I would say yes: the student with the closed mind. The ones that I tend to have: 1.) My high school teacher taught me everything I need to know about that. 2.) The "holy book/word of my God" is all I need to know. 3.) I took AP classes in high school. 4.) By this one measure--and I only measure by this one thing--I know that I'm right.
Oh, yes. I think I have a class full of them, actually. Yesterday I asked a yes/no question, involving the minimal participation of "raise your hand if you thought this was a good argument". About half of the students in the room didn't raise their hands. So I asked "why didn't you think it was good?" The first 2 said "oh, we meant to raise our hands, we just didn't. The next one said he hadn't raised his hand because he had "basically just zoned out". There's your unteachable.
The "mature" students who think that, because they have three kids and a full-time job, I shouldn't expect them to meet the same standards as all the other students. Or who think that because they are adults with experience in a field completely unrelated to my subject, they know all there is to know and should not be penalized for not knowing the course content.
Some students 'already know the material'. Those have to be jolted from their comfort. Some just don't have the talent, and they should be treated kindly, but not allowed to pass.
I cannot believe I was (or ever will be) the only mature student, who, after the first semester was astounded to realize how much I did not know. My journey after that was one of excitement and amazement realizing that I would be allowed the pleasure of being educated by great minds who were expert in their fields (most of whom were younger than I). I had responsibilities of a different kind with a senior mother with senile dementia, but never once did I use that as an excuse. I did request the occasional extension, but never once did I use the "caregiver" card. I wanted my Profs to think of me as a student only and not someone who needed special treatment. On the unteachable aspect however, I was astounded by the number of students who were close-minded due to "this is what the Bible says." I always wondered why they bothered to attend University - it certainly wasn't to expand their minds or awareness of the world.
I always say, "students who say 'yes' raise your hand... Students who say 'no'... students who don't know... " This gets 2/3 involved. Perhaps I should add, "students who do not know if they know," and then "students who do not know if they know whether of not they know," and continue in the epistemological exercise.
I find teacher ed students hard to teach once they get close to graduation. They think, "I am going to be a TEACHER, and I know this is not germane to my teaching little kids, so I do not need it. I have my classroom already designed with the learning pods everywhere and once I get there, I will be awesome. I do not have to understand how math works since I can add three digit numbers with 96% accuracy by hand, and can always check my work on my handy calculator.
At the college level, I'd say "yes." Pretty much any human being who isn't comatose can learn something, and take pleasure in the act, but there are obviously people whose intellectual abilities are not sufficient to take on college-level work (for some people, learning to tie a shoe is a major achievement; for others, learning to shop for and cook a meal is a major step toward a higher quality of life, and worthy of celebration, but it's not going to eventually lead them to college). There are plenty of other people whose areas of strength lie more in the world of competently manipulating physical objects or working with other people than in the mental pursuits on which college classes generally focus (and the presence of too many such people in college classes probably has something to do with the sort of passive-aggressive classes described above; finding a way to truly value and develop their very real talents without insisting that they get a college degree, or even an AA, would probably make sense). There are also, as the thread on violent students suggests, some people who are, at least for the moment, too caught up in the chaos inside their own heads to participate effectively in a college education. That's often a remediable situation, but it needs to be considerably improved and stabilized, if not absolutely cured, before the student shows up in a classroom (or, in other words, if someone is too disabled by mental illness to hold down a fairly basic job, sending him/her to college is not a good idea either).
Then there's a large group of students who are teachable, in the sense that they're capable of doing college-level work, but for one reason or another -- laziness, fear that they won't do something perfectly the first time, over-scheduling or over-absorption in other areas of life -- resist our best efforts to create an environment in which they can learn, and lead them through the steps of learning. For those students, I'm of the "you can lead a horse to water" school; for me, "teaching" consists of creating the path and offering guidance to students who are willing to pursue it, not getting out there with some combination of carrots and cattle prods to cajole and/or force them along. So I guess I'd say that such students are teachable, but resistant, and it's not my job to somehow overcome that resistance, just to be ready and willing to work with them, within the parameters of a particular course, if and when they overcome it themselves.
Yes. Everyone, even the mind-numbingly stupid, can be taught something, like, say, how to flush the toilet, but not everyone can be taught that which we are paid to teach.
@Marc Gold, "if we can figure out how to teach them" exactly WHAT? How to follow instructions? How to not be mind-numbingly stupid around dangerous chemicals? WHAT?
@introvert: that quotation bothers me, too. I think it's the idea that teaching is something we (can) do to students, and that we will succeed if we just try hard enough for long enough. I'd prefer to think of teaching and learning as complementary, cooperative endeavors, that require teacher and student to meet somewhere in the middle, with maybe one reaching out more than the other at various points in the process (or perhaps in particular teacher/student relationships), but with both responsible for maintaining the relationship, and the process, as a whole (sort of like a good marriage, or any other productive human relationship).
Of course, there are extreme cases where the first task is for the teacher to reach the student, at otherwise jump-start the process. Annie Sullivan, for instance, had to figure out how to communicate with Helen Keller, and to overcome some psychological resistance as well as lack of understanding as she did so. But that relationship ultimately worked because Keller figured out in a relatively short time what Sullivan was trying to do, and, once that had happened, was an extremely cooperative, active learner. If Sullivan had kept trying for years, with absolutely no sign that Keller understood and/or was willing to cooperate, I'd say that she was wasting her considerable talents, and would have better served humanity at large by moving on to a more able and/or cooperative student than by continuing to believe against all evidence that she could reach Keller. In that situation, it might also have made sense to switch teachers, on the theory that some teachers can reach some difficult students more effectively than others, and that there's nothing wrong with trying a new pairing.
So maybe if we make the "we" collective, rather than individual, the quotation would make more sense? Also, your "teach them what?" question makes a lot of sense; not everyone can or should learn everything, and matching talents/abilities/deficits and appropriate educational goals is a big part of the process.
Intercourse the Doppler effect: that student's real problem was the inability to hold two ideas simultaneously in mind. Didn't Doonesbury make fun of Ron Reagan's inability to do that? Regard how what he learned while majoring in economics affects us today.
The short answer to your question is "yes." Marc Gold is full of hooey: I'm not a special ed teacher, I have no training as one, and I never volunteered to be one. I'm sure he'd also say that, "the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask that fouled you up." I no longer believe that: I've been asked "Is this going to be on the test?" too many times now.
Many students have an unteachable attitude: the put all their energy into blaming the professor for everything out of habit, they sincerely believe they are entitled to hand holding, without with they cannot learn, they sincerely believe their prof should have to do everything and they do nothing and they will still learn. Things like that. Those students are not unteachable---they are simply in need of an attitude adjustment. That adjustment may still come, and they will emerge as full fledged learners, even the best in the class! I've seen it happen and it humbles me and almost makes me like to be here.
Then there are others, much sadder cases. Some of the kids I see really do not seem to have the grey matter to do the thinking involved, to process complex ideas and complete complex tasks. And sometimes these students try very hard, but they still cannot do it. I would classify those students as unteachable---at least it is impossible for them to learn at a certain level.
@Marc Gold Pardon, but that type of single-sentence appeal of authority--argumentum ad verecundiam--is the type of closed minded certainty that I was trying to suggest!
@introvert: Some of the questions on your list are painfully thoughtless. Among the most egregious examples is: "I didn't come to class, did we miss anything important?"
I no longer believe "there is no such thing as a dumb question" because I’ve had students who would bombard me with a fusillade of off-topic and often remarkably thoughtless questions, which among other things would demonstrate clearly that they hadn't done the reading. This kind of behavior reminds me of the series of “whys” asked by two-year olds. Carl Sagan speculated that this is an attempt to control adult behavior, with no information content involved or sought.
Several posts above mention the unteachability of students with closed minds, who are determined not to learn anything. Whenever one mouths off at me, I’m reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s observation, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt” (also attributed to Mark Twain and Confucius).
@introvert: Don't worry, I get annoyed whenever given glib advice so inappropriate it only shows the inexperience of the advisor, such as from Marc Gold. I suppose giving out this list to students would be better than smacking them in the head with a 2x4: for starters, it'd break a lot fewer 2x4s.
I would say yes: the student with the closed mind. The ones that I tend to have: 1.) My high school teacher taught me everything I need to know about that. 2.) The "holy book/word of my God" is all I need to know. 3.) I took AP classes in high school. 4.) By this one measure--and I only measure by this one thing--I know that I'm right.
ReplyDeleteYes. The student who doesn't want to learn and the student who doesn't actively participate in his education.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes. I think I have a class full of them, actually. Yesterday I asked a yes/no question, involving the minimal participation of "raise your hand if you thought this was a good argument". About half of the students in the room didn't raise their hands. So I asked "why didn't you think it was good?" The first 2 said "oh, we meant to raise our hands, we just didn't. The next one said he hadn't raised his hand because he had "basically just zoned out". There's your unteachable.
ReplyDeleteThe "mature" students who think that, because they have three kids and a full-time job, I shouldn't expect them to meet the same standards as all the other students. Or who think that because they are adults with experience in a field completely unrelated to my subject, they know all there is to know and should not be penalized for not knowing the course content.
ReplyDeleteI think that there certainly are unteachable students. The painful thing is that you can't reliably tell which ones they are.
ReplyDeleteSome students 'already know the material'. Those have to be jolted from their comfort. Some just don't have the talent, and they should be treated kindly, but not allowed to pass.
ReplyDeleteYes, just consider Froderick's students who cannot understand the Doppler Effect!
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe I was (or ever will be) the only mature student, who, after the first semester was astounded to realize how much I did not know. My journey after that was one of excitement and amazement realizing that I would be allowed the pleasure of being educated by great minds who were expert in their fields (most of whom were younger than I). I had responsibilities of a different kind with a senior mother with senile dementia, but never once did I use that as an excuse. I did request the occasional extension, but never once did I use the "caregiver" card. I wanted my Profs to think of me as a student only and not someone who needed special treatment. On the unteachable aspect however, I was astounded by the number of students who were close-minded due to "this is what the Bible says." I always wondered why they bothered to attend University - it certainly wasn't to expand their minds or awareness of the world.
ReplyDeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteI always say, "students who say 'yes' raise your hand... Students who say 'no'... students who don't know... " This gets 2/3 involved. Perhaps I should add, "students who do not know if they know," and then "students who do not know if they know whether of not they know," and continue in the epistemological exercise.
ReplyDeleteI find teacher ed students hard to teach once they get close to graduation. They think, "I am going to be a TEACHER, and I know this is not germane to my teaching little kids, so I do not need it. I have my classroom already designed with the learning pods everywhere and once I get there, I will be awesome. I do not have to understand how math works since I can add three digit numbers with 96% accuracy by hand, and can always check my work on my handy calculator.
At the college level, I'd say "yes." Pretty much any human being who isn't comatose can learn something, and take pleasure in the act, but there are obviously people whose intellectual abilities are not sufficient to take on college-level work (for some people, learning to tie a shoe is a major achievement; for others, learning to shop for and cook a meal is a major step toward a higher quality of life, and worthy of celebration, but it's not going to eventually lead them to college). There are plenty of other people whose areas of strength lie more in the world of competently manipulating physical objects or working with other people than in the mental pursuits on which college classes generally focus (and the presence of too many such people in college classes probably has something to do with the sort of passive-aggressive classes described above; finding a way to truly value and develop their very real talents without insisting that they get a college degree, or even an AA, would probably make sense). There are also, as the thread on violent students suggests, some people who are, at least for the moment, too caught up in the chaos inside their own heads to participate effectively in a college education. That's often a remediable situation, but it needs to be considerably improved and stabilized, if not absolutely cured, before the student shows up in a classroom (or, in other words, if someone is too disabled by mental illness to hold down a fairly basic job, sending him/her to college is not a good idea either).
ReplyDeleteThen there's a large group of students who are teachable, in the sense that they're capable of doing college-level work, but for one reason or another -- laziness, fear that they won't do something perfectly the first time, over-scheduling or over-absorption in other areas of life -- resist our best efforts to create an environment in which they can learn, and lead them through the steps of learning. For those students, I'm of the "you can lead a horse to water" school; for me, "teaching" consists of creating the path and offering guidance to students who are willing to pursue it, not getting out there with some combination of carrots and cattle prods to cajole and/or force them along. So I guess I'd say that such students are teachable, but resistant, and it's not my job to somehow overcome that resistance, just to be ready and willing to work with them, within the parameters of a particular course, if and when they overcome it themselves.
Yes. Everyone, even the mind-numbingly stupid, can be taught something, like, say, how to flush the toilet, but not everyone can be taught that which we are paid to teach.
ReplyDeleteCC for "comment of the week"? Please?
ReplyDeleteEveryone can learn if we can figure out how to teach them. ~Marc Gold
ReplyDelete@Marc Gold, "if we can figure out how to teach them" exactly WHAT? How to follow instructions? How to not be mind-numbingly stupid around dangerous chemicals? WHAT?
ReplyDelete@introvert: that quotation bothers me, too. I think it's the idea that teaching is something we (can) do to students, and that we will succeed if we just try hard enough for long enough. I'd prefer to think of teaching and learning as complementary, cooperative endeavors, that require teacher and student to meet somewhere in the middle, with maybe one reaching out more than the other at various points in the process (or perhaps in particular teacher/student relationships), but with both responsible for maintaining the relationship, and the process, as a whole (sort of like a good marriage, or any other productive human relationship).
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are extreme cases where the first task is for the teacher to reach the student, at otherwise jump-start the process. Annie Sullivan, for instance, had to figure out how to communicate with Helen Keller, and to overcome some psychological resistance as well as lack of understanding as she did so. But that relationship ultimately worked because Keller figured out in a relatively short time what Sullivan was trying to do, and, once that had happened, was an extremely cooperative, active learner. If Sullivan had kept trying for years, with absolutely no sign that Keller understood and/or was willing to cooperate, I'd say that she was wasting her considerable talents, and would have better served humanity at large by moving on to a more able and/or cooperative student than by continuing to believe against all evidence that she could reach Keller. In that situation, it might also have made sense to switch teachers, on the theory that some teachers can reach some difficult students more effectively than others, and that there's nothing wrong with trying a new pairing.
So maybe if we make the "we" collective, rather than individual, the quotation would make more sense? Also, your "teach them what?" question makes a lot of sense; not everyone can or should learn everything, and matching talents/abilities/deficits and appropriate educational goals is a big part of the process.
There's this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://failbook.failblog.org/2011/09/22/funny-facebook-fails-weep-for-the-future/
Hollywood tells me that all students are teachable.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, anyone reading this blog knows the answer to this question. :o).
Intercourse the Doppler effect: that student's real problem was the inability to hold two ideas simultaneously in mind. Didn't Doonesbury make fun of Ron Reagan's inability to do that? Regard how what he learned while majoring in economics affects us today.
ReplyDeleteThe short answer to your question is "yes." Marc Gold is full of hooey: I'm not a special ed teacher, I have no training as one, and I never volunteered to be one. I'm sure he'd also say that, "the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask that fouled you up." I no longer believe that: I've been asked "Is this going to be on the test?" too many times now.
Many students have an unteachable attitude: the put all their energy into blaming the professor for everything out of habit, they sincerely believe they are entitled to hand holding, without with they cannot learn, they sincerely believe their prof should have to do everything and they do nothing and they will still learn. Things like that. Those students are not unteachable---they are simply in need of an attitude adjustment. That adjustment may still come, and they will emerge as full fledged learners, even the best in the class! I've seen it happen and it humbles me and almost makes me like to be here.
ReplyDeleteThen there are others, much sadder cases. Some of the kids I see really do not seem to have the grey matter to do the thinking involved, to process complex ideas and complete complex tasks. And sometimes these students try very hard, but they still cannot do it. I would classify those students as unteachable---at least it is impossible for them to learn at a certain level.
@Marc Gold Pardon, but that type of single-sentence appeal of authority--argumentum ad verecundiam--is the type of closed minded certainty that I was trying to suggest!
ReplyDeleteI've been asked "Is this going to be on the test?" too many times now.
ReplyDeleteFrod, the correct answer to that is, "That would be like telling you what you were getting for Christmas."
@introvert: Some of the questions on your list are painfully thoughtless. Among the most egregious examples is: "I didn't come to class, did we miss anything important?"
ReplyDeleteI no longer believe "there is no such thing as a dumb question" because I’ve had students who would bombard me with a fusillade of off-topic and often remarkably thoughtless questions, which among other things would demonstrate clearly that they hadn't done the reading. This kind of behavior reminds me of the series of “whys” asked by two-year olds. Carl Sagan speculated that this is an attempt to control adult behavior, with no information content involved or sought.
Several posts above mention the unteachability of students with closed minds, who are determined not to learn anything. Whenever one mouths off at me, I’m reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s observation, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt” (also attributed to Mark Twain and Confucius).
@Frod, first, it's not my list. It belongs to Frank Lanzafame.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I'm sorry, I was trying to inject a bit of humor but you seem a bit down about the whole stupid questions thing.
Ol' Frank's list there is something I provide to my own students. Perhaps you should provide it to yours.
@introvert: Don't worry, I get annoyed whenever given glib advice so inappropriate it only shows the inexperience of the advisor, such as from Marc Gold. I suppose giving out this list to students would be better than smacking them in the head with a 2x4: for starters, it'd break a lot fewer 2x4s.
ReplyDelete