NaBloPoMo #5: Hunting the belated snark

I'm behind the times, but for the record (because I know you all cared), I really disagree with this piece from Inside Higher Ed. My snarky summary: "John Smith," tenured prof, rants and raves about how students are lazy slackers, administrators pander to their every whim, and no one appreciates his efforts.

Yawn.

I'd have more sympathy if he didn't target teaching outside on sunny days, using videos, sitting in circles, and assigning group projects as signs of the pedagogical apocalypse. Yeah, there are a lot of problems in higher education. The use of new teaching methods is not one of them. I mean, he complains that those who teach outside don't "car[e] if there is no blackboard." What??!? No blackboard????? The. Horror.

I'm not knocking traditional lecturing. It works well for certain things, and I'd rather see someone do the traditional lecture really well, than adopt active learning strategies really badly. But that said, the methods he picks on do NOT require his colleagues to "abandon classroom rigor," as he suggests. So when he identifies these practices as leading to his decision to leave academia? Well, you go, dude.

Now, I'm not saying he has no legitimate grievances. The school at which Smith teaches may indeed be a hotbed of precious snowflakes. It may indeed be a miserable place to teach.

But. One school does not a trend make.

And even if his experience is utterly representative of all of higher ed (despite not being representative of my experience), I just want to say: people, GET OVER IT.

I guess it's just that I get so tired of all the variants on "kids these days!!!!" People, it is inherent to the profession that college professors are of different generations than their students. And generations CHANGE. I did not learn in the same way as my professors; they did not learn in the same way as theirs. And students today are different again. Students today live in an entirely different informational world than even I inhabited (okay, I should probably strike the "even," since I am old enough to be traditional college students' mother, in a perfectly respectable way). I mean, no one had e-mail when I went to school. The web was just something you cleaned out of the corners. Access to information was on a completely different scale.

And yes, I realize that it is the recreation of older generations to deplore the younger ones. But honestly, people: today's students are DIFFERENT. Not better, not worse - just DIFFERENT. 

That doesn't mean you have to enjoy teaching them, and if you don't, then finding a new career is a good idea. But people, stop putting so much energy into bemoaning the inevitable, and figure out how to work with reality instead.

Comments

[Notorious Ph.D.]

Didn't Abelard teach without a blackboard? Oh. Okay, bad example. But Socrates, right? Teaching methods change. We use what works for us, our students, and the particular subject we're teaching. I end up lecturing in about 70% of my class sessions. But I do it because it works for me, and for my students, I think, not because I don't think anything else works.

[Rudbeckia Hirta]

My campus has many classrooms -- located indoors -- with no blackboards. Whatever departments are assigned to those rooms seem to be able to teach inside without blackboards, so it's probably not too much of a stretch for them to teach outside without blackboards. (Now that the stodgy math department will be taking over those rooms, boards have been ordered.)

[Dr. Crazy]

You write:

"But honestly, people: today's students are DIFFERENT. Not better, not worse - just DIFFERENT.

That doesn't mean you have to enjoy teaching them, and if you don't, then finding a new career is a good idea. But people, stop putting so much energy into bemoaning the inevitable, and figure out how to work with reality instead."

I *mostly* agree with you. Except, on my better teaching days, I don't think that my students are so different from the student that I was or students of previous generations. What I suppose I mean is this: when it's working, students want to be engaged, they want to learn, they want to achieve, they want to do good work. And they ultimately do those things. The means and ways of getting them there may change, but that's more about what *professors* choose than about what *students* demand. I'll admit, I've taught class outside, but that's been *my* choice - not my students'. And I've said no to going outside when I felt like it wouldn't benefit that day's work. And yes, I use a lot of small group stuff in my classes, but that's not because students clamor for it (indeed, they mostly start off hating it) but because I've seen the results it can give. Sometimes I think that the assumption that today's students are so "different" from us (read: worse) and that we must appease them (for they are coddled snowflakes whereas we walked uphill both ways to school in the snow with no shoes and liked it) really elides the power structures that characterize classroom dynamics. Dude, if you want to run a class that is all lecture all the time, that's your prerogative. And if you do it well, students will learn, whatever their "generation." I just really am suspicious of all the "millenial" crap - much as I was suspicious of all the "gen x" crap when I was in college (and as I'm suspicious of characterizing professors of my generation as coming from a "gen x" worldview now - for I know that I often bristle at some of the things that are ascribed to that worldview). That's not to say there aren't generational differences.... I'm just not so certain that generational differences are so monolithic.

And dude, that guy does need another job because he's clearly so *cranky*.

[Terminal Degree]

I haven't used a blackboard (or whiteboard) in years. OK, so I do use other technologies, but some of my BEST classes have been on days when I drag my entire seminar to the union, buy them coffee, and find a corner in which to talk about the day's readings. I guess that makes me a softie who has given in to the students.

Or maybe it's just that I want coffee sometimes, too. And (gasp!) a FUN learning experience now and then.

[michelle]

Why do you still read this crap?

[Bardiac]

I worry when a colleague complains often about teaching; everyone hates grading, but if you don't like interacting with students, this is a bad job for you, y'know?

[jo(e)]

The worst part is that he says nothing original whatsoever. I mean, if you are going to whine, at least say something new!

I work at a small state school. My students, for the most part, pay for their own educations. They don't come from families of privilege. And from what I can see, they work pretty damned hard in their classes.

My students are bright and perceptive. They are so much more frank and open than my generation. They aren't afraid to talk about taboo subjects. They aren't afraid of technology. They are eager to explore new ideas, new ways of thinking. I'm so impressed with their generation. They give me hope.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

jo(e) - I know! I think because this wasn't the Chronicle (heh) that I thought it would be different from the standard whining fare. But no! Just the same! Anyway, I had a lot of students like yours at Rural Utopia.

Dr. Crazy - I agree, once you get to the students, they're not that different. I mean, it's not like they evolve into a completely different species in a generation! I do think there can be different ways to reach them. But it is really about what you choose to do.

michelle - I don't know! ;-)

I guess, too, that I'm amazed at people who assume that their experience of academia is somehow universal. I mean, I've taught at 5 different universities, and they were all REALLY DIFFERENT.