 |
| Um, yeah. College is so stressful |
First there was the news that students in American universities study a lot less than they used to. Now we hear, in a recent book titled "Academically Adrift," that 45 percent of the nation's undergraduates learn very little in their first two years of college.
. . .
...Have colleges, in their efforts to keep graduation rates high and students happy, dumbed down their curriculums? If they have, who is to blame? What should parents and federal taxpayers do?
• Products of Rote Learning ~ Leon Botstein
• No Work, All Play, No Job ~ George Leef
• The Winner: A Liberal Education ~ Sean Decatur
• 'Will I Be Able to Get a Job?' ~ Gaye Tuchman
• An F for Effort ~ Philip Babcock
• The Student as Profit Center ~ Mark C. Taylor
5 comments:
What I don't understand is how a professor (who was once a student), who had to earn their degree by doing "the hard work" becomes a professor, and then dumbs down the course.
I'm doing 8 hour days by the average. i.e. Sometimes doing 10 hour days, sometimes doing 6 (but never a 2)
When/If I become a professor, I'll guarantee a pound-you-in-the-ass teaching style; ill-aimed revenge!
BS
Lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry
We miss you, BS. But we're glad that you're busy with your studies!
You might want to read or at least skim through some of these brief NYT articles: they provide ample answer to your question. I went into teaching with precisely your attitude. I soon abandoned it. IN my view, the job of the instructor is to cause students to learn--that is, to teach students as they are, not as one might wish them to be. Severe instructors who hold students to high standards are typically hated and avoided. Getting other instructors to cooperate with an effort to raise standards across the college is difficult, and it would probably be disastrous for the college. You'll observe, however, that I've hammered this point--that students refuse to do enough work, that the system encourages the idea that students can take a full load while working and having a social life--for many years, but it appears among the less popular messages I send. There's no easy fix. Any fix will have to involve the leadership in education. They don't seem to be interested in stepping up to the plate. BvT
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Statements like "today's students" are the worst generation of students ever are routine and commonplace.
I challenge anyone out there to find--and document--a time when teachers were not saying the same thing they're saying today.
When exactly were the good ol' days?
--100 miles down the road
--
100 Miles, there is no contradiction in recognizing your point and, at the same time, recognizing that, as studies suggest, students study far less than they used to and that standards have declined. Every year, for decades, we’ve been told that the Big One is overdue and yet the Big One has not materialized. Will you argue, therefore, that the Big One is not overdue?
Hey, BS, excellent to hear from you. I just have to echo BvT on the complex demands of getting students to learn, given the wild range of attitudes and abilities out there in the classroom. What I've tried to do (with very mixed success)--and I'm sure this is an obvious point for all good teachers--is to maintain high standards (not as high as I'd like), but do many things within my power to help students to get up there to meet them. That means things like letting them do rough drafts of essays and get help before the final one is due, and letting them do (for some credit) things that show efforts and engagement, such as going to public presentations and writing reflective comments about their content. The good students take advantage of these offers (especially the "rough draft" one) and do well; the lazy or uncaring ones don't, and don't do so well. They know that they've had the chance to get help, so they can't (and actually don't) get mad about low grades.
It's all a great compromise. For the reasons that BvT cites, I have definitely lowered my standards. But I think that my students may learn as much as they did in my early days. So hard to know.
Be well!
MAH
Post a Comment