DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH COLLEGE STUDENTS
I’m not talking about students at prestigious colleges but about those at Community College of Denver (CCD) where I teach. And I do not mean all of the students at CCD, only many.
It’s crazy. Over the past few years I’ve noticed this trend – if, at the beginning of the semester, I convey to my freshman composition students that my course requires a seven-question weekly vocabulary quiz (for which I provide the words and definitions in advance of each quiz) and weekly homework, at least a third of the students will drop the course.
The vocabulary quizzes include words such as insipid, amalgamate, chaotic, discern and other such words. I give these quizzes to complement the homework which, typically, requires reading a 4-to-10 page article from an academic journal, writing a 2-to-5 page objective summary of the article and contacting me (via email or phone) with a question about the reading.
Because I only give pass-fail grades on these types of assignments, the students do not receive a penalty for their often underdeveloped reading and writing abilities so long as they put forth a good-faith effort in completing the homework.
I give the assignments as a means to practice reading and writing with the ultimate goal of improved skills in these areas. In theory, if the students come to class prepared (but only with their best efforts), then we (the class and I) can discuss what individual students did with the homework and what worked and what did not work.
IN THEORY.
That theory goes to shit when – typically – within the first three weeks of the semester a third of the students drop the course and many of those who remain come week after week without completing the homework.
I am not unaware of the other social forces at work which compete with the efforts of my students to do well in school. I nonetheless do not understand why so many students continue to attend college without, apparently, understanding that homework (solitary effort and outside-of-class-time academic work) is an integral part of learning.
What the hell is going on? Have students always behaved this way? Am I just becomming an old cranky bastard?
posted by Esteban at 6:55 AM
1 Comments:
Well, that is an intersting question. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit I was one of your students (hopefully not one of the lazy ones). I've got to say that I believe the problem is not isolated to community college.
For example, my sister will sometimes teach at UCD (mainly higher level economics courses) and has noticed the same phenomenom there. She can, word for word, go over the exact content of a test in class, and the students will still get an average of around 40%. When she wants to fail all of them and hold them accountable, she is told that she cannot fail everyone. It's like they've learned that when it comes to apathy, there's safety in numbers.
But I think our society has, by and large, created a general sense of entitlement in our youth. I think this sense of entitlement crosses all socio-economic classes and geographic regions. My life after college has taken me to several different cities and different jobs and the sheer amount of whiners that I have to work with boggles my mind.
The youth are inundated with media that portrays only children of the wealthy and already entitled, who never work for anything, and yet receive everything. (MTV is horrible with this.) With some notable exceptions, hard work is no longer a part of our daily vocabulary. Not that I'm interested in our entertainment returning to the morality lessons of the '50s. But, there has been a definite shift in cultural morays and I believe that is evidenced in the youth.
(Discalimer: I also know some truly amazing, hard working, brilliant people who would never fit into this discussion.)
I'm not sure what would awaken all these people to the truth of our reality, or how you shift the values of a culture, especially one obessesed with material goods and leisure.
Good luck with the students.
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