Kansas State University professor Michael Wesch has a thought-provoking post up on the Britannica blog, ruminating on how the education system today is failing students. I agree with some of what he says, but I don't think I would offer the implicit absolution to students that he does. How are they failing their educations? It's an important question, I think; Wesch seems to believe that if students are disengaged from the learning process, it's the fault of the professoriat. I wonder, though, to what extent many of these students are reachable? Do they come to class with the basic understanding that learning is not a passive act, that they have to be engaged with texts and lectures? Could it be the problem is not so much bad teaching as it is that people who don't belong in college are there for the credentials?
Thoughts, readers?
Anyway, here's a video Wesch's cultural anthropology students last year made about student disengagement. Worth a watch:
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I attended Kansas State and as a matter of fact, I think I had Marketing in that very room in the video. Now, over 20 years later (and as a lecturer myself at UC Berkeley) I realize that Kansas State was largely an education factory solely existing to grant degrees, with little concern about whether the students were learning anything worthwhile. I WAS one of those students, figurative speaking, in the video. I recall some classes that I went to less than 5 times and still received a B. I went to my first Business Policy class and thought to myself: "this class is basically bull__it. I'm only coming back for exams." Although I had a few professors that were great, I recall some others whose idea of a lecture was reading out of the textbook to the class. Poor professors, combined grad students instructors who didn't really speak English, left me with a less than favorable education experience. But I didn't know it at the time; and don't get me wrong--I had a really great time at K-State and drank a ton of beer, I just didn't learn a whole lot. I got a great job when I graduated, but I never really learned to think.
The students I teach now are nothing like me when I was in school. They are engaged, they come to class, they think critically and they do their work. Why? I think part of this is due to the fact I only have 28 students, I know all their names and I care deeply about their experience in the classroom. (Also, I can't recall the last time I used a chalkboard!) Moreover, the University sets a high bar for admission and most students have had to work hard to get where they are. While students are here, the University expects excellence and for the most part gets it; most students don't have time to go out drinking every night like I did. At Kansas State we weren't expected to give much and we didn't—and we found more interesting things to do in Manhattan.
Dave! I went to Cal. Maybe that's partly why I found those students so very alien? I was actually totally unprepared, since I went to a very bad high school--and like you, I didn't know it, so I floundered a lot and only realized my problem years later. But anyway, although I had one or two lemons, by and large my college experience was pretty amazing. I have a hard time imagining paying for a class and then not going or facebooking my way through it, though I'm glad that I graduated right before everyone started bringing their laptops to lectures; too much temptation, I think. It's easier to goof around than to really listen. But when why go to college, if you're not going to participate?
Erin Manning wrote:
"This has gone on too long, but if you take this dynamic and add it to an increasingly incoherent college-level educational model which spends more time deconstructing the idea that there's anything useful about studying the achievements or writings of Dead White Males, etc., than actually teaching anything..."
I am a faculty member at a university closely related to the one depicted in the video. I don't know where you get the impression that *any* time is spent at universities denigrating "the achievements or writings of Dead White Males". Maybe in English departments? (In the 1980s?) But that's just one small piece of university life. In philosophy all that's ordinary taught is Dead (and Live) White Men, and this is no big deal. In the sciences, nothing of the cultural war you are speaking of.
The maker of the video is right in many ways, but I think it has less to do with culture war than that comment, and others here, suggest.
Maybe in English departments? (In the 1980s?) But that's just one small piece of university life. In philosophy all that's ordinary taught is Dead (and Live) White Men, and this is no big deal. In the sciences, nothing of the cultural war you are speaking of.
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