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Thursday, March 5, 2015
"On Compassion and Public Shaming: In Support of Jesse Stommel." By Steven L. Berg. Where Burnt Chrome Gets a Shoutout!
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Uh, relatively speaking, our "attacks" were not vicious, and I saw no-one here who tried to "equate compassion with lowered standards". I also dispute that students "would not be comfortable approaching most of the professors who vent on College Misery." Beyond that, I find much to agree with in Berg's piece.
ReplyDeleteAmong the things I disagreed with, I should have explicitly listed Berg's characterisation that BurntChrome didn't really get it.
DeleteIt's annoying when people don't get what we do, and instead decide for themselves.
ReplyDeleteBut my favorite part of Berg's article that discusses the student who complained in a clearly inappropriate way. That student didn't need public shaming, but counseling was okay!
My office hours are crowded. I sometimes would prefer I *did* scare them away. Then I'd have time for the things that matter -- Cookie Clicker and Netflix.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it would probably confuse Berg and Stommel both that the undergrads actually consider me quite "approachable" despite realizing I have a low tolerance for bullshit. Also, because I have a rep for brutal honesty, I'm often sought out by grad students I don't even work with. Apparently they trust my counsel more than that of their own advisers, whom they suspect of just telling them what they want to hear.
DeleteI suppose I'm just repeating the same point others are making here that there is zero correlation between venting pseudonymously in here and doing good work with students IRL.
There are lots of ways to be supportive of students. It just feels to me like the Stommels and Bergs of the world think they have it all figured out and anyone who doesn't do it the way they do it is a monster.
Well, shit. I'm famous?
ReplyDeleteI responded, FWIW, because I think Berg missed my point. But maybe I wasn't clear enough in the original smackdown? I don't know. Hardly anyone commented, so it mustn't have been too controversial for this page.
I thought about adding my two cents, but then it would be three of four comments on his post coming from us and he'll just feel persecuted. I think he did miss your point--ironically because the CM post he linked to is the one in which you explained your situation in some detail.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that Chiltepin is correct that the Stommel supporters are confusing compassion with being nice. Or at least I'd like to hear one of them acknowledge that sometimes the compassionate thing to do is to say no or to tell a student to drop the class. Until I hear that from them I won't take them seriously because it will remain clear that they want to be liked, not respected.
Many many moons ago I was barely hanging on in college, collecting a lot of C minuses and the occasional D or F. The dean, a guy named Dick Weiner (I'm not kidding), called me to his office and told me that I needed to give some serious thought to withdrawing from school and getting my shit together before registering for another term. I signed the paper on the spot. Best thing I ever did.
Thing is, I probably could have scraped by for another three years and collected enough credits to graduate with a degree in something. And if Weiner had met me with what Stommel thinks is compassion that's probably what I would have ended up doing. Who knows where I would have ended up after that. But because he had the compassion to say "you don't belong here right now, get out" I was able to actually get my shit together. Six years later when I returned to school I was one of those annoying straight A people. Now I'm one of those even more annoying tenured assholes. And it's all thanks to Dick Weiner.
I wasn't sure I should add this part, but what the hell. When I left school all those years ago I was in the same class at the same institution as another regular contributor on this blog. Don't ask me how I figured it out, just a bunch of contextual clues made me realize it. Academia really is a tiny, tiny world.
DeleteI think Archie's response is very much to the point: one point of clear disagreement in this conversation is whether deciding to (or having to) leave college for a while can be an appropriate part of the learning process. Like Archie, and Burnt Chrome (and, I suspect, a lot of us here), I think it can. In fact, I think it's often the best solution for a student who is overwhelmed by other life circumstances, or who lacks direction, or whose heart just isn't in it. As BC pointed out in the next paragraph after the one cited, "they can always come back." While that may not be true for every institution, it's true for many, and it's definitely true for the US higher education system as a whole, which is one of the reasons I'm proud to be part of that system.
DeleteAdmittedly, some people who leave college never make it back. But many do. In fact, I teach at a school where many of them (especially young men who weren't quite ready for college the first time they tried) land, and they often do very well.
There are, of course, other underlying problems, such as the fact that student loans may come due if the student leaves school, or that some students are relying on their association with the college, and/or their student loans, for basic needs such as shelter and food. If a student is in that situation, *and* is not really coping with school, that's when I'd be trying to hook up the student with every conceivable kind of help possible. For the ones who seem to be drifting, however, or for those who have their acts more or less together but simply need to take a break to deal with temporary life circumstances, a break seems like at least as reasonable, and as compassionate, a suggestion as coming at the situation with the assumption that "success"=keeping the student in this particular school, at this particular time. (Of course, that's how all too many institutions define success, because retention rates have become such an important measure of institutional quality, but I have my doubts about the assumptions behind that metric, too).
This.
DeleteI've noted before that the bulk of the "A" students in my service sections (and about half of those in my in-major classes) are what I call "second time arounders". A few years or decades in the "real" world have given them some perspective; they know what is important to them and are willing to to the work it requires. In a lot of cases they report that this simple wasn't the case for them right after high school.
OK, I think I'm getting tired of the phrase "public shaming". I don't think I'm the only one to whom the phrase conjures an image of dunce caps and rotten tomatoes. A headline that reads "Anonymous Professor Shames Student Publicly" calls to mind an attack directed at a specific individual, in front of others to whom the target is known, and possibly involving comment on the dimensions of the target's genitalia. Nobody is doing that. Not us. Not the "Dear Student" column on Vitae. "Public Shaming" is a bit of a straw-man, no?
ReplyDeleteNow, there may be a case to be made that even when professors anonymously complain about students (actually about student behaviours, rather than specific students) it discourages students from seeking help. And maybe a productive conversation could be had on the topic.
But by the same reasoning, there is doubtless a case to be made that students anonymously complaining about professors on the-site-that-shall-not-be-named may discourage profs from wanting to help them, not that Stommel et al seem too worked up about that!
So let's make it a package deal. If you want to challenge profs who vent about students, the price of admission should be a willingness to call out students' personal attacks on profs.
Or is that student-shaming too?
Fuck...
Where's the scotch?
Where's the 'like' button?
DeleteIndeed. At the very least, I think we need to add a word: "student-behavior shaming."
DeleteAnd then we get to discuss another assumption that runs through critiques of so-called "student shaming": that a student who stumbled across or overheard a professor's criticism of a behavior in which the student hirself had engaged would be so mortified, terrified, horrified, or otherwise -fied that (s)he would never approach that professor with a question, a problem, etc., etc. It seems at least equally plausible to me that the student would think "phew! Glad (s)he didn't catch me doing that!" and be careful to frame any requests for help or accommodation in a way that avoided the behavior (s)he had heard criticized. As long as the original behavior criticized was, indeed, inappropriate, I'm having trouble seeing that as a bad outcome.
I realize it's not really appropriate to engage in psychological profiling over the internet (especially if the "doctor" attempting said profiling holds a Ph.D. in English literature), but it strikes me that, for at least some of the critics of student-shaming, there may be a bit of projection going on. Here's my line of reasoning: many of these critics exhibit some narcissistic traits (e.g. it's very important to them that their students like them, and see them as cool, compassionate, etc.); narcissists tend to be particularly sensitive to the possibility that they are being criticized, and to a sense of shame. Therefore, they assume that everyone (including their students) is equally sensitive to criticism, and will feel equally ashamed when they hear criticism that might possibly apply to them, and equally unwilling to engage with someone who has been known to engage in such criticism.
DeleteOf course, some people argue that narcissism is rampant among the millennial generation, so maybe the critics of student(-behavior) shaming are right. Or maybe that's what the prior generation says about every batch of young adults that comes down the road.
I'm too old to care if 20 year olds think i am cool. I am their parents' age, or older. I am by definition "not cool." I pity profs that try to be cool. I thought they were pathetic when I was a student, an opinion that has not gone away...
DeleteEdmunson has a great essay in his book Why Teach (required reading!) about why it's important not to be cool.
DeletePart of me thinks that college-aged kids smell someone trying to be cool the way dogs smell fear. They differ in how they "attack" -- the kids may convince even themselves that they "like" the cool prof that they glom onto -- but they are alike in that neither the kids nor dogs respect their prey.
DeletePutting Edmunson on my (admittedly very long) reading list.
DeleteYep.
DeleteNot flattery (see below) but I pick up a ton of useful stuff from OPH and PC.
Their contributions during the Stommel-storm have been so enlightening.
I wasn't aware of the Edmonson book. Thanks for the recommendation, Chiltepin. Looks good.
DeleteI pick up lots from everyone here, EC1 among them.
DeleteAround here I sometimes get the sensation that I'm just regular me, scurrying about the feet of giants who tolerate me because, due to my being nearer the floor, I sometimes spy trinkets that had rolled under the furniture. But the fact is, I feel pretty welcome and understood here.
I'm not suggesting anyone support a bit of professor shaming, but how about a guy who pretty much only publishes in a journal of which he is the "founder, director, and designer", and which "invites its audience to participate in (and be an integral part of) the peer review process"?
ReplyDeleteIt would be entirely wrong to say that Jazzy Stubble's "Hybrid Apology" is not legit, but it's a bit of a consanguineous marriage.
Love the new website slogan!
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I'm not sure who said it, or where, but it's true.
Delete(Also: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the Crampicle, deliberately or not, seems to have been engaging in a bit of imitation. I guess we should be flattered.)
Regarding who said it, it was Prof Poopiehead in this comment.
DeleteDear Students:
ReplyDeleteYou are in college to receive an education. At 18 years of age you are all old enough to drive, serve in the military, and legally drink in many states.
If you learn nothing else, learn this. In the world outside of academia, in the end you either have results, or excuses. (cue Sean Connery voice: "Here endeth the lesson.")