Rant the First
Ironically, ever since I did that rant meme, I've come up with real life subjects for ranting--my colleagues, the weather, static electricity, regular electricity, the university, the universe... well, you can see where this is going.
Anyway, se_parsons wanted to know what's wrong with kids today, and specifically, with my students.
( ranting ahead )
Anyway, se_parsons wanted to know what's wrong with kids today, and specifically, with my students.
( ranting ahead )
Comments 24
They are born to be slaves.
Why not bring THAT up in your Roman class?
You'd make excellent Romans with your deification of the ruling body and your unwillingess to question any assumption. Where's my Spartacus?
I keep thinking back to the hell I gave all my communist professors during the Reagan era when I was an undergrad.
I could parrot back knowledge and their philosophies on tests, but that NEVER stopped me from thinking that democracy and a society where people's greed is recognized and harnessed is a good idea.
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I'm so grateful when my profs say this; that stuff is beyond distracting for the students, too. I'll bet some of your students are grateful as well. (One prof this quarter opened her first lecture with this: "I need to warn you that if I hear cell phones or beepers or other noisemakers during lecture, bad things will happen. I'm a real bitch. So turn 'em off, folks." She's tenured, of course. The other one just stops the discussion and looks over to wherever the conversational hum is coming from, but that only works because it's a smaller class.
I have to say: the conversations I overhear on campus, in the library, in the lecture hall, waiting for class, eating lunch, drinking coffee, walking to class--everywhere, in short, would provide the writers of VM maybe a teaspoonful of inspiration. The expressiveness, mental toughness and intellectual curiosity are in there somewhere, but maybe they only let it out in the dorms after hours or
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(Personally, I think teenagers on TV are more capable than teenagers in real life, but it's particularly striking when one teaches.)
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It reminds me of two little brothers I once did daycare for. They had been--literally--raised in front of a TV, lying around watching it with their early-retired-on-disability dad. When they got to my house they were incapable of clear speech (they were 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 at the time) and had no ability whatsoever to find something to do. They soon learned that we didn't watch TV at our house, that they couldn't just wander into the living room, flip the switch and vegetate ( ... )
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At one point, when I was probably in junior high, my parents had friends over and we were all discussing something, and to settle an argument I went to the encyclopedia to look up the answer; they were charmed and slightly gobsmacked, and would retell this story regularly for many years.
I do think that for many students, the difference between "watching tv" and "attending a lecture" is not entirely clear, and that this explains a lot of strange behavior on the part of students. And as I said in my comment above, I do think that it's in part my job to train them out of this kind of behavior. But it can be demoralizing to ask a simple question and look out ad all those blank faces.
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Ah, it's true--there are few things that will charm a learning-oriented parent as quickly as this kind of behavior from one of their children!
And I sympathize with your struggle to engage the blank faces. My guess is that there are a number of them who simply don't care (regretfully) about the content of your class, or any other. Schools often don't engage kids with the sheer joy/excitement of learning, and kids then see college topics as just another boring thing they have to make their way through (papers, projects, final grade) until in the end they've captured the prize, a degree or diploma, that everyone tells them is so necessary to be a successful adult ( ... )
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Social conversations are by their nature a give-and-take sort of thing and so everyone quickly learns how to do that. A classroom, however, is most often a "sit there and receive my message" sort of thing, and so discussion is often limited to the people who a) have a natural ability to process things quickly and spit out questions and opinions, or b) people who have developed that ability through constant immersion in it (often in a very high-debate family). I'll tell you right now that nobody ever sits children down and teaches them how to ask questions in school; it's assumed that you know how. Some of us don't. It's not ( ... )
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I think it takes a while to get students comfortable with expressing themselves in the classroom--you can't just tell them to do it and expect that to work. For instance, the class I just taught is a group that's been together since September, and they're finally getting to the point where the majority will voice opinions. They're mostly first-year students, and don't quite know what they're supposed to be doing.
The thing about class participation, though, is that it isn't just thinking on your feet--it's also about how you prepare. I encourage students to write their questions down as they do the reading, and to bring those in to class. Even, "what does this mean?" or "why does [the author] say this?" because if one student doesn't understand or can't follow the argument, the chances are ( ... )
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I'm pretty new at teaching also, and I for one, would LOVE to know how to give such a primer. Even in my lecture class, since I'd rather the students stop me and ask questions rather than flounder aimlessly, feeling overwhelmed. I suppose it's food-for-thought-for-summer-break, or something :)
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Just to clarify my earlier post: it's also more of a rant than anything else. I'm sad that the students don't come to you--in a university--with those skill already well-developed. While honing those skills is something you'd expect at the college level, having to force the students to simply develop them is depressing and rant-worthy. The kids are failing at their part in the shared classroom responsibility because they and you have been failed. But continued failure is at least partly their decision as well. They're smart, intelligent, and they have interactive skills. Applying ( ... )
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