When I was an undergraduate, which really wasn’t all that long ago, attending classes and completing my coursework constituted the sine qua non of my university existence. And that was probably true for many of my classmates at Howard University. Sure, we had extracurricular activities (some political and some recreational, some artistic and some just plain self-destructive), but that stuff probably didn’t take up nearly as many hours per week as the tons of things students are busy with between class sessions these days.
I first noticed the difference (between then and now) when I taught at Duke University and served as faculty-in-residence for a first-year dormitory. I did the latter for three energizing years, and each incoming class seemed more overextended and hyperscheduled than the one before.
They were all serious students. They wouldn’t have gotten into Duke if they weren’t. But they also boasted an amazingly full life outside of the classroom. They volunteered for every worthy cause you could imagine. They interned at some of the most prestigious institutions around. They played multiple sports, toured with high school musical bands, and some of them even had time to start their own nonprofits. And they were doing this all at the same time. In high school!
Indeed, what was most shocking was the realization that this model of full-time schooling mixed with full-time everything else only got ramped up once they started college. They were so accustomed to being frantically busy that they didn’t even blink at the prospect of piling on tons more extracurricular work to their demanding semesterly courses: cheerleader, columnist for the campus newspaper, volunteer for university and community programs, RA, GA, athlete, lead performer in the campus play, official MC for weekly spoken-word events on campus, and on and on and on. It was exhausting (and admittedly exhilarating) just to watch them run around campus.
Of course, they got most of this stuff done because they barely slept. Again, I lived in the dorm. I know this to be true. They might have gotten up a little later than I did each morning, but that’s only because they went to bed as my alarm clock rang out.
I think that I probably did two all-nighters during my entire undergraduate career. Nowadays, some students are lucky if they get away with two all-nighters a month — or even a week.
And they do all this not just because they can (new media technologies facilitate such hectic social dynamics in truly unprecedented ways), but also because they know that we (their professors and mentors) expect it.
It is no longer enough to be valedictorian. You have to excel in the classroom and demonstrate a robust set of commitments far beyond it. Everyone is telling them that this is what is going to make them stand out. And they’ve been hearing that mantra for a long, long time now, which means that some of them have been juggling schoolwork with other kinds of work (with an eye toward scholarship competitions and college admissions) since well before high school. It is hard-wired into this generation’s cultural DNA. They assume that future employers are looking beyond 4.0 grade point averages (especially in an age of supposed grade inflation), so they are meeting those expectations with a vengeance.
And since that is the backdrop, I always feel a little guilty about the fact that my testing instrument of choice is (and has always been) the pop quiz. After all, aren’t we supposed to be treating students like adults? Providing them with the readings, giving them the test dates, and then asking them to manage their time such that they are prepared for the scheduled exam — or not, right?
My pedagogical model, instead, is always predicated on wanting to make sure that students read the materials as I assign them, in time to contribute to classroom discussions, not as their admittedly packed schedules allow. But is that fair? Infantilizing? Unreasonable?
My students know that the unannounced quizzes are easy 100s for those who have done the reading. There are no trick (or particularly difficult) questions on them, just a request that students demonstrate (in “short answer” form) a basic comprehension of the readings before we go over them.
I’ve even been known to manifest the pop threat if a large lecture class seems particularly under-attended one slow Wednesday morning in the middle of the semester. Again, it is a reward for the folks in attendance and a punishment for the students who thought to sit that day out. But should I leave students alone to manage their hectic semesters and stop waxing nostalgic/romantic about some bygone, seemingly prelapsarian, moment when the classroom was ostensibly the center of the undergraduate universe?
6 Responses to The Ethics of the Pop Quiz
stinkcat - October 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm
What is unethical about a pop quiz? If they don’t have time for the readings before class, perhaps they should drop off the student newspaper, or the football team, etc. If you warn them that there can be a pop quiz, there is nothing wrong with following through.
primaryovertone - October 14, 2009 at 12:59 pm
While extracurriculars are good things and may very well add to a student’s overall personal development they will not mean squat to a future employer in most cases. An employer wants the person they hire to be able to do the work given to them. They are unlikely to care if the employee was good at basketball or was in the chess club. I do not understand students who pay thousands of dollars to learn a body of information just to throw that money away by skipping class and blowing-off homework.If you feel that giving a pop quiz is the best way to evaluate whether your students are prepared for class, go for it. Maybe after failing a few quizzes your students will figure out what their priorities are.
rightwingprofessor - October 15, 2009 at 9:18 am
Seriously Mr. Jackson you must be running out of things to write about. Students have busy lives, each professor is competing for their attention. Giving frequent quizzes is one way to do that, otherwise half the class will ignore your readings until before exam time. What are you teaching anyhow?
allieoop - October 19, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I’m a librarian and as an undergrad in the late 60′s, I got a passing grade in a survey Chemistry & Physics class because the professor gave a pop quiz every time we met. It forced me to study and I learned material that was really foreign to me.
shagen - October 21, 2009 at 11:36 am
primaryovertone – I disgree with your comment about employer’s not being interested in extracurriculars. As a former corporate recruiter, involvement and – perhaps most importantly – leadership in extracurriculars, including student groups as well as athletics, were in fact the very item that separated quality candidates from average ones. If two students look identical on paper with similar majors, grade point averages, and work experience, the student that was the president of his fraternity or the captain of her softball team would, far and away, be granted an interview over the other candidate. In this day and age, when there is an abundance of candidates but few jobs to fill, extracurriculars are indeed an important qualification for job-seekers. How else can you prove to a potential employer that you have time-management skills and can balance several different commitments at once?… just my two cents.
phock - October 21, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I think the pop quizzes do the students a favor. They provide an incentive for the students to arrive prepared to benefit from that day’s lecture and/or discussion. Requiring students to review the information via the pop quiz also greatly increases retention of information.