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?
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Bad language is definitely something that needs to be dealt with, even if just for the practical reason that it poisons the class atmosphere and makes work simply unproductive. Same for the other cases of aggressive classroom behavior. As about the participation grade… it depends on how that grade is defined for students in the syllabus. And it depends on the student, too, I would say. Unpleasant situation, all in all…
Some teachers just tolerate all of the things students do in class. In my Political Science class, the teacher ignores the text-messaging that students do; and he lets them sit on their computers, although I know they are not taking notes. Maybe he figures it is their loss.
If I ever teach, I think, I will not allow this sort of thing – and bad language probably falls in the same category. But will I have the guts to do so? Being female and 5’2″ will probably not help, since I won’t necessarily exude authority.
Many students don’t take good notes either. This is because some teachers post powerpoints of the lectures beforehand or make notes of readings in the book. Thus students don’t think they need to take good notes. For me, if I didn’t take notes my memory [which is rather good] of the topic would be much poorer. But maybe this is an unusual way of learning.
I stumbled across this doing some research on the subject and though it is well over a year in response, I felt compelled to respond.
First, I think that the 1st Amendment should apply to adults (whatever age the government currently deems one is old enough to make decisions about their own wellbeing) always and everywhere. That being said, “She” acted very inappropriately and someone should definitely tell her so.
Second, foul language is just as inappropriate on an assembly line, in the military, and pretty much all around the world, so that statement was very ignorant and inappropriate of you.
Finally, a professional is someone who is paid to do a certain job. And I think you should reevaluate your elitist view on the lower and middle class. To claim someone who does menial labor is somehow less elegant or refined is very unfound and snobbish.