: 100 startling things you don’t know about Canadian universities.).The Professors write that: "Something new and nasty is going on with university students these days, and there’s more trouble in store.”
The article goes on to state: "The authors blame societal permissiveness, child-centred educational and parenting styles, overwhelming materialism, video games, sexualized media and the guilt of two-income families. But they also have a deep sense of entitlement,” the book says. “They often expect deadlines to be altered, want their explanations accepted without confirmation and try to insist that course requirements fit their availability to do work. Not all students fit this description, but the general student population has changed."
"The entitlement generation is killing the joy of teaching, they say, but students aren’t the only challenge for universities. There are also declining admission standards, combined with high-school grade inflation; interfering helicopter parents, who hover over their children; stiff competition for dwindling numbers of Canadian students and even tougher competition for international students; growing academic fraud; and confusion about the university mandate and weak leadership, the book says."
FULL STORY:
- Penny from Prince George
Very interesting to see someone point out a problem with "student-centered" practices. They get stuffed down my throat so much that I feel like I'm being fed religious dogma. It's refreshing to see that not everyone has bought into them 100%.
ReplyDelete"Then, as I was saying, our youth should be trained from the first in a stricter system, for if amusements become lawless, and the youths themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-conducted and virtuous citizens [...] Thus educated, they will invent for themselves any lesser rules which their predecessors have altogether neglected.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean?
I mean such things as these:--when the young are to be silent before their elders; how they are to show respect to them by standing and making them sit; what honour is due to parents; what garments or shoes are to be worn; the mode of dressing the hair; deportment and manners in general. You would agree with me?
Yes.
But there is, I think, small wisdom in legislating about such matters,-- I doubt if it is ever done; nor are any precise written enactments about them likely to be lasting."
-Plato
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint." ~attributed to Hesiod (8th century B.C.)
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this issue generally, it being the beginning of the year and all, and I've been setting up syllabi. I think it depends on how much pedagogy depends on authority of the teacher, and I'm not sure how much that is.
ReplyDeleteLearning is hard work, and one thing that helps the student do the work, and remember the material, is the numinous authority of the teacher, and the superstitious reverence in which - ideally - the student holds him/her.
I've always favoured, in theory, the collaborative method of teaching - we're all here to learn, I'm just farther along the road than you are and here to lend you a hand, sort of thing - but in retrospect I think that method is also firmly based in respect for the teacher's authority, and it only works if that respect is there.
Now that I think about it in this light, I wonder how much issues that are (to me) apparently irrelevant to student learning - I don't care when they get things in, so long as they do; I don't care if they show up so long as it's understood that I won't go over things again - are actually important as a reinforcement of the respect for the teacher's authority that is the basis of the pedagogical relationship.
At any rate it's better than Plato's other suggestion for the basis of the pedagogical relationship. Erotic? Are you kidding me? I've got 150 students in one of my classes, how much energy does he think I have?
AMEN! We keep hearing that we're supposed to focus more and more and more and more and more and more on helping students to learn based on catering to their specific needs. At no time is there ever any discussion on whether this is beneficial to students or how to help students also learn how to learn in other modes that aren't necessarily comfortable for them, or that aren't catering to their specific desires and needs. Just because they LIKE watching films and garnering information from a movie, doesn't mean it's the best way for them to learn. Giving them MORE movies, or more group collaboration isn't necessarily helping them to succeed in a work world that won't allow for their unique ways of learning.
ReplyDelete@Merely...
ReplyDeleteyes! I apparently scare the crap out of students. They respect me. This is nowhere truer than at my new school where nobody has heard that I'm not really that scary yet.
I suspect this comes from where I learned to teach--I started teaching karate classes when I was 14. :) I apparently still project "the teacher can kick your ass now stfu" without really meaning to. :)
In the end, this means I get to have a little more fun without worrying about killing their respect, but it also means that I have absolutely no idea how other teachers should learn to command that respect (and I also think things would be 100% better if students had it to begin with for all their teachers).
I think of student-centered teaching practices as the ones that demand more of the student than passively absorbing information, not as the ones that let the students run the asylum. So things like collaborative projects, in-class writing exercises and draft workshops, and breakout discussions actually mean you can't hide. They're things I collect, ask for peer-grading on, and/or expect them to be able to discuss immediately. I don't care if they show up or not for these, but they aren't going to earn credit for them if they don't, as opposed to straight-up lecturing where they can skip it all and borrow notes.
ReplyDeleteMA, I also think that letting students get things in whenever they want is hideous-- a huge disservice to your colleagues and your students. First of all, my students need to understand that the time I set aside for grading and the contract I have with them for returning things within a week mean that things may not be late. Sorry, I have a research career, an institutional service burden, and a personal life, and I refuse to be grading on their whims. Second of all, come on. Unless they are going to be college professors, nobody who hires them is going to let them get things in whenever they want. When other people are depending on your work in order that they may complete theirs (and yes, grading is part of my work), deadlines matter.
Thank you all for validating my strict deadlines and tough makeups rules. Some of my colleagues claim to be relaxed about these things and frown on my authoritarian approach. But they don't seem so relaxed when they're swamped with last-minute submissions the day before grades are due.
ReplyDelete@Abandoning Eden: I see your Plato and Hesiod and raise you Sumer (3rd millennium BCE). Cuneiform tablets record the world's earliest school assignments and also the world's earliest rant about how the current students lack a work ethic and respect for the ummias (proffies). (Sorry, that book is at work and I'm at home, so I can't give you a quotation.)
In ancient Ur students who were late or had bad handwriting were caned. Those were the days.
I'm not sure I buy this claim of an entitled generation. I've had students try and spin me a line many times in the past, but I have literally had none who did so repeatedly after I made it clear the first time that I stick rigidly to my stated policies.
ReplyDeletePushing at boundaries is natural, especially for the young. Part of our job is to hold firm.
I think of "student-centered" teaching practices as being those which are in the best interests of the students both as a collective and adjusting to the individual where appropriate. It has nothing to do with letting them run the show.
F&T - I should have explained further. I really don't care, for myself, when they hand things in, but I do know that they need deadlines so that they can pace their terms (otherwise they'll all hand everything in at the last minute, which screws all their other courses). And I do also know that one of the things they need to acquire is time management skills. So I have deadlines, and I assess a penalty (%/day) for overdue papers, and I do deduct that amount from overdue papers. I know that some of them will calculate that they'll do better by handing in a much better paper 2 days late, even with the penalty, and I am happy to let them make that calculation. But what I want them to do is to see that it IS a calculation; it's not just a toss-the-paper-over-the-transom-and-hope-I-don't-notice-it's-late. The extra time will come at a price.
ReplyDeleteBut, for myself, I don't take it as an insult when things come in late or students don't show up for class. They will learn much less from a paper they frantically scrabbled together in 24 hours without sleep than from one they took the time to think through over 3 weeks; but that's their loss, not mine. They will learn less if they don't come to class; but that's their loss, too. I encourage them (via deadlines and participation grades) to do the things that will result in their learning more, and getting the most out of the class. But they are adults (notionally), and it's their business, not mine, what they get out of the class, and how much they learn there. I provide the opportunity to learn some cool stuff; it's up to them to take it.
My sense is that "student-centered" can mean a lot of things, from the very effective active-learning/engagement techniques that F&T describes to the "learning styles" hoohah that is now widely discredited (yes, they need to do their best to learn various things in various ways, and earn the grades -- and hence choose the majors, careers/vocations, etc. -- that reflect their strengths and weaknesses).
ReplyDeleteIt can also refer, in the eyes of some students, parents, and administrators, to the "customer service" model of education, which leads to the "learn in your pajamas and/or with a baby on your lap and a toddler at your knee" vision of online education that dominates the ads for such offerings. When my university first started offering online classes, we had to make it very clear that, while the classes did not meet at a fixed time, they were *not* self-paced; student work was due at regular intervals. This is, as Merely points out, the right approach for the great majority of students. But it's not what some of them envisioned, and I got some complaints about it on student evaluations, most often from the students who had the least real-world experience and the worst time-management skills (the people who were actually trying to juggle a baby, toddler, and job as well as my class were much more appreciative, even if they were occasionally late, and lost a point or two in the process).
One thing that puzzles me: as far as I can tell, the people who would like us to be more "student-centered" in the most indulgent, personalize-every-lesson-for-every-snowflake-so-they-can-all-achieve way often seem to be the same people who are complaining that college costs too much, and we don't teach enough students. Don't they realize that personalization is time-consuming and hence expensive, and that moving more students through more quickly will require more standardization and less personalization (and a certain amount of sink-or-swim/if they fail, they fail mentality)? Or am I missing something, and are these two groups more distinct than I think? My instinct is that the apparent contradiction is often resolved, albeit unconsciously, by the myth of the teacher as inspirational, 18-hour-day working (and of course non-unionized) super(wo)man/saint. Of course such teachers do exist, but there aren't enough to fill all the schools and colleges (and they do have a tendency to burn out at a rate somewhat higher than those who strive for some sort of reasonable work/life balance).