Archive for April 22nd, 2009

My husband is a college instructor. “I was talking to one of the other professors,” he told me the other day, “and she said in 15 years, the students just keep getting more and more selfish and more and more discourteous. You go to observe a lecture, and they’re texting under their desks. They talk to eachother while the professor is speaking. It’s like teaching Jr. High.” Although he hasn’t been teaching 15 years, he says he has observed some of the same things.

Most recently, at the end of a test, while some students were still working, a couple of other students were talking before leaving, and when one of the still-working students asked them to be quiet, one girl said “Sure, B—-” and left the room. 

I was outraged at hearing this. I said, “I haven’t heard that kind of language yet in our elementary school classrooms, I’m sure they say it to each other but they wouldn’t dare say it in front of the teacher.” I imagined myself a college instructor. I imaged taking the bad-mouthed girl outside the class next time she showed up, and telling her, “You may not have thought of this before, but this is a four year institution of higher learning and when you leave here you will have a bachelor’s degree, which actually does mean something — part of what it means is that you have some basic professional courtesy and ability to speak politely in front of a group. People who can’t be civil in a group belong on the assembly line, where they don’t care if you want to shoot your mouth. If you want to be a professional, on the other hand, and work in an office, you have to learn to speak with grace and courtesy. Especially if you want to pass this class.”

I told this to my husband and he listened with interest. “After all,” I concluded,  ”these kids are basically suffering from, among other thing, the fact that few have ever told them off or expected much of them. I think that’s too bad, but as teachers it’s part of our job to get after the hindermost.  Just because someone else, apparently didn’t go after this girl when they should have, or she would have known how to act, doesn’t mean you should continue making that mistake.”

What do you think? Should she be chewed out? Should her participation grade be lowered for inappropriate language?