The local paper runs a sort of blog on its web site that features all sorts of writers. This morning there’s a short and sensible article written by a high school junior about the college application process that few would find hard to argue with. About five comments down, though, we have this:
As a college professor I can tell you that MOST student in Indiana should go to junior college. They can not progress beyond the 2 year level. They can’t write. They know virtually no math. They can not formulate an argument. They are ill read. They do not know what they want except a 40K job at which they will presumably play euchre all the time. Most students should forget a 4 year education and start at Ivy Tech and ONLY IF THEY DO VERY WELL–CONTINUE.
I find it hard to know what to think about comments like this. Yes, I agree, the average abilities of college freshmen when it comes to math and writing are way below what I would expect from a decent high school education, and it creates big problems in the college classroom where a certain amount of prerequisite knowledge is expected — and where there are students who really are prepared and wanting to learn, but bored by the pace we must take in order to try to get the others up to speed. Yes, they have a hard time thinking logically. Yes, they probably haven’t read widely. Yes, their sights tend to be set more on lifelong stability. And I’ll even agree that a good percentage of these students probably should be in a different place and would be better served somewhere else.
But there is something in the tone of this remark that chafes. I’ve seen the same tone elsewhere in the edu-blogosphere — it seems to show up much more frequently toward the end of the semester, unsurprisingly — and I catch it in myself. I think it’s the fact that we look at the problems and needs of college students and conflate them with the students themselves. Look at the use of the word THEY in that comment. THEY can’t do this; THEY are really bad at that. It’s so easy to turn these frustrating deficiencies into personal characteristics or social boundary markers — to take the very real problem of lack of college preparation and turn it into an us-versus-THEM scenario.
It’s one thing to be clear-eyed about the challenges facing college teaching that stem from poor pre-college preparation. Those deficiencies are real and there is no getting around the fact; and it will take decades to reverse the cultural decline that has led to this situation, if in fact it can be reversed at all. Let’s all of us profs be real about that.
But it’s entirely another to turn this situation into an occasion for antagonism and defeatism — to turn our students into lay figures who symbolize the cultural and educational decline that has let them down. It’s true that those students’ choices and values (or lack thereof) play a large role in whether they end up prepared for college and/or working hard in college. The students must choose excellence and education over the culturally easier choices like entertainment and indulgence. But I don’t want to forget that I play a role in making the former choices more appealing than the latter. A large part of my job consists not so much in exposing students to content knowledge, but training the students’ tastes to be more inclined towards beauty, curiosity, and wonder — and the resulting educational excellence that those attitudes engender — and less towards mindless fun and satisfaction of physical impulses. They must choose; but WE must make the choices we want appealing.
I’ll be reminding myself of that in 5 minutes when I go to teach my liberal arts math class… and over the next three weeks as the semester ends. And probably for the rest of my career!
It’s finals week, and I was behind a student car, packed full, heading back to Florida as I came back home.
“The students must choose excellence and education over the culturally easier choices like entertainment and indulgence. But I don’t want to forget that I play a role in making the former choices more appealing than the latter.”
I have to say that this is probably the best sentence I have ever read to describe teaching. I love that even though you complain about skills and such, your general idea of teaching is perfect. Even though I slacked off and barely got past my comps to get the math degree I have, I left college with the choice to pursue more education. Even though my theory may have been rusty, I got the desire to learn more, be curious, and wonder. And had I not had teachers who encouraged that type of thinking through discussion and other methods, but rather teachers that just gave us multiple choice questions, graded with no comments, etc (and I did have some of those), I would have just been stuck with a degree and no desire to do anything with it.
I think that a lot of teachers sometimes forget that beginning college students are kids. We dont know what we want, we just want to learn. And if our basic skills arent good enough, then at least give us inspiration to learn. Dont just say “you suck” and send us packing. A little bit of optimism never hurt any one.
The comment in the paper is nothing more than being predjudice. I could turn around and say well, college professors are old and dorky and liberal. But that gets nothing accomplished now does it? And you know I get really frustrated with my job and I hate some of our clients, but that gives me no reason to make a generalization about ALL of our clients. And really just getting mad once doesnt give me reason to generalize a single person either. Humans change a lot over time. Yes there are problems in our education system. I am getting so sick of it being the students’ fault. Yah, so we arent prepared… but is that always our fault? My middle school would never put me in better math classes after we asked for it for 4 years, and I spent an hour everyday writing notes to my friends because I didnt need to pay attention in math class.
I guess my point is this… It just seems to me that some professors spend more time complaining about their students than they do trying to help them or better the education system. There are so many other ways to help our education system, yet it seems that so much focus goes towards what to do with the students who aren’t good enough.
Okay, I ‘m done ranting… sorry for the long comment
I think I turned a corner as a teacher when I realized just how
young/inexperienced/immature an 18 year old human is. Granted, some people come
to the end of adolescence having learned to delay gratification, but I don’t
think it’s the majority. Again, some attend college with the ability to set goals
and devise a plan to achieve them, but not many.
Being able to delay gratification and discipline the self in order to achieve a
set goal are two mature behaviors that I’m sorry to say I did not fully appreciate
until I was in my 30′s. This helps me to cut my students a bit of slack…on
my better days.;)