COLLOQUY

While history is repleat with gripes of disruptive students and generational grudge matches, these traditional elements are now being played out within the context of a cultural transformation that has just begun and is not at all well defined. The article identifies elements of consumerism, a "Wal-Mart" society, and the crisis of adult authority as the roots of the problem. Student bashing, professor bashing, and of course, administrator bashing also creep into the discussion.

Two colleagues from different disciplines and I have formed a teaching circle and have been studying what we see as the start of a cultural paradigm shift in education. The particular incidents add up to the behaviors which demonstrate the end of the old set of rules and understandings. What is currently absent, but may be beginning with an article and colloquy like this, is the broad active discussion among the academy and society to redefine the terms and conditions, the role and mission, of the academic culture and its relation to the broader popular culture.

What strikes us as most distinct this time around are two characteristics. One is the degree to which faculty activism at the grassroots is going to be essential to a positive outcome. The other is the challenge to the administrators to do something they have little experience with -- to become true "professors" of the values of eduction and true teachers of those values to the politicians, trustees, and public.

-- Roger P. Davis, Professor of History, University of Nebraska at Kearney (posted 3/26, 11:19 a.m., E.S.T.)

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