read, to calculate, and many other things they cannot rediscover on their own. But Socrates reminds us that knowing is more than repeating a correct answer.

Recalcati places the love of knowing and the desire for knowledge at the heart of teaching. His “erotics” of teaching does not refer to personal seduction in the ordinary sense, but to the desire to know more as a driving force of intellectual life. Knowledge is not an object to be possessed once and for all: the path toward it is sustained by a sense of what is still missing, by curiosity, and by questions that remain open. A good teacher is neither a bureaucrat of instruction nor a machine for transferring data: by making a subject come alive, the teacher can turn it into something the student wants to discover.

From this perspective, a lesson may become an intellectual event in a student's life. Its theoretical content may fade with time, while the teacher's distinctive style endures in memory: the living example of a love for the subject being taught. Yet a teacher's desire to know cannot simply be passed on to a student. A teacher can open a door but cannot force the student through it. The fascination a teacher may inspire depends on the encounter between teacher and student; it is not the guaranteed outcome of a technique. Nor does a moving lesson release the teacher from the obligation to explain well.

In this sense, the teacher is a witness to a personal passion: love of knowledge is not delivered like a definition, but made visible in the way one searches, argues, doubts, and reconsiders an idea. High expectations may give a student the courage to think independently, provided they do not turn into humiliation. Style does not replace rigor; it can bring rigor to life.

An admired teacher may remain an inner point of reference long after one's studies end. We remember not only what was explained, but how the teacher reasoned, acknowledged error, or approached the unknown. Such exemplary influence adds to cognitive and formative influence.

Admiration also carries a risk: an overpowering model may produce imitation and conformity. Ideally, a disciple preserves the teacher's example without surrendering personal independence.

Foiaș fascinated you precisely because he made the process of mathematical exploration visible. But we should not confuse the memory of an already intellectually mature student with an assessment of the whole course. What happened to students who needed continuity and predictability? A teacher's authenticity does not exempt an institution from checking whether most students could learn through that approach.

Șabac provided a rigorously structured exposition; Foiaș revealed the freedom of exploration. These are two possible formative experiences. Yet the two memories do not prove that every improvisation, or every impeccably organized presentation, is good. They merely warn us against imposing one teaching style on everyone.

Memory is not an evaluation register preserved unchanged. An adult reinterprets high standards, encouragement, organization, or spontaneity in light of subsequent experience. Sometimes one discovers the value of a subject once considered useless; at other times one realizes that what seemed like authority was actually intimidation. A vivid memory is an important biographical fact, but by itself it does not prove teaching effectiveness for an entire graduating class.

Collective memory can be selective too. A professor admired by the best-prepared students may have been hard to follow for those needing more support. A less spectacular professor may have left lasting working habits. Charisma is a real experience, without necessarily producing a universal effect.

These three memories illustrate three distances between first impressions and lasting effects: an teacher underestimated at the time can prepare a pupil thoroughly; confidence gained at a critical moment may influence a choice; and a method can outlive the content for which it was used. None of these influences can simply be inferred from popularity, marks, or a pupil's agreement with the teacher's ideas. They are personal testimonies, not measurements of an entire teaching career. That is precisely why they can complement, but not replace, evaluation at the time.

They also bring us back to Recalcati. Learning a method is valuable, but the highest stake of an encounter with a teacher remains the birth of a love of knowledge, the desiderio di sapere of which Recalcati speaks — the desire to know that persists after the lesson ends. Regaining confidence in mathematics and finding pleasure in ordering ideas may be the beginnings of such a relationship with study. We cannot reduce them to points, but neither can we assume that every student experienced them alike.

It is important to distinguish what was formative from what was humiliating or arbitrary. Later gratitude does not justify every pedagogical method. But it shows how incomplete an evaluation made immediately after a course can be: the teacher is judged at one moment, while the consequences of the encounter may unfold over a lifetime.

Yet there is also the opposite experience, which nostalgia may conceal: a teacher who humiliates, labels, or discourages students may leave lasting wounds. That one former pupil eventually appreciates demanding teaching does not prove that every classmate benefited. A teacher's long-term influence is not necessarily beneficial; we must also listen to those whose memories are unhappy.

Not necessarily. A teacher's influence and an idealized image of that person are different things. What a pupil learned, or the courage acquired, may remain real even if a late meeting forces a revision of admiration. Conversely, a grateful former student returning is not automatic proof of the quality of an entire teaching career. A reunion can be valuable testimony, not a verdict.

Here is another asymmetry in evaluation: the most important result may only become visible decades after a course, when no administrative form records it any longer. Testimonies from former students can therefore enrich our judgment of long-term influence, but we must consider who responds, the passage of time, and the contribution of other teachers, family, and life experiences.

Charisma can awaken interest, but it can also foster conformity. Popularity may reward an accessible course or lenient examinations without proving depth of learning. We can investigate formative influence through testimonies and documented examples. A teacher may also be appreciated through what former pupils become, but is not the sole author of their destinies.

The distinction is essential. A valuable article does not automatically make up for a poor lecture, just as an exceptional lecture is not, in itself, a scientific discovery. Universities need both functions, but they must first be judged separately. A single score can conceal radically different professional profiles.

There is nevertheless a link: a professor must know the field deeply, as a specialist does, and keep abreast of developments. Such intellectual currency cannot be equated with a researcher's publication output. Research can enrich teaching, but the number of articles is not a direct measure of teaching quality.

We should distinguish research that produces original knowledge from the formative experience of investigating a problem. Identifying a question, studying existing solutions, comparing alternatives, and checking a result can shape an engineer who will never publish an article. The value of a university exercise is not limited to its immediate professional application.

Each module provides two hours of presentation and two of laboratory work. The seven modules address understanding generative AI, formulating and checking prompts, bibliographic research, data analysis, designing teaching and assessment, agent-based workflows, and responsible use of AI in education. Professors would compare tools and work on materials from their own disciplines.

The proposal has practical potential. But its value should be judged by the competencies actually acquired and relevant changes in teaching, not mere attendance over 28 hours.

This is the difference between competence and administrative evidence of participation in training. If the aim is to develop competencies, there should be meaningful assessment and a way to recognize competencies already demonstrated. If the aim is merely to complete a course, the certificate becomes another indicator of compliance.

The conditions for passing the course, its applicability to different kinds of promotion, and the treatment of procedures already underway also need clarification. The 28-hour plan alone does not settle these questions. In the documents received, the requirement appears in a covering message, not in an independently verified final regulation.

Only if we reduce teaching to the transmission of information. Access to explanations online does not guarantee understanding, just as repeating a correct answer does not prove independent judgment. A good teacher helps students identify important problems, recognize the limits of an argument, and connect concepts. AI can support these activities and may sometimes explain something more clearly than a teacher. But educating a person also calls for a responsible human relationship sustained over time, not merely an exchange of questions and answers.

It is. A dialogue with AI can sustain curiosity and elicit fruitful objections. But stimulating thought through answers is not identical to bearing witness, in Recalcati's sense, to one's own love for a discipline. Through style and experience, a teacher shows how one lives through the difficulty of a proof, the uncertainty of a hypothesis, and the joy of discovery. AI can reproduce certain forms of dialogue, but generating convincing explanations should not be confused with the lived experience of someone who has devoted a life to a discipline.

AI can support learning by testing hypotheses, identifying errors, and offering further explanations. But it can also impoverish learning when it replaces intellectual effort that the student needs to undertake. Teachers will have to decide which difficulties must be faced without automated help, which results students must justify themselves, and how genuine understanding can be assessed. Not every difficulty is an obstacle to be removed; some are what develops the ability to think.

A teacher's authority can no longer rest simply on knowing more answers. It must rest on competence, discernment, responsibility, and the ability to guide learning. Socrates reminds us of the power of questioning; Recalcati, of the power of the desire to know. Technology changes how we learn, but it does not abolish the need for judgment or for finding a personal meaning in knowledge.

Experience at the lectern gives the question another weight. Evaluation is necessary to identify shortcomings, recognize merit, and ensure institutional accountability. But an administrative instrument cannot claim to express, through a single number, a professor's entire intellectual and human worth. The judgment must consider both what can be documented now and, modestly, the possibility that some effects will only become visible much later.

Indicators provide partial evidence: the number of pages does not reveal the originality of a book, and uploading materials to Moodle does not prove that students have understood them. Yet indicators are not useless: they document activities and can make evaluation more transparent than the impressions of university committees.

The problem arises when relative position becomes a sign of inadequacy. Even if all teachers received excellent evaluations, if they were required to be divided into four roughly equal groups, about a quarter would still end up in CS4. Imagine a community of a hundred professors who all receive good or very similar assessments: the bottom twenty-five are not thereby significantly worse teachers. Conversely, being in the top quarter of a group does not, by itself, guarantee a satisfactory standard of teaching.

A relative ranking answers “How does this teacher compare with others?”, not “Does this teacher meet the standards of good teaching?” To identify deficiencies warranting intervention, the results should be compared with explicit quality benchmarks and examined in context. Otherwise, we risk treating the bottom quarter of a ranking as a category of professional inadequacy. Moreover, rewards based on points may unintentionally direct effort toward activities that earn more under the scoring grid, not necessarily teaching activities.

These are separate questions. A research score does not, in itself, determine a position in the quartiles based on student evaluations. But a relative ranking can create a misleading impression if interpreted as a verdict on teaching quality. No ranking should replace a reasoned examination of actual teaching.

More generally, we can examine command of the subject, clarity of explanations, and pupils' progress. Yet qualitative judgment is not infallible. The experience of committees in earlier decades, including under communism, reminds us how much depended on circumstances, personal relationships, and the competence of evaluators. We need explicit criteria, evidence, a right of appeal, and above all impartial committees composed of competent people.

We should also distinguish evaluating a course from evaluating its teacher. Students may value a subject but struggle with how it is taught; conversely, they may admire a teacher's clarity and availability without acquiring the expected knowledge. Neither immediate satisfaction nor exam results tell the whole story on their own.

Mathematically, numbers can be added. But that operation does not automatically acquire evaluative meaning. The institution must explain why heterogeneous results have been converted to a common scale, why particular weights were chosen, and, above all, why one activity is allowed to compensate for another.

A multicriteria model can be useful for a well-defined administrative decision. Yet it does not become a natural measure of a professor's worth. Its coefficients embody institutional choices that may be open to challenge.

It may tell us that their contributions are equivalent under the chosen rule, not that the professors are equivalent. Legitimate multicriteria methods exist for aggregating heterogeneous results, but they entail explicit choices about weights and about compensating for weaknesses with achievements in other categories. Some requirements, such as minimum teaching competence and integrity, should remain non-compensable.

A practical alternative might have four distinct dimensions, presented together at each evaluation:

• Teaching and education: observation of a sample of activities by trained colleagues; review of materials and assessments; student questionnaires interpreted in light of the subject and response rate; evidence of progress; and a compulsory minimum standard.
• Research: expert examination of significant contributions and their originality, with bibliometric indicators used as supporting information.
• Institutional and community responsibilities: a record of tasks performed, an assessment of their quality, and recognition of service to colleagues, separately from pedagogical value.
• Reasoned synthesis: a profile of strengths and weaknesses, discussed with the professor and open to appeal; a global index, if any, only for a precisely defined decision, not as a universal label.

Interviews with former students could periodically offer clues about long-term influence, without attributing their whole professional development to one professor. They should not be restricted to successful graduates or those who keep in touch with the university; different experiences, including less favorable ones, should also be sought. The useful question is not merely “Did you like the professor?” but “What way of thinking or working did you retain from that professor, and how did your understanding of the influence change over time?”

It is easier and sometimes more reproducible. But convenience does not establish validity. Peer review can become arbitrary if it is not documented; numerical evaluation can become arbitrary if the weights lack justification. The answer is not to choose between people and numbers, but to require evidence, explanations, and scrutiny for every judgment.

We ask a teacher to know the subject deeply, make ideas intelligible, be honest in the face of truth, and foster the learner's intellectual autonomy. In fortunate circumstances, a teacher can also awaken a passion that outlives the lesson and becomes a landmark of an intellectual life.

We cannot produce valuable teachers merely by evaluating them more rigorously. We must make teaching attractive to capable people, select them thoughtfully, and give them the time and intellectual freedom to go on learning themselves.

We cannot measure all of this precisely, nor should we abandon evaluation. We must acknowledge the limits of indicators and give reasoned professional judgment its proper place. A form may serve university administration; it must not be confused with the definition of a teacher.