‘Don’t You Get It, Professor?’

@wise1inmo: it’s a sign of our times! A CHE reader trying to earn a few extra bucks. It’s a tough time for provosts out there, you know!

The student does not need counseling. This is exactly how undergraduates think these days. They are so brilliant that conventional education does not apply to them. This message gave me quite a smile. Thank goodness for spring break.

A “mathotical” student! I love it! Does “mathotical” mean he acquires knowledge through his ears? It can’t be a misspelling of “methodical,” as he spells “methodically” correctly a few lines later. Curiouser and curiouser.As a teacher of English composition, I often see papers written in a kind of shorthand, argument without evidence, as if the reader of the paper could also read the writer’s mind. I suspect that is what this writer has done (although I’m no expert in the content area implied in the e-mail), and he’s enraged that the prof can’t see what seems obvious to him. I tell my students over and over that what is obvious to them is not obvious to the reader unless they give evidence of their thought processes. We call it writer-centered writing, and it’s not always the result of adolescent self-absorption, although in this case it certainly appears to be.If I were to receive this e-mail, I would reply that, while the student no doubt had brilliant ideas in his brilliant mind, he had failed to communicate them in his paper. I can read (and grade) only his paper, not his mind. If I were feeling really vindictive, I’d invite the student into the wonderful world of grade appeals, so that three more dunderheaded professors could also inform him that his masterpiece wasn’t worth more than a C.Not that my colleagues would thank me.@rkahhamilton: I think you’re right. I have freshmen every semester who complain, “I handed in all my work; how come I only got a C?” Then I have to explain that C stands for Competent and is a perfectly acceptable grade. To get superior grades, you have to do superior work.

Wow.

As I understand it, they are called “snowflakes” because from pre-kindergarten onward they are given the message that they are like snowflakes–each one unique, unrepeatable, special, and therefore deserving of special attention.

I’ve had more outrageous emails than I can count. I once had an email from a grad student complaining about a B on her presentation who said I must have assigned her that grade instead of an A because she made more money than I did. How she thought I knew her salary is surely a mystery to me.

How about this one:”stop commenting on my work your crappin out my day! i’m a 4.0 studnent adn i used tolike english and speach until i got u.”I am not kidding either; this was a real email.

The student’s arrogance and pomposity were reminiscent of Ignatius J. Reilly.

Students carry huge amounts of stress. Don’t be surpised if they occasionally reveal this to you.

The only thing clear about this email is that the student expects the reader to meet the student on the student’s terms. Sadly, we should all expect exactly this reaction from a cohort raised in an educational system that ALWAYS met students on their own terms. Not a visual learner? No problem; we can change the way class works just for you! Find the material boring? No problem; we’ll screen a movie that tangentially deals with the material instead. Can’t understand when you’ll need this in real life? Hey, you’re probably right; we’ll scrap it.This is why English composition classes are so often the epicenter of conflicting expectations between new college students and academia; it is here that–for the first time–they are expected to meet someone else on that person’s terms. Writing requires an author to move beyond him/herself. But for these students, the notion of a world beyond themselves is incomprehensible.

Yes, I’m an ex-texas aggie. But, no, I’m no longer in Texas.As for poor Thomas, I feel bad for him. But I’m also well aware that what is happening with the Texas curriculum began with the progressive/liberal/poststructuralist recognition that all knowledge is negotiated politically. Blame also the same group’s efforts to augment/add to/explode the traditional canon of works and ideas to be studied in school.It was a progressive notion that Homer Simpson should be discussed alongside Homer the Greek. When that happened, we all sat back and smiled at how clever we were. What can I say now that members of the far right have taken our own tactics and used them this way? I believe their re-conception of history is deeply incorrect, but how does someone who has used these poststructural arguments in the past object to their use by the other side now?

Much of what the student writes and several of the commentators tacitly buy into is the idea that the primary point of education is the “knowledge” that students might acquire. This implicity perpetuates the notion that what higher education should furnish students is the ammunition to compete in the economy. I suggest that this is a fallacy on two counts.The problems of the U.S. economy that have brought us such high unemployment rates have less to do with an uneducated working force than with 1) unbridled corporate greed and 2) the signigicantly lower cost of human labor in other countires.Moreover, the model of higher education as purveyor of “knowledge” (currently reduced to the idea of “information”) suggests that knowledge is something within a person and gives that person a competitive edge in the world of work. (Aren’t our own graduate students sterling examples of the untruth of this position? They’ve got plenty of education. Why aren’t they getting rich???) I’d like to suggest that the purpose of higher education is the improvement of society to the benefit of all (which ideally should include more genuine equality of economic opportunity). Society. And communication among thinking, self-aware human beings is essential to the health and success of society. The belief that “knowledge” is king contributes to the snowflake attitude of the student e-mail writer and the hardline know-nothings in our society. What they lack is a sense of the high importance of reasoned and evidence-based communication. This, not fruitless economic competition with our fellows, is the groundwork for the cohesive, and thus more productive, society most people naturally desire.

To some degree I’ll second Raza_Khan and say that (while science is my area) if a student sent me an email like that I would meet with them and explain, in detail, exactly what is wrong with their letter, with their assignment and why. It may well be, that nobody ever has. If the student is marginally sane this will come out and I could refer them, but with a caveat. Student mental health services range from abysmal to bizarre, with random points of light here and there. This email also reminded me of a conversation with a student who complained to me about a science paper for a class. (And dear god but we who teach science hate grading such papers, which are hard to write and hard to grade.) I was going over how the student had to lead the reader through his thought process and not require leaps. This student looked at me and said, “But that’s how all of you TEACH your CLASSES!” And he gave me examples and showed course notes. He was right. And during that, I remembered myself, in some of my early manuscripts being dinged for “leaving out the obvious” for the same reason. Since then, I have been much more sensitive to the fact that as professors (and TAs) many of us teach the way this self-evaluated “A student” apparently wrote. We write on the whiteboard with mathematical, grammatical and spelling errors. We have errors of grammar, spelling, and math in our powerpoints. And we expect our students to ignore that and “get it”. A couple of years ago, assisting a huge section class I was sitting in the back when an NAS professor put a graph up that he said he had figured out years ago and put in several papers. A student came up to me at the end of class saying she didn’t understand it. So we looked at it together, and something was wrong. So I backed up, re-did the graph from scratch using Excel, and indeed, the student was correct. The bigwig professor had made some basic errors and the graph was completely wrong. I approached the guy and he didn’t understand what I said and dismissed me. Best I could do was give that student a big extra credit, and put in writing that she was correct and should be commended for catching that error.

Kagillogly,The rebellion of the 60s and 70s was a “resistance to the formal, memorization, rule-based education they’d been raised in,” but beginning with the loss of those qualities, the loss of quality American education soon followed. ACT and SAT scores started a steady decline. American business increasingly believes students are not prepared for jobs. These issues did start in higher education and drifted down to public schools as graduates of the 60s and 70s became self-serving parents, teachers, administrators, and board members followed quickly by the loss of discipline, dress codes, and accurate–not inflated–grading. Education is one of the country’s foremost entitlement programs–”Success and promotion guaranteed whether its earned or not.”Teachers have become more concerned with their “negotiated contract,” and not doing anything extra for the students unless they receive pay. (Another reason for the decline of American schools is the number of men who chose teaching during that period to avoid the draft and the Vietnam War, and remained teachers because of the gravy train known as “tenure.”) Parents have been too busy to be concerned about their offspring’s lives and are angry at the school if the child interrupts their personal life style. Rather than making society accountable, we force schools to address problems–poor teenage driving led to driver education, teen pregnancy led to sex education, drug use got “just say no” in, and now the signs are obvious that obesity is going to be the next intrusion. All these issues have been added to the school day, without expansion of the school year or school day. On top of that, the dropout rate continues to soar.The peer pressure in school is no longer how can we get the best grade, but how do we get by doing the least amount of work, and this quality starts with the adults who provide the example that students willingly copy.

spelling/ Stanford

This has been an interesting discussion. While I understand the urge to treat the student as a Millennial and shrug off the e-mail as a poorly-spelled crass joke, I think there is more to it. While elementary and secondary students are being treated softly and like ‘snowflakes,’ they are also taught critical thinking skills at a much earlier age. If anything, WE are the ones who have to discover whether the student understands the material without solely applying the assessment of rote memorization skills – especially in the realm of philosophy. Do we want them to become direction-followers and marketing objects? We are the ones often – and rightly so – criticized for a lack of interdisciplinary research and cooperation. Instead of attempting such, we specialize deeper and deeper into our discipline. When this happens, it is more difficult to understand the views of someone who has been taught to challenge everything, let alone understand a student who applies an interdisciplinary analysis.

Although I am not a medical doctor, the symptoms pointed out in the original story and the follow-on comments often appear to be indictive of a student suffering from bipolarism. Higher education faculty and staff have an obligation to learn the usual signs and symptoms of this disease and some of the causes before the assumption is made that the students are not serious about their studies. Besides genetic factors, pressure and stress can be major issues for bipolar students. Only an informed faculty and staff can effectively cope with the consequences of this rampant medical condition.