Cathy Small, a 52-year-old anthropologist at Northern Arizona University, has just published a book called My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student. She noticed that her students weren’t engaged in class—falling asleep, eating full meals, whatever—and she wanted to know why.
She went undercover to find out, and she talks a bit about the experience in a Salon interview today. I wasn’t at all surprised by the things she discovered, but she went to college in the 70’s, before going to college was commonplace—now more than half of high school graduates go on to college, and Small notes this. She mentions that kids in college now are training to be able to compete for jobs in a way that her generation didn’t really have to. She also bemoans the fact that there’s little sense of community outside of the Greek system, because everyone is busy making themselves into perfect job candidates.
I’m sure there’s truth to that, but I think there’s something else to it: I think it’s taken for granted now that college is necessary, but because “everyone” goes to college, it’s not cool. No one wants to be engaged because, why should they bother, when college means nothing anymore? I think many people are just doing what they need to do to get through.
This might change if the custom of going straight to college from high school wasn’t so prevalent. If people took time after high school and worked or volunteered or traveled—or some combination of those—I think college would be a lot different. I think some people would realize their interests and passions don’t require college degrees. I think others would find passions that college might help them pursue. Maybe then colleges would be full of people who want to be there, rather than people who are smart enough and think they have no choice but to get some kind of BA.
Okay, I’m off the soapbox.
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I had a call from Val yesterday, and I freaked when I saw her name on my Caller-ID. No baby yet, though: She was just checking in. The weather is lovely and they’re having a great time, although they were planning to move to another house because they were right across the street from a construction site. Even on vacation, nothing is ever easy.
13 comments:
Thanks for the Val update.
I think there's another dimension to the kids today discussion of college students.
When I first started here I got all up in a kids face because she never seemed to have a paperclip. I thought that someone going to college ought to have enough pride in their work that they wouldn't turn it in with the corner folded and torn. She explained to me that if she had *an office* in the building she would have paperclips.
On that occasion, another prof explained to me that the people who go into education are the ones that would have paperclips when they were students - and that the other kind of student was always there, we just never really noticed them.
there's something to it.
I don't know. There probably is something to that, but I think there's so much apathy . . . do you see that with your students? They don't care about anything but getting the grade and satisfying the requirement?
Maybe they are just burned out from all those standardized tests they had to take in high school. They also have to jump through way too many hoops to get into college now. My high school sophomore is worn out. It's crazy.
Here's my take, and worth every penny you paid for it.
Part of the problem is that education is SOOOOO dumbed-down (I blame New Math, but you guys go with whatever floats your boat) that college is now what high school was X years ago.
College is no longer about education, but about training. Most people are there to get a ticket punched, not to grasp and wrestle with new concepts...they don't want to be engaged in the arena of ideas or watch thoughts collide. They want a diploma.
This is why pretty soon having a Master's will be the norm, and eventually a Doctorate...and people will bemoan the fact that dissertation committees aren't what they used to be.
There. Now you know.
-Joke
That college is the new high school and that masters are becoming the norm is absolutely - and completely sadly - the case.
I agree with you, Joke, and I think that relates to why Carolyn's high-schooler is burned out.
How to change it, though? Because it should change, shouldn't it? I mean, it's not like the glut of "educated" people has made the world any better. It's not like there are scads of enlightened people roaming the planet, spreading peace and joy and healthy foods.
So does the answer lie in making it harder to get into college, so admission numbers drop? I can't see that happening--the schools want the tuition money.
Really: Does anyone have a suggestion?
I have a wildly impractical suggestion, which will be soundly derided by most:
At the Junior High "no "middle school" for me, thanks) and High School level teach a Classical Education Curriculum. Math, Science, History, Economics, Foreign Languages, L-A-T-I-N, English. The kind of stuff that used to be taught as a matter of course. The kind of stuff I was very fortunate to study even though I went to school fairly ::cough, cough:: recently.
Kids today are NOT falling in love with learning and intellectual discourse. Professional success is no longer the natural byproduct of a good education alloyed with natural talent and an admirable work ethic. Now it's the POINT of going to a certain school or getting a certain degree.
The short answer is to have parents get kids to read obsessively. This has many advantages: You can't become a crack-addict if you're reading Adam Smith or Charles Darwin, you can't have a teen pregnancy if you're trying to get through Shakespeare, you can't have anyo f the eleventy gazillion things that kids do dysfunctionally if they are trying to get through The Federalist Papers.
Reading opens your mind to different peoples, different cultures, different possibilities, opposing philosophies, etc.
Reading IS fundamental.
You'll never have a kid jaded about college (or HS) once he (or she) has amassed his own library.
Just one man's opinion,
-Joke
Kids today are NOT falling in love with learning and intellectual discourse. Professional success is no longer the natural byproduct of a good education alloyed with natural talent and an admirable work ethic. Now it's the POINT of going to a certain school or getting a certain degree.
You said it right there--it's all about the money. We have to raise our kids to be less concerned about making lots of money. I'm really, really trying hard to do that, but I don't know yet if it's working. And even if it does work, I only have the one kid.
I thought that getting into college was more competitive now than it used to be or maybe I'm wrong. Seems as if you need a 4.5 GPA, to be a professional sports star, and perform community service. When my sister graduated in 1983, she was the valedictorian and still not eligible for much in the way of scholarships. She was also in the marching band.
Maybe I was just an idiot in school, but around here concepts are being introduced at much earlier ages than I remember. (Or maybe the schools I attended just had lower standards.)
I do think we need a return to our children treating their teachers with more respect.
Now for the record, I am as raving a capitalist tool as is likely to be found on this blog.
My gripe is that people make the money the goal and not the result of education. Which is, as we used to say in college "bad wrong."
To bolster what Carolyn said, I remember having to do, f'rinstance, square roots in math in FIFTH grade. I remember life before you could get anything higher than a 4.0. I remember being flabbergasted that all the classes I (and everyone else I was at school with!) took senior year were AP classes.
But then again, as a libertarian, I realize that "we" can't do anything, it has to be an endless stream of "I" that will make a difference. And I, for my part, am getting my kids to read. Which is murder, because most kids books today are unreadable dreck. So, Numbah One Son has polished off the first 3 Harry Potter Books, and a whole mess o' Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle.
To me, there is no greater antidote to the "punch my ticket" mindset than to get kids to read and to LOVE to read.
Now you know.
-Joke
My daughter LOVES to read. But she still hates math. LOL
I love love love reading. I graduated from HS in '99 and it was all about punching the ticket (except for English classes & drama). College, though, was definitely a place to grapple with ideas and not just get a degree. I think now that a lot of college is about "growing up" and "developing a sense of yourself" and blah blah blah - all good stuff, I think, but unrelated to the academics. I chose to spend the money to live on campus, even though I couldn've had the same quality of education off campus with my parents. But would I have made friends? Done all that growing up? Not in the same way. So I think you have to look at that, too - not just get a degree because it's expected or to make money (although those are valid points) but also for the social experience. That's huge.
There are so many things to comment upon, but so little space.
NAU is not anyU. (Disclaimer, one of my grad school buddies teaches science there.) It is a state-supported college in a state that has two very well known and respected first tier research universities. It has a high concentation of native american students. My friend says that some of her most intellectually engaged students are native american kids who come from homes where going to college is NOT expected. Those students do not live in dorms; they find cheaper alternatives.
So maybe some of Cathy Small's results were skewed by the sample selection process.
Don't blame new math for what ails today's college students. Their professors may have been beneficiaries/victims of new math, but today's college students are too young to have been new math guinea pigs. (Disclaimer, I liked new math and majored in math in part because of the early exposure to advanced math concepts presented in new math.)
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