Living through the Stupid People Revolt

As last semester came to a close, I thought things had gone pretty well, but Frank across the hall and two or three other friends in cheesy old (and increasingly abandoned) A200 carped loudly and persistently that this latest crew of studentry is marked by a disturbing degree of cluelessness and assholery.

“Good God!” they’d shout from somewhere in the building. “Good God!”

Guess so, I said, but (I thought) I don’t see how that could be, unless it’s just one of those random clusters, like leukemia under high tension wires or logs and seaweed spelling “FU” in the sand. Could happen, but so what.

Well, for me, the hidden horror lurking among my smiling students finally revealed itself once I submitted grades, at about Christmas Eve. Since then, it’s been nothing but whining and wheedling and mewling and, in at least one case, snickering, bleating loutery from hell.

Today, after a few rounds with one breathtakingly obtuse and persistent bellyaching Fall '09 jackass, I stood at the door of my office, leaned into the hallway, and declared, “Good Lord! What can it all mean!”

“It’s like I said,” muttered Frank from within his office. “Just like I said.”

* * * * *

Well, the new semester begins, and, as was the case five months ago, the kids this time seem nice enough, and I’m goin’ with it. Only once this week did I detect a brief flare-up of High Schoolitudinal Groupstink. (I’m gonna bring a squirt gun to that class.)

Suddenly, I’m feeling old and students seem ridiculously young. It doesn’t help that they are perfect, and I am (mostly temporarily) decrepit. My back is killing me and I keep having to don and then doff* these stupid reading glasses.

“You know, we’re living through history,” I declare to the class, absurdly. “Thirty years from now, your nephew or niece will walk up to you and say, ‘Gosh you’re old. What was it like living through that Stupid People Revolt? Do you remember it? Um, were you one of ‘em?’”

They smile.

I think I like 'em.

* * * * *

Another delightful nugget from Newspaper headlines tell the story

• The Old Guard’s Tony Garcia “clears his throat.” The Saddleback College Lariat, April 2, 1998

An article in the 4/2 Lariat reports that, according to Saddleback student Antonio Aguilar (the student who, months ago, challenged an explicit Holocaust denier during a board meeting), he was ‘spit at’ by English instructor Tony Garcia on March 30.

Evidently, Garcia responded to the charge by saying that “I cleared my throat as [Aguilar] went by.”

The article ends with a masterpiece of understatement:

Richard McCullough, Saddleback College Interim President, said he would not condone this type of behavior from faculty if it did, indeed, occur.

“That’s not what they should be doing,” he said.

Comments:

Anonymous‬ said...
A little practice with those glasses and you'll be doffing and donning as punctuation marks for your comments.

You're not old.
7:07 AM, January 15, 2010

‪Anonymous‬ said...
Sadly, after years of observations such as these I went to a psychiatrist. It was a " Is it me, or is it them moment". He asked me something like "if a thousand fish washed up on the shore and you could save but one or two, would it be your fault?" I said, " you're a freekin idiot, too!"
7:56 AM

Distance-Ed fraud

From yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education:

Online Scheme Highlights Fears About Distance-Education Fraud

An Arizona woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday to running an elaborate scam that highlights what federal authorities describe as the vulnerability of online education to financial-aid fraud. The scheme embroiled Rio Salado College, home to one of America's largest online programs, in a half-million-dollar con.

The defendant, 38-year-old Trenda L. Halton, blended in with the working-adult students at Rio Salado. But the neatly organized records in her suburban Phoenix home held clues to a double life. ¶ Social Security numbers. Tax returns. High-school diplomas. Ms. Halton used those records in a scheme that defrauded the federal government of about $539,000 in student-aid dollars—a scheme that involved dozens of people recruited to pose as phony "straw" students, according to court records.
…
But the high-tech methods she admitted using have already set off alarms at the U.S. Education Department. Ms. Halton made her bogus recruits look like real students by assuming their identities online to "participate" in classes and collect a share of their aid money, authorities say.
…
Confirming whether someone in an online class is a legitimate student represents a "significant challenge," says Mary Mitchelson, acting inspector general for the department. Ms. Mitchelson told Congress in October that her office had opened 29 investigations related to distance education since 2005, 19 of them in the past two years. And the number of distance-education investigations has increased since her testimony.

The targets of such digital crimes tend be community colleges, where requirements to establish financial-aid eligibility may be minimal, tuition is cheap, and distance education is booming….