This would make sense as a counter argument if his students who took Math 1A from him didn't also do better on other math courses than students who took Math 1A from other professors.
There are often very big challenges in the freshman courses. The case I'm most familiar with is the calculus courses (in undergrad I was an engineering and mathematics dual major so I had to figure out how to splice in the coursework and petition to get some courses substituted for others etc).
There is a lot of pressure on the non-majors course to deemphasize the mechanics of calculation and move toward theory and reliance on Mathematica for mechanics (I think this battle has been lost, it was raging in the mid-to-late 90's)--this suits the sciences well and students are happy because they don't have to grind hard. The majors course is more rigorous but needs to be focused on the Mathematics curriculum arc and emphasizes more abstract applications and theorems. This is great except it's challenging and honestly distracting to many freshman engineers who need calculus as a tool quickly for their other courses.
Anyway, the college of engineering was always trying to figure out how to get their freshmen through a rigorous enough calculus so that they weren't having to shadow teach calculus in their other courses. One big option that was always in the air was for engineering to give up and teach it's own mathematics. Of course, the mathematics department fights like crazy to prevent (obviously because mathematics revenue is very teaching dependent, whereas engineering is well funded by grants and industry). Anyway, it's not easy to get the balance correct (nobody was ever happy with the results).
I very much doubt any single professor has enough experience to understand all the compromises these freshman courses must satisfy. It's great to make students happy, but it really puts a drag in upper level teaching if the foundations aren't right.
You still didn't refute that his students are doing better in their later classes. If your complaint is lack of foundation what is causing his students to do better?
_Which_ later classes though? If you disaggregate an engineering set of them might they be doing worse masked by the softballs the majority are taking?
There is a lot of pressure on the non-majors course to deemphasize the mechanics of calculation and move toward theory and reliance on Mathematica for mechanics (I think this battle has been lost, it was raging in the mid-to-late 90's)--this suits the sciences well and students are happy because they don't have to grind hard. The majors course is more rigorous but needs to be focused on the Mathematics curriculum arc and emphasizes more abstract applications and theorems. This is great except it's challenging and honestly distracting to many freshman engineers who need calculus as a tool quickly for their other courses.
Anyway, the college of engineering was always trying to figure out how to get their freshmen through a rigorous enough calculus so that they weren't having to shadow teach calculus in their other courses. One big option that was always in the air was for engineering to give up and teach it's own mathematics. Of course, the mathematics department fights like crazy to prevent (obviously because mathematics revenue is very teaching dependent, whereas engineering is well funded by grants and industry). Anyway, it's not easy to get the balance correct (nobody was ever happy with the results).
I very much doubt any single professor has enough experience to understand all the compromises these freshman courses must satisfy. It's great to make students happy, but it really puts a drag in upper level teaching if the foundations aren't right.