"Your class is too difficult. It's just community college."
A student who came by to complain about the class gave me this line that I have heard many times before. There seems to be this preconceived notion that community college means easier. There is an expectation by many students that classes are meant to be easier and if you somehow require them to work, to challenge them, then you are doing them a disservice. Certainly, the comedy show Community doesn't help this perception. The professors are bumbling idiots who don't even know their subject and give out A's and B's for essentially showing up. I cringed the two times I watched the show.
I try to explain that the classes they are taking from me are transferable to universities and consequently are, and should be, of equivalent value in expectations, difficulty and overall content. Yet, that does not diminish their protests of unfairness on my part. My classes are challenging and require a significant amount of work, but are in no way unrealistic. Every semester I deal with the complaints: "Why do we have to write analytical papers?," "this is too much work," "you expect too much of us," "why can't we have multiple choice exams?," "you teach the class like it is a 4 year university," and "it's just community college."
I wonder what they think community college is supposed to be and why are they attending college if all they want is for me to hand them an A for showing up?
Well, a community is a group of people who care about each other. Sharing is caring. Giving out A's is sharing. Therefore, you need to give them all A's. After all...it is COMMUNITY College!
ReplyDeleteHA!HA!HA!HA!HA!
Mathsquatch Out
If it makes you feel any better, I got the same crap at a U where I worked. The frosh-flakes couldn't grasp it wasn't high school, so (just like another commenter mentioned a few days ago) I often got accused of teaching the course like it's a grad-level class. On the flip-side, I was once told I wasn't qualified to teach and belonged in a third level community college (I think they meant third-rate...).
ReplyDeleteAll I know is many of my students can't do the stuff I was taught how to do in high school. It's a no-win situation no matter where we work when we're confronted with the educationally ill-prepared and the intellectually lazy.
I fucking love Community, because it reminds me of my time (both as a student and as an instructor) at Research 1 institutions.
ReplyDeleteI got similar comments when I taught at a R1. Students like to complain.
When I was a TA, one of the other TAs handed out a paper that said, "Please write down what you consider to be busy work." According to the students, *everything* was busy work...essays, quizzes, reading, lectures....
Fuck 'em.
In the meantime, oh that Joel McHale....
I've had similar complaints when teaching the main non-majors' survey course in my field. Students get the idea that our non-majors' survey courses are supposed to be blowoffs (and there are a few profs here who teach them that way, !#@?*?!! )
ReplyDeleteIn your shoes, I would probably grin and say "Isn't that great? You're getting an amazing bargain -- a university-level education at a community college price! No, don't thank me, I'm just doing my job of serving your needs."
OK, then they'd complain that I was being an asshole.
No, no, no, no, no, re: the show. Professor El Tigre gets a stupid question, walks up to the student, pulls her chair (with the student still sitting in it) into the hall, comes back in the classroom, and shuts the door. IT DOES NOT GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT. What the show does get wrong is the portayal of a study group. That never happens at my CC.
ReplyDeleteI can't count the number of times I have heard those complaints. I tell the complaining majors that there are two future scenarios to consider:
ReplyDelete1) They WILL transfer to such places as Highly Prestigious Institute of Technology or Fair-to-Middling Poly, so they damn well better be getting at least as good an education as the freshmen/sophomores there so they'll be prepared for the upper-division ass-kickings.
2) They'll eventually be competing against those same students for jobs. DUH. Do they want their resume to immediately go into the slush pile because the Education section says "Large Metropolitan Multi-Campus Community College"?
Then again, I go to a four year liberal arts school and have taken classes during the off season at the local community college. Easiest classes I've ever taken. One of them actually really pissed me off. The professor literally gave us the answers to the tests ahead of time (as in, she sat at the front of the room, told us the questions, and then told us the answers). We had one paper to do, and I put a lot of time and effort into it. It was easily one of the best papers I've ever written, and she graded it by saying, after the fact, that if we turned it in on time, we got full credit. Not so much as a comment.
ReplyDeleteThe other students were complete morons, though. I don't know how people managed to fail these tests, though I suppose it had something to do with the midterm falling out on 4/20. Since they couldn't wait and get high after the midterm, I guess.
Mine tell me, "There's so much reading! We are working full time, have kids, have another class, and there's only 8 weeks in a term!"
ReplyDeleteI smile and say, sounding as conspiratorial as I can, "I *know.* That's why I only assigned one short book and six articles or primary source readings, not my usual two or three longer books and twelve articles."
Usually that ends the conversation.
Picky, my response to that is even less sympathetic: "I know you're busy, but you chose to enroll in this class. I didn't come to your house, ransom your belongings, and force you to enroll in this class. Life is about choices. You may choose to remain and do your best, or you may choose to drop the course and take it at later date, when you have more time to devote to it."
ReplyDeleteThat also shuts 'em up. (Never mind that I often have to explain the concept of ransoming is all about.)
I've had some really interesting comments from students in the early going of fall semester at LD3C. I teach developmental writing, and when I ask students to define in their own words the differences between our classes and English composition, many students talk about our classes as being "easier" than comp.
Well, for people with comp-level skills, I'm guessing developmental writing would be easier than composition.
Along the lines of CCs being easier than 4-years or unis, I've had several students slumming it at LD3C (I teach things other than dev writing, especially in the summer), and the students from Big Uni down the road are shocked by my standards. I often field complaints about how this is "only" community college. I actually do tell such snowflakes what Dr. Beowulf suggests, that they're getting a great education at bargain prices.
The administration actually loves that response.
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ReplyDelete@Gladys Rolodex
ReplyDeleteI love how Senor Chang gets in everyone's face. *Siiiiigh* I'm bummed he won't be a prof anymore and will just be a student. How can I live vicariously through that?
Well, I can't spell for shit today.
I get a lot of outraged education majors, too, who think that as I "only teach general education" it should be a piece of cake. One assured me that her advisor told her to take three gen ed courses a session (normal load is 2 in an accelerated 8 weeks). oy, howdy, was she disillusioned. And yes, when faced with comments like, "This isn't Emory!" or "This isn't UGA" I have given a variety of replies, from SnarkyGeekChick's "But you'll be competing with Empry folks," to "I believe *everyone* should have a good education!* (the admin loves that one) to "No, it isn't. Deal."
ReplyDeleteI took CC classes on the advice of my 4-year advisor (longer story that does not need to be rehashed). The calculus II, history and public speaking classes were fucking jokes. I aced all of them without breaking a sweat.
ReplyDeleteIn Calc II, one of my cohorts (in sickly redneck drawl), you so smart. How come you in this class?
Oh, honey, I thought. It involves fucking, smoking, and drinking in that order.
The advertising production class really beat my ass in the ground though. The professor was into the studio method of critique. I learned how to develop a thick skin because the entire day was devoted to who could give the wittiest but most devastating critique. The professor always joined in the fun.
That thick skin came in handy during my thesis and PhD days as well as when reading my student comments.
However, the two accounting courses I took at that CC were terrific. I worked my ass off and then some. I dug deep, deeper than I have ever dug for a course, to make an A. Recently, when I had to write about a professor who shaped me as a professor I chose that accounting professor. He was great because I wanted to show him I was a better person for taking his class. In some respects, I learned more in those two accounting classes than I ever did in any course before or after.
And I told his widow those exact words.
Community is a show that's as realistic about community colleges as med shows are about hospitals. The students do remind me a lot of my own, and there are occasional days when I would love to be Senor Chang (at least before he got busted for having the fake degree). But I have to say the most unrealistic thing is the fact that they have so much alcohol at campus events. I've never been to a CC where alcohol is permitted. Our student life director about had a heart attack the first time he watched an episode where drinks were served at a campus event!
ReplyDeleteIn real life, community college courses are just about the same as they are at any university. It depends on the college, the department, and the professor as to what kind of experience a student will have. I have colleagues who give away grades as well as those whose pass/retention rate is so low they look as if they are having coffee with a couple of friends by the end of the term in their classes.
For most of us, it's somewhere in between, and it's most definitely NOT "just" community college. We battle that same perception, that CC World is just an extension of high school and is supposed to be easier, and I think overall we do a pretty good job of combating it. I'm proud to say my CC has the second highest GPA rate for transfer students in the state (and the difference between us and #1 isn't statistically significant). Our students do better overall than native students at universities. Most of my colleagues believe in high but realistic standards which prepare students to go on and do well.
My community college is a great mix of all sorts of students, certainly better than the huge 4-year down the road, which is stuffed to the brim with LAZY DRUNKS who are there only to party and fornicate with strangers. Idiots. I loathe that place, and their daddies pay huge sums for them to just fuck around for 3 years and drop out.
ReplyDeleteAt least at my CC, there is REAL diversity, the students are often pretty damn interesting, and a surprising number of them are there with actual GOALS to accomplish, including the noble field of nursing, which is NOT AN EASY PROGRAM.
Yes, we get a large number of losers, deadbeats, and lost souls at my CC, students who are just malingering around for years and years, but hey, it's good for enrollment, and hence, our jobs. I grew up as a misfit, and I teach a lot of misfits. Fine with me.