Yes, it was a miraculous morning here as I sorted through 14 projects, each one lacking enough skill or joie de vivre to pass my incredibly high standards.
- 9 of the 14 failed to meet the requirement of "include data from 4 different sources," written on the assignment sheet.
- 10 of the 14 failed to alphabetize the sources, addressed in the first line of the assignment sheet.
- 8 of the 14 failed to start their entries with an "evaluative comment about the usefulness of this source," state on the assignment sheet and discussed MINUTES before we started the project.
- 10 of the 14 failed to name their attached file in the standard format for this class and this department: "Lastname-Research7-Classname3301.doc." Most came in like this "Firstname.doc."
- 6 of the 14 included sources from magazines listed on the assignment sheet as: "Non-credible sources. Choose something from a reputable journal off of list #2" - also on the sheet.)
- 10 of the 14 failed to include a rationale for how the source in question relates, complements, or rebuts to another source in their project. It's supposed to be the last sentence of each entry. The 4 who did have a sentence there said things like: "This is another source," and "This is an older source."
When it all got totaled up, nobody passed. I know I can't flunk everyone at semester end, but how much of this are we supposed to tolerate.
All of this is simply "reading the instructions." None of this was hard or new. It's all stuff we've done in class on previous projects. All of it is stuff I say out loud, include on handouts, send out in emails. I can look right fucking at them and say, "Alphabetize your final copy," and they will not, almost willfully, except that's not possible. They are willful about nothing.
Honestly, I think this sets you up for a great learning moment: hand out the failed papers, then say we are going to do this again, together. Spend 20 minutes of class going over the instructions -- because half of college kids these days are fucking morons who need the information nailed into their heads with a goddamned hammer.
ReplyDeleteYou'll fall a day behind in lecture, but it needs to be done. They'll be much more careful in the future.
That's such a good idea, Academic Monkey. I've been stewing here all morning and never thought of how I could use this. Thanks so much!
DeleteSorry AM, I think this is a terrible idea. The whole point of failing the entire class is to reinforce the point that they must follow the goddamn directions! For some reason students think instructions are optional rather than required and don't bother to follow them. By going over the directions with them in class, you're reinforcing the idea that they can't do it themselves, and that they will be allowed a second chance when they screw up. So if you really MUST allow them a do-over, make them actually take their OWN TIME to sit down and read the tea-partying assignment sheet!
DeleteI think it's a great idea - IF the original marks stand (or they can only gain half marks if they MUST gain any marks) - and IF they need to have done an OK job on this assignment to get to the next stage.
DeleteI'd make it clear how disappointed you are in them, then emphasise the role of the assignment in their skills development, and make the reworking of it a favour you are doing them...
I think it's a great idea - IF the original marks stand (or they can only gain half marks if they MUST gain any marks) - and IF they need to have done an OK job on this assignment to get to the next stage.
DeleteI'd make it clear how disappointed you are in them, then emphasise the role of the assignment in their skills development, and make the reworking of it a favour you are doing them...
good for you
ReplyDeleteNice work Rich. If they can't meet the simplest items on a checklist, then they'll never work up to the ability to do something substantial, like write the damn paper. Lemme buy you a beer.
ReplyDeleteI recently had a student come up to me to ask why he got an F on his "Hamster Behavior Journal article Summary" paper. An assignment that has more pages of instructions than the actual paper will have. He turned in a peper. He turned in a Journal article. Never the two did meet. He did not summarize anything from the article. No hypothesis, not methods, no results, no analysis, no application (all of this spelled out in detail in the syllabus). He said "So I didn't do one little thing, and I got an F? But I wrote a paper." Face palm.
ReplyDeleteI respect a professor's rights to grade his/her own way. But the stats in this post - if reported to me on my campus - would make me wonder why these students are not getting all of these things wrong. It's my experience that students are very good at following directions, as long as those directions are clear. With this many students doing the assignment in an alternate way, I'd suggest the original professor might want to review his/her assignment sheet. It's clearly not getting the job done.
ReplyDeleteI see cases like this every week, and it's surprising to me how often the students are right.
Good luck. I'd certainly encourage this instructor to teach extra lessons if his message is being missed by the majority of his students.
While I agree that sometimes instructions are not clear, my experience has been the opposite: students simply do not bother to read them or don't understand the instructions because they weren't paying attention. And when you ask "Does anyone have any questions?" they'll usually sit there looking blankly at nothing. Students are NOT good at following directions, even simple ones like:
Delete"On the top left of the page, write your (a) full name, (b) the class name, (c) the assignment name, and (d) the date"
I'll invariably get a first name, sometimes no name, no class name, a date here and there, and never all on the left side of the page (sometimes on the right).
Forget if the list is something longer than 4 items, because THEN, they don't bother. They may get instructions right for paperwork that their parents help them with, but never for assignments. In most cases, half the students lose the assignment sheets and ask why I haven't posted them online yet, or haven't read the assignment sheets, even when I go through them in class.
Yeah, this makes me think you haven't taught in a while. Students suck at following directions. And not because the directions are unclear, but because their educators (from elementary school through college) rarely strictly enforce those directions. I can guarantee that after a failing grade, Rich's students will suddenly be able to read and understand his so-called "unclear" directions.
DeleteStudents do not ignore instructions because instructions are unclear. Students ignore instructions because students are lazy. Every time I give a paper assignment it contains a required length. And every time at least 75% of that class fails to write a paper of that length. It would be difficult to be unclear about "5 pages."
DeleteI think there's a selection bias here in the difference between A.D., C.C. and C.i.T.: I suspect that the cases which actually make it to the Dean level probably have a higher substance:bullshit ratio than what instructors see on a daily basis. As far as clarity goes, I'll stand by my grades as supported by the assignments as written, but I've had colleagues who didn't give out written assignments (and colleagues who didn't give out detailed and/or written syllabi, but that's a discussion for another day) or who gave out very vague ones, and were just begging for grade challenges.
DeleteI had a similar situation.
ReplyDeleteClearly stated on the assignment: Provide a handout for the class when you do your presentation.
Percentage handout counted for this assignment: 10%
Number of times I offered to copy handouts before presentations began: 3
Handouts provided: 0
Credit for handouts: 0
To a person they gave up a full letter grade.
I've had the same experience, except with including a Works Cited/Reference page on their handout. They always act UBER surprised, and then ANGRY when I deduct points from their grade for not including (a) a handout; or (b) a works cited page for their handout. Then it's apparently my fault for not reminding them one more time (when I've already reminded them 8 times), and it's on the checklist of things to make sure they do in their assignment, and on the rubric I provide them ahead of time, and on the board when I explain the assignment, and online where I've posted guidelines for the assignment.
DeleteI know of what you speak, S3
I was marking a paper yesterday and at the bottom was written the instruction I gave in class "Put the title of the book in italics" and WAS the title of the book in italics in the paper? You know it was not. How does that even happen?
ReplyDeleteI'm a college graduate and honestly, if I was forced to obey those 10 commandments in order to pass your assignment, I wouldn't bother writing it in the first place. I mean, you told them what they should have written in the first and the last sentence - where's the creativity in that? Rules should serve to make things easier instead of complicating them.
ReplyDelete3 sensible rules (or if you prefer to call them "instructions") are more than enough. More than that makes the whole assignment more about following someone else's rules than about writing interesting content.
Don't forget that too much rules kills creativity. Do you think Mark Zuckerberg would have followed your instructions if he was your student? I think not.
I accept that, Irena. However, this particular document, a longitudinal project that includes a technical annotated bibliography has a form that editors and scholars require, including a very specific closing sentence that puts a source into relation with other sources from the project.
DeleteIf they ignored that, their project fails, not just for me, but for funding, publication, etc.
Oh please, do you think these students' future bosses care about their precious "creativity" when they ask for reports on particular topics? When we have specific instructions, it isn't because we want students to jump through hoops (although there is value in that as well). It's because we actually know what we're doing and students don't. Our instructions are to prompt the right kind of thinking and have it presented in a format standard for our fields.
DeleteThe creativity argument is a red herring anyhow. All art has structure. Without it, robots following random patterns could create meaningful art. Creativity is what artists do within a particular form, not the absence of it.
But please, refuse to do the assignment. You will still fail, but at least I don't have to waste time actually reading a paper.
I'm not refusing anything. :) I have finished college and I want to offer another point of view and help this professor to understand why young people often don't listen to professors.
DeleteDo you know what you sound like when you say that you know what you're doing and your students don't? You might as well say to your students that you're smart and they're stupid. I'm sure they will take it as a precious life lesson and grow from it.
If you want people to listen, you need to make it about them, not about you.
Times have changed and nowadays success is more about breaking the old rules than about following them.
Btw. what do you mean by "right way of thinking"? There is no such thing as a right or wrong way of thinking. What's right for you may be wrong for someone else and the other way around.
Honestly, we don't really need your view. We actually have experience teaching. Honestly, I don't care WHY young people don't follow directions. The fact is when they don't follow them, I fail their assignment. Usually the problem fixes itself after that. I don't need to connect to them, I don't need to make it about them, I don't need to break the rules. The classroom is not a democracy. I outline clear guidelines and clear consequences, and follow through with them. It works, students learn more, they become more responsible in the process. That's a life lesson in and of itself.
DeleteIn the discipline I teach in, I AM smart and the students ARE stupid. We went to graduate school for 5-10 years to learn our subject, and some of us have dedicated our careers to furthering our knowledge of it. Outside of that context, I can't make any claims about our relative intelligences. However, we get paid because we know more than students about our topics, and it's pure hubris on the part of students who think otherwise.
By "right way of thinking" I mean supporting claims with evidence rather than putting forth baseless opinions, and following the standards of the discipline I'm teaching. In scholarship, there is absolutely right ways and wrong ways of thinking. These do change over the years as theories and methods are refined, but again, these changes are made based on evidence.
...These do change over the years as theories and methods are refined, but again, these changes are made based on evidence.
DeleteUnless we're talking about theology, of course!
(Sorry, couldn't resist. I know all you folks at state universities in the U.S. don't have theology department colleagues. But I enjoy taking a few jabs for the rest of us.)
Well, theology programs are based on evidence, just evidence that never changes. If the evidence doesn't change, then the theories and methods can't either!
DeleteMy deep frustration this past job season is that there seemed to be so many t-t theology jobs that I was possibly qualified for...if I left my scholarly self behind and focused only on my content knowledge.
Oh, hell, I shouldn't engage, but just this once ...
Deletea) "Do you know what you sound like when you say that you know what you're doing and your students don't? " - let me guess: do I sound as if I know what I'm doing, since I've been studying and teaching this subject for years, and my students don't because they haven't - and haven't even been doing the readings or paying attention in this class this term? Oh, no: apparently
b) " You might as well say to your students that you're smart and they're stupid". You are displaying a very common confusion between stupidity and ignorance. The students may or may not be smart (or stupid); I have no idea. What they all are, however, is ignorant; that's why they're taking the class. They don't know the stuff I know. That's why they're paying me to teach them. So when I say I know things they don't, it is a) no more than the truth and b) what I'm being paid for.
c) "If you want people to listen, you need to make it about them, not about you" - actually, when I'm teaching I don't "make it" about them OR about me. It's about the subject matter of the course. Which they can learn, or not. I'm here to help them learn it. They can accept that help, or not. If they don't learn it, they fail. But it's not about me, and it's not about them either.
d) "Times have changed and nowadays success is more about breaking the old rules than about following them. " - sometimes. However you have to know the rules, and when you're breaking them, and why you're choosing to break these rules but not those rules. For example. That's what the class is there to teach them.
e) "Btw. what do you mean by "right way of thinking"? There is no such thing as a right or wrong way of thinking. What's right for you may be wrong for someone else and the other way around." - well then, there obviously isn't any point taking any classes, or getting a degree, because we're all right all the time anyway so we have nothing to learn. I'm not sure why, with that frame of reference, Irena, you bothered to spend your money getting a degree.
Hear, hear, CiT!
DeleteI am off the charts tired of hearing how students feel offended to be led by the hand (nose) by instructions. If it is so offensive, why don't you try FOLLOWING them in the first place?
If you had followed the first instruction of argument -- know what you're talking about! -- you might have scanned some of the previous posts here, Irene. There you would have discovered post after post of instructors lamenting how long syllabi/instruction sheets have gotten because of so many "But you didn't tell us ..." whine-fests.
CiT is spot on. The most difficult lesson I had to UNlearn after college was that bosses didn't give a rat's gluteus about hearing what I thought; they cared I did what I was told.
And step away from your Zuckerman/Jobs/Edison/Einstein comparisons. For every true "break the mold" visionary, there are a 1000 lame-ass Uncle Lennys -- the wastoid who comes to you at every family gathering with his latest "next Pet Rock" strike-it-rich scheme that never pays off in anything more than filling his garage with a gross of something he can't sell to anyone.
Not for nothing, you know what Zuckerman/Jobs/Edison/Einstein did not do?
Whine about how they were the next Zuckerman/Jobs/Edison/Einstein .. they went out and did it.
(PS - My students whine when I tell them real-life stories unless I can some how connect it to the vapid 'controversy-of-the-week.' I have actually been dinged on evaluations for trying to connect my "work experiences" to teaching the discipline.)
Yep. CiT and MA rock on this topic. Irena is pretty much "pwnd" here, as the internet generation would say.
DeleteI find it funny that half the students complain that the instructions aren't clear and the other half find the instructions too tedious to even read.
Curmudgeon in Training.
Delete"By "right way of thinking" I mean supporting claims with evidence rather than putting forth baseless opinions, and following the standards of the discipline I'm teaching. In scholarship, there is absolutely right ways and wrong ways of thinking."
I agree that there is a right way of doing an assignment. As in, you should follow the suggested topic, make sure the assignment has the proper format, and support every claim with a reference.
But there is absolutely no such thing as a right way of THINKING. You can tell people what to do. If the dog wants to get a treat, it has to do a trick first. But you can't really tell them what to think. A student can follow all the rules and get an A without doing any real thinking. Thinking and following the rules are two entirely different things.
Amen! and Hear, Hear! to Merely and CiT. One of the the things the trophy generation seems to have particular trouble with is the distinction between stupidity and ignorance/neophyte status.
DeleteAlso, I'm no theologian, but it's worth pointing out that there are not only differences but fashions in theological/Biblical interpretation, even in the most supposedly-conservative denominations. To point out one very obvious example, the tradition of treating the King James Bible as *the* reliable translation of the Bible can be no more than 600 years old, while Christianity has been around for a little over 3 times that long. Or, to take a more recent example, there are very few contemporary American Christians of any denominational stripe who would argue that the Bible justifies slaveholding, but there were quite a few, of varying denominations, in the 1860s, and still a few making that argument, or at least advancing Biblical justifications for segregation, a hundred years after that. Ideas do change, and even facts change (the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has had some pretty significant effects on Biblical interpretation for those open to change), but some denominations are more comfortable than others acknowledging that fact.
Aware and Scared.
DeleteWho said I was offended? I didn't take anything personally. I used myself as an example of why students don't want to follow the rules.
I meant to say that too much rules takes out all the fun from the assignment and it would be too boring to write about, so that's why I wouldn't do it.
"There you would have discovered post after post of instructors lamenting how long syllabi/instruction sheets have gotten because of so many "But you didn't tell us ..." whine-fests."
Do you actually think that the students don't follow the rules because they have listening problems? No. First thing they'll do is they will try doing it easier way which means purposely disregarding some rules and trying to get away with it. If this fails, only then they will do it properly.
"If you had followed the first instruction of argument -- know what you're talking about! --you might have scanned some of the previous posts here, Irene."
If you had actually bothered to read my name before using it to get my attention, you would have seen it's IrenA and not Irene. Different spelling and different pronounciation.
A student can follow all the rules and get an A without doing any real thinking. Thinking and following the rules are two entirely different things.
DeleteUmm, not really. Or at least not always. Imagine the assignment is to analyze the characterization of Prospero or Lear. You can follow all the rules for formatting and citation and the one or two paragraphs of instruction specific to the assignment, but still write nonsense. You can't get an A on an assignment like that without thinking. To get an A, you would either be synthesizing information from secondary sources - a high-order cognitive task even if the research is somewhat simple - or you will be really thinking about the source itself, using thinking skills learned earlier in the course or through other life experiences. Preferably, you would be doing both. Depending on the level and the context, doing only one or the other might not be enough for an A or even a B.
I meant to say that too much rules takes out all the fun from the assignment and it would be too boring to write about, so that's why I wouldn't do it.
DeleteAre you freaking serious?
You think the focus of the class is for you to have FUN??? You just ignore that which deem "boring"? Wow. Just wow.
Oh you will really enjoy your first employment performance review.
Do you actually think that the students don't follow the rules because they have listening problems?
No ... I think it is because their zeal to "make it easier" comes across as a lack of comprehension.
And, snowy, the majority of your classmates do not "do it properly" after having their half-assed early attempts called out.
Go back just last week, when Stella explained how she stopped giving feedback because it became apparent that students were simply ignoring it.
Do you get that?
They call us INSTRUCTORS for a reason ... we instruct. When those instructions are ignored wholesale, students demonstrate an utter disregard for their own success. Like was discussed in that post, if you skip over the "unfun" exercises at the gym, do you complain when you leave "unbuff"?
If you had actually bothered to read my name before using it to get my attention, you would have seen it's IrenA and not Irene.
Ooh, ouch ... got me.
Horror of horrors, I misread a letter of your pseudonym.
So, can I wreak havoc on the dozens of students who have misused/misspelled/mispronounced MY name?
One teacher ... 30+ students. Yeah, I can imagine the "offense" you express when your instructor makes the scanning mistake and calls you Irene instead of Irena.
But I bet the instructor spells "F" correctly next to your name on the final grading sheet.
First thing they'll do is they will try doing it easier way which means purposely disregarding some rules and trying to get away with it. If this fails, only then they will do it properly.
DeleteThe first part of this is, in my experience, often correct. The second part, as several others have pointed out, less often so.
I suppose enough people have piled on Irena Friday, but here's one more.... You sound like an arrogant student, or at least like some people I've encountered in adult education who say things like "You have five minutes to teach me something. If you can't do that, it's your problem" (yes, I've heard something very close). What's magical about 3? Most things I am required do do in life have instructions, and there are more than three. There were lots of instructions when I was applying for university, for graduation, for a car loan, for a mortgage.... You might think that some instructions are pointless, but I don't think there are many professors that give instructions they don't believe are useful. I ask my students to put their last names and student at the top right corner of the front page of their exams, to write in pen, and to double-space all answers. That's three and about half of my students miss one of them.
DeleteAnd the idea that guidelines are stifflers of poor sensitive souls' creativity is nonsense. Listen to a some masses written for actual liturgical use: Mozart, Hadyn, Bach, Palestrina.... There were lots of rules they had to follow. Look at genres within poetry: tons of rules, great results. You simply do not know what you are talking about.
"A student can follow all the rules and get an A without doing any real thinking. Thinking and following the rules are two entirely different things."
DeleteUmm, ever hear of the subject of mathematics?
If not, have you got change for $5? How 'bout $50?
"I suppose enough people have piled on Irena Friday, but here's one more..."
DeleteJeez, it's been like watching the cats play with a mouse. Only this time, I'm rooting for the cats!
If you don't want to follow directions, by all means start a billion-dollar internet phenomenon. Then wonder why the IRS comes knocking just because you didn't follow some of their silly directions.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI offered you another point of view so take advantage of it.
ReplyDeleteTry to present every project and assignment as a real life story.
The best professor I ever had always used real life examples when explaining something. He had a lot of working experience before he started teaching.
Here's how he was explaining using written templates in MS Word:
"When you start working for a company and they ask you to send a circular e-mail for them, you DO NOT write it. You find a company's official template that is already made. You DO NOT change it. You do not change any single part of it. I know a guy who was working in ____ (one of te biggest multinational companies in my country) and he tried to change the font of the official template before sending the circular email. The boss saw him doing it and she slapped him in front of everyone and fired him on the spot. You NEVER change a company's template. Ever. At least if you don't want to get fired."
90% of people passed this exam (this was only a tiny part of it). This is how he explained everything.
This is only one example but you get what i mean. If you want to make people listen you have to tell it as a story and make it dramatic. Then at least the smart students will get it and the other ones... well, you can take the horse to the water but you can't make it drink.
I find it hard to believe that all of students are both lazy and stupid.
I completed my first undergraduate degree in the late 1980s, my second in the early 1990s, my masters in 1998, and my doctorate last year. In the pursuit of those various degrees, I had teachers that inspired and teachers that bored. The one thing that they all had in common was that they all had some bit of knowledge that I did not, and it was my responsibilty to obtain it.
DeleteNot their responsibility - mine.
If they chose to tell entertaining stories, that made class a pleasure. If they chose to drone, it made class tedious. But their teaching style was their prerogative, and my decisions to complete the necessary work were mine.
I can understand the argument that entertaining classes are easier to enjoy, and learn from, than boring classes. But at the end of the day, the teachers are there to teach, not entertain.
And if students can't be bothered to read simple (although multi-step) instructions, that's a problem. In my field, if a professional chooses to skip some of the instructions, someone could end up dead. There is validity to "breaking the rules", but as others have stated one must have a firm grasp on the rules and why they should be broken first. Just breaking rules for the sake of doing so isn't a productive starting point.
Every student is not a unique precious snowflake - the ultimae responsibility for their education rests with them.
IrenA
DeleteYou say you are a college graduate. That might be, but it doesn't make you an expert on post-secondary teaching. Your suggestions are a great way to massage student egos, but they don't really have any other pedagogical merit. The fact that you think you know more than people with graduate degrees and years of experience just reinforces for us the depth of your ignorance.
It's very easy for students to write about themselves, this is true, especially because so much pre-university education is focused on students's self esteem. But a lot of the most recent educational research has shown that focussing on self esteem doesn't actually result in the best student outcomes, and that in fact students who are challenged and who have to develop curiosity and persistence are more likely to have academic success. University classes are about learning NEW things, not regurgitating the same old pap.
There's other research (and common sense) that says complicated subjects are only interesting if you invest the time and mental effort to grasp their complexities. Any professor can make a subject superficially entertaining, but that's not teaching. If I teach you a series of concepts that mean you can have a deep understanding of a topic, it will become interesting in a whole new way.
Since you were obviously a business student, you got through your degree without having that experience. I feel sorry for you.
Hear, hear! We hear so much about "you didn't teach me; whine, whine, whine," when they should be angry with themselves and say, "I didn't choose to learn; idiot, idiot, idiot!"
DeleteHere's another (former) undergrad perspective:
DeleteWhen a professor asked for an annotated bibliography (as Razorback Rich seems to have asked), I wrote a freaking annotated bibliography. According to the directions. And more often than not, the "directions" weren't even included in a handy handout: the prof expected us to go to the library, pull the MLA/Chicago/CSE handbook from the shelves, and follow that.
It was not hard to do. I didn't need a "story" to convince me that it's worthwhile to format sources in a consistent, recognizable way. It's just a sensible practice for any decent scholar.
And like A&S, I don't really see the connection between not following directions and Zuckerberg et al. Anyone starting a business has to comply with guidelines at various levels. Dropping out of college does not count as disregarding directions either, unless you want to put familial expectations in the same box as directions for formatting a bibliography assignment. I guess I'm not enough of a creative free thinker to make that connection.
If you want to make people listen you have to tell it as a story and make it dramatic....
ReplyDeleteWell, Razerback can use this incident as the "story" next time he teaches this assignment.
I'm seeing more and more complete ignoring of explicit instructions, not (yet) from a majority of students in any one class, but in some cases from a substantial minority. Like Rich, I teach a class that begins to introduce students to writing in their disciplines, and so asks them to do some things many of them haven't done before (including reading scholarly articles and accurately picking out information like research questions, methods, evidence, conclusions, etc.). The scientists are, for the most part, pretty compliant, or at least do their best, but the mixed classes (and some of the science classes) often have some strong resisters who just want to write a "research paper" like they've written before, and ignore any part of any assignment, small or large, that steers them into unfamiliar territory. I think part of the problem is that I teach a class with the prefix "English" -- the last core class, in most cases, that they need to take and pass to graduate -- and by this point the non-English majors believe that they know all they will ever need to know about "English" classes. A few of them actually have to take the class twice or even three times before they finally twig to the fact that it's a bit different from other English classes they've taken, and they probably should do things like attend class and follow directions if they hope to pass.
ReplyDeleteIrena, as a bit of free-thinker myself, I'd love to have you in my classes. But it's worth pointing out that in some fields (and it sounds like Rich's is one of them), there are very specific forms that professionals need to know, and follow. And in most fields, it's a good idea to master some of the customary ways of doing things before breaking the mold in creative and productive (rather than simply puzzling, lazy, or self-indulgent) ways. Job and grad school applications, grant proposals, responses to requests for proposals, etc., etc. will all be discarded, unread, if they don't follow certain basic guidelines, and professionals (or, for those lucky enough to have underlings, their underlings -- which often means recent college graduates) spend a lot of time making sure that they conform to such picayune details. It's not fun; it's not always, in the grand scheme of things, a great use of anyone's time, but it's part of life, and it's certainly appropriate for Rich to point that out, in word and deed, to his students. I'm not a proponent of flunking people solely on the basis of such details (though some proffies do, and can cite the reasons above for doing so), but it sounds like Rich's students also neglected to include content that was key to the assignment. That's grounds for failure in anybody's book.
Um....anyone else from Gen X and before?
ReplyDeleteI learned to follow directions in Elementary School, didn't you?
And most of those things on the checklist? Learned by the end of Junior High. You too?
So why do we have a snowflake recent college grad whining about how this SIMPLE SHIT is too boring to do?
Because she, like her peers, probably didn't do any of it and got gifted with a degree she didn't really earn.
But she's insistent she's smart. Smarter than everyone here! Not.
Lazy. Ignorant. Entitled.
Worth repeating
DeleteLazy. Ignorant. Entitled.
Also Gen-X, and I'm with you. I used to tell our boys to make their millions while they still knew everything, that that was a temporary condition.
DeleteFolks, this member of Generation W 1/2, also called Generation Jones (the very first generation to be told, "You missed the '60s, kid"), finds your grousing about the younger generation, in the way that old people do, to be a sobering experience.
DeleteTop-end Gen X here!
ReplyDeleteIrenA's contributions to this discussion replicate an all-too-familiar feature of broader discussions of education and those who teach: people assume, by virtue of having once been a student, they understand the enterprise in its entirety.
Too many rules stifle creativity? Nonsense. Without rules, creativity has no meaning, no substance. Charles Dickens begins "A Tale of Two Cities" (that should be italicized) with the English literary world's most famous comma splice. He follows it with a paragraph of intricately structured, correctly punctuated sentences. This evidence suggests that Dickens didn't write a comma splice just because he didn't understand the rules of grammar. He used his understanding of the rules to heighten the esthetic effect: a chaotic representation of a chaotic world.
To put it in business terms: very few companies are looking to fill their entry-level positions with rule-bustin' mavericks who reject the notion that others have worthwhile knowledge and experience. If you don't demonstrate the ability and willingness to follow instructions, the world will simply move your resume to the "Out" basket.
There's just a bald reality here: I have power and you don't. As it happens, and has been repeatedly expressed above, we have reasons for asking students to do things a certain way and I am sure we often explain those reasons in detail, but ultimately it doesn't matter. When it comes down to it, I say and you do. That's the life lesson here. No one says you have to like it, but if you want the result (a good grade) you have to suck it up and do as you are told. Just like we do if we want tenure and promotion.
ReplyDeleteMy son: I'm not going to take from my employers what the baby boomers took. I'm not going to work long hours and slave away at a desk. I'm not going to follow the rules that "you" set into place!
ReplyDeleteGood luck out there, son! Um, no you cannot come back home!
Yup. Ours didn't believe us when we told him that we'd converted his old bedroom into a home office. He went up and checked...looked pretty gobsmacked when he came back down.
DeleteHe asked how we expected him to afford housing, and I said, "Get a roommate. That's what both of us did when we were fresh out of college." Gobsmacked again. *shakes head*
At the beginning of the semester in a remedial English comp class I teach, I write a topic sentence on the board for students to copy. (I do this, by the way, to keep students' essays from wandering 'way off-track and ending up who-knows-where.) Their job is to develop the rest of the paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI am, I think, absolutely clear about what I want: "I'm putting this sentence on the board because I want you to write it down and use it as the first sentence in the paragraph you'll be turning in next class as homework. I'm not writing it on the board to exercise my manly bicep; I want you to copy it and use it. So take a minute and write it down. If you'd like, you can take a picture of the board with your cell phone. But, please, use my sentence to get started. Any questions?"
Usually about 1/3 of the class either fails to use my sentence or copies it incorrectly.
I'm not making this up.
When I served in the U.S. Navy, at the beginning, they gave us what I subsequently heard referred to as a "back stab." It was an unusually close inspection, of our lockers and of us, in which they picked out any trivial fault they could find, even if they had to make it up on the spot if nothing actually was against regulations. They screamed at us at the tops of their lungs about everything, and woe betide the young recruit who answered with anything other than, "Yes, sir!"
ReplyDeleteWhat this did was reinforce in our minds, like nothing else could, the value and usefulness of following directions and paying attention to detail. This is the kind of training they gave to people who would go on to do things such as operate nuclear reactors and weapons systems, with which mistakes could cost lives, not to mention lots of taxpayer dollars. My 19-year-old self found it extremely useful, if not at all pleasant.
Of course, if anything like this were tried on modern college students, there would be a hue and cry. Still, I wish Rich the best. Monkey's suggestion is a good one: have them do the exercise again, even if it does put the class a day behind.
I had the same thought Frod.
DeleteWhen my undergraduate degree career path started to wither, I enlisted in the Navy (via an advanced training program for medical personnel).
Here I was, 10 years older than most other recruits, a college graduate, and I heard the very same explanation when my gear had been unceremoniously dumped next to my bunk.
"Yeah, we know freaking out over your laundry is extreme. But, if we can't trust you will fold your shirt so it will fit in the space allotted, how can we be sure you'll follow directions when someone's life might depend on it?"
Annoying at the time, but it certainly made sense.
Irena better not want to go into, say, classical music, where you really do have to follow the actual score to make the music. Or surgery or nursing, where experimenting with a procedure could kill someone. Or tax accounting, where skipping part of a form can result in something illegal. Or dance, where choreographers will expect her to execute a particular set of moves in a particular set of order. Or engineering, where the math must be perfect or things fall apart. And so on.
ReplyDeleteShe never did tell us what she does for a living; perhaps she hot-glues stuff to other stuff and sells it on Etsy? And if she represents "a college graduate," well, WE are doing something wrong in allowing her to graduate, no? She comes across as a complete fool.
Oops, that should be "particular order," not "particular set of order." I wish Blogspot let you edit after you post!
ReplyDeleteI've just started teaching an online class, and I had my students post their first assignments to a classroom forum. Last week, when one student turned her assignment in without putting her name in the file name, I responded to her post, asking her to do it correctly and re-upload. Not only did she ignore this request (granted, I was probably much too polite about it), I had two more students upload their assignments with the same mistake. If something like this happens again this week, I'm going to have to...do something. Not sure what yet.
ReplyDelete