We Hates the Snowflakeses! We Hates Them Forever!

[Nullifidian]

So I'm taking a British Literature class, 800-1800 CE. It has been going on for the past seven or eight weeks. Part of the class consists of an oral report, either given individually or in a small group of no more than three people. The basic requirements for the oral report entail that we deal with a given work or author from the British Isles during the period covered in this semester. The professor would prefer it if we covered material not otherwise covered in class.

That should be simple enough for even the dimmest student, right?

So why is it that today I read a post by a student who floated Dante Aligheri as his preferred topic when the entire class revolves around BRITISH AUTHORS?! :hairpull:

Even worse than the fact that he's apparently been sitting in the wrong class this entire semester without realizing it was his response to being told he couldn't do the proposed topic. He then tried to hit up the professor for suggestions because he had no idea who he could possibly do a report on except for Dante!

Hello? McFly? There is a miraculous invention known as the "literary anthology". You may be familiar with this, because it's THE THING ASSIGNED FOR THE FUCKING CLASS. Since we're not reading everything in this 2000+ page anthology, you can cross-check the assigned readings on the syllabus with the table of contents and use that as an idea for appropriate writers or works to cover for your oral report. Or you could go look up other anthologies. Or you could use the category pages at Wikipedia for something like 16th or 17th or 18th century British authors. You have a vast amount of resources at your disposal without bugging the professor and, implicitly, everybody else on your class' Blackboard page with your demands because you're too stupid to figure out which fucking class you're in.

Is it just my imagination, or do today's students education consumers and precious little snowflakes demand much more hand-holding than they did as little as ten years ago?

[erimir]

I think, just to troll the rest of the class, he should suggest JK Rowling next.

[Deadlokd]

Nigella Lawson.

[Kael]

I totally get being in the wrong place on the first day, or even in the first week or so. I get not getting a memo about classroom location changes, that's happened to me. But just how the hell do you go to the wrong class for a whole half a semester? Doesn't it clue in at some point? Like, "hey, this British Lit class sure is talking an awful lot about Italians..."

How does that happen?

[JoeP]

I think, just to troll the rest of the class, he should suggest JK Rowling next.

Nigella Lawson.

mickthinks.

[curses]

I think we should throw them in the fire pits with the kids that text all the way through class.

[The Lone Ranger]

Is it just my imagination, or do today's students education consumers and precious little snowflakes demand much more hand-holding than they did as little as ten years ago?

It's not universally true, of course, but many people have argued that, on average, this is indeed the case. For instance, in his very interesting book Generation X Goes to College, Peter Sacks argues that the rise of the consumerist attitude is mostly to blame. His claim is that students nowadays are inclined to think of themselves as consumers, and the teachers as employees. Accordingly, all too many students are inclined to think that the responsibility for their education lies entirely on their teachers' shoulders, not theirs.

That is, far too many students are inclined to think that if they (or their parents) have paid their tuition, they've done everything they need to in terms of their education, and that it's the teachers' responsibility to (somehow) educate them. So they don't need to study, attend class regularly, or otherwise work for their education -- because, after all, they've paid for a product, and they expect their teachers to deliver.

While Sacks may be laying it on a bit thick, I've certainly seen exactly that attitude in far too many students. For them, education is an entirely passive process. They show up when they want, if they want, and far too many of them seem to think there's nothing wrong or even embarrassing about showing up to class 15 minutes, 30 minutes, even an hour late. And despite explicit instructions not to do so, far too many of them will spend most of the time that they actually bother to spend in class on their laptops browsing Facebook, not even pretending to pay attention.

There was an interesting study published not long ago that was passed around our department recently. According to the study, the average college student of today spends much less time studying and otherwise preparing for class than (s)he did just 20 years ago. I'm inclined to believe it.


And far too many of them just sit there. Getting them to answer questions or to interact in any way is almost like pulling teeth. I swear, there are times (far too many times, I must admit) when I feel like I'm lecturing to a class full of wax dummies. I have, on more than one occasion had students flat-out tell me that they resent any effort on my part to engage them -- that as far as they're concerned, they've paid their tuition and they've therefore done their part; my part is to [somehow] magically impart them with knowledge.



Every single semester, I start out eager and enthusiastic. And, I must sadly admit, virtually every semester I sooner or later find myself looking out over the blank faces and wondering what on Earth I'm doing there and if I wouldn't be happier digging ditches or something.


The thing is, I think that I can honestly say without false modesty that I'm a good teacher. I genuinely like my students [most of them] and my job [most of the time]. And so I'm helpful and enthusiastic and I go to great lengths to ensure that I'm always available to my students.

And accordingly, I get great evaluations. The students always say that I'm an excellent teacher and that they appreciate how hard I work on their behalf, and they claim that I'm very good at helping them understand the material. And I've had several different colleagues sit in on my classes, and in their reports, they've always been extremely flattering in their praise. I've even gone so far as to compare the grade averages of my students to those of students in other sections of the same courses, taught by other instructors. My students generally have the highest averages; since this school uses standardized tests I think I can honestly say that it's because I'm doing something right, not that I'm an easy grader or anything like that.

While I'm hardly a strict disciplinarian, I do try to maintain some level of discipline and common courtesy. For instance, I do insist that students not text or talk on their phones during class -- you'd be amazed at how common it is for students, if allowed to do so, to sit there quite brazenly, texting away during class, completely ignoring the instructor.

Just last week, I sat in on a colleague's class; it was both a horrifying and enlightening experience. She has been teaching for decades and is an energetic and enthusiastic teacher herself, with excellent evaluations from both students and fellow faculty. So we're talking about a classroom that's about as good as it gets at this college. It was a 90-minute class. Several students wandered in about 5 minutes after the class had started. None of them had the courtesy to look embarrassed or otherwise discomforted. Another few wandered in after about 10 minutes, and a few more wandered in after about 15 minutes. The last student came in an hour after the class had started. Again, she showed no signs whatsoever of being embarrassed or otherwise discomforted by her late arrival -- apparently, she considered this completely normal.

I sat in the back, so that I could observe. Several students were texting more or less the entire time, and not even bothering to pretend that they were paying attention. One guy spent the entire time on his laptop, looking at Facebook.


I have flat-out told students that I will not tolerate that degree of disrespect, and that if I catch anyone texting their friends or surfing the web during my class, they will be asked to leave. [And I have done exactly that -- told students to get out of my classroom.] Still, that sort of disrespectful behavior on students' part is amazingly common, and a staggering number of my colleagues seem regard it as perfectly normal behavior on the students' part.



An awful lot of teachers have basically given up. I've been told, for instance, that some instructors simply give an "A" to every student who bothers to show up consistently. I've also been told -- by several different students -- that I was the first teacher they'd had who actually cared whether or not they learned anything, and who expected them to work for their grades.


Part of all this is the school, of course. In my experience, it's a far worse problem at community colleges than at 4-year schools, perhaps because community college students are more likely to think of themselves as consumers and their teachers as employees. But I've certainly seen far too much of that kind of attitude at 4-year schools as well. This all-too-common attitude is precisely why I'm really hoping to secure a position at a better school in the not-too-distant future.



Just in case it isn't clear, I must stress, by the way, that this diatribe is in no way meant to indicate that there aren't good, dedicated, and hard-working students out there -- plenty of them, in fact.

Still, my impression is that behavior that is considered normal today would be considered completely unacceptable not too long ago. I'm certain that an awful lot of the crap I see on a daily basis would not have been tolerated for even one second by any of my college instructors.

Of course, a big part of the reason that this sort of behavior occurs is because it's tolerated in the first place. And that's no-doubt because so many administrators have bought into the "student as customer" attitude. What I've seen, time and time again, is administrators doing everything they can to get paying bodies into seats. That includes putting relentless pressure on instructors to "dumb down" their material, for instance, and forbidding them from expelling students from classrooms for being disruptive. At one community college where I used to teach (I quit for precisely that reason), my department chair literally told me that I was forbidden to fail students, no matter how poorly they performed. Needless to say, the students knew the score, and since they knew that they literally couldn't fail the class, an awful lot of them saw no reason whatsoever to make any effort to even pretend that they were investing any time or effort in their own educations.


Personally, if/when any student makes the mistake of telling me "I pay your salary and so you owe me a good grade" (it happens a lot more often than you might think), I reply thus: "No, you pay for the priviledge of attending my class; if you pay attention and work at it, you'll learn something; if you don't, you won't -- it's that simple."

not like being treated as an employee, and students learn that quickly.]

[/rant]


Cheers,

Michael

[livius drusus]

I have another theory. What if our snowflaking friend didn't realize Dante was and wrote in Italian? Twenty bucks says he read "abandon all hope ye who enter here" on the door of a dorm room and thought that looked like some good shit to write a paper about.

[beyelzu]

I am amazed at my fellow students sometimes. I go to class and take notes, and I see students who sit on facebook for the whole class, and I wonder why they bother to come to class at all.

[wildernesse]

I don't know that they are more common now than 10 years ago, but 10 years ago the whole class might not have been privy to the student asking the dumb question. Same thing for fb--the only reason I wasn't on fb during undergrad lectures was because it hadn't been invented yet and no one took laptops to class. Instead, I had to content myself with doodling, writing letters, or doing the crossword.

I had many undergrad classes that contained between 100-300 students, though. Who started the consumer mindset in that scenario? (I will say that I had several instructors who managed to make even giant lecture hall instruction engaging and did not treat it like a chore. And my law school classes were 70+ students, but completely different in level of engagement and demand.)

[Kyuss Apollo]

They have been trained since at least middle school that they really are snowflakes. It's all they know.

[Demimonde]

I have gained a new perspective on this now that I am tutoring. I feel pity for the kids that walk in the door totally unprepared for college. One girl who I was recently tutoring in freshman History was completely clueless. The TA was throwing terms at them like "technological spiritualism" without explaining it while she was wondering which American colony Martin Luther was from. :twitch:

Another epidemic I have found in my own department is that the English Comp classes are all taught by grad students with no interest or talent for teaching. I had over two dozen students come to me for help writing their "Discourse Community Memoir" paper which all the freshmen regardless of prof were writing. Only one of them actually understood what a discourse community is, let alone what they were supposed to do. Keep in mind this was after two weeks of listening to their professor's lectures.

Many of these kids want to learn, hell all of mine do, that's why they are in tutoring. But I spend most of my time with them going over basic study skills: note taking, active reading, active learning. The hardest part is in actually getting them to formulate their own questions. They have been spoonfed so long they have forgotten how to hunt, how to be curious, how to be inquizative. They are amazed by the entire notion of it.

If the university is going to move forward, I think they MUST begin by adding to the core ciriculum a manditory study skills and critical thinking course for ALL incoming students. Coming from public schools these kids are feed lot cattle from an industrialized educational system that has failed them. If you want them to be active freethinkers hungry for knowledge they must have the tooth and claw to do it.

[Demimonde]

Ew double post.

[Qingdai]

We had an introductory our freshman year, titled "Critical Inquiry" which went over basic research and introduction to various topics, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, biology and issues in the respective fields.