From Students, a Misplaced Sense of Entitlement
How could it be that graduate students delivered such appallingly poor papers and presentations? They’d gotten undergraduate degrees; why couldn’t they write in sentences? Why were they devoid of originality, analytical ability, intellectual curiosity? Why were they accosting me with hostile e-mails when I pointed out unsubstantiated generalizations, hyperbolic assumptions, ungrounded polemics, sourcing omissions, and possible plagiarism?
The sad thing is, I’m not alone. Every college teacher I know is bemoaning the same kind of thing. Whether it’s rude behavior, lack of intellectual rigor, or both, we are all struggling with the same frightening decline in student performance and academic standards at institutions of higher learning. A sense of entitlement now pervades the academy, excellence be damned.
Why were they devoid of originality, analytical ability, intellectual curiosity?
They want to be promoted. Promotion is predicated upon kissing ass not kicking it – social equity! Kneel before an abusive hegemony of beige.
We must end historic patriarchal White Protestant oppression of ethnically diverse Peoples of Colour. If we wish a future in which every child’s utterance bears the same weight as its adult oppressors’, we must begin by destroying the hateful framework of individual worth. DIVERSITY!
21st century academic scientific success is approved grant funding applications – zero risk, zero innovation, least-publishable bits within PERT-charted inevitability; a punctiliously spreadsheeted business plan woven of Official Truth. Academic scientific success is perfect process uncontaminated by insubordinate perfidies of product except as guaranteed insignificance or safely untestable fantastical theory.
Scientists pursue discovery. Discovery is product. On a good day, discovery is ghastly wicked insubordination. Sin like you mean it.
R2>C=C<R2 is an acyclic, unremarkable olefin bearing four rigorously identical small substitents. Both planar sp^2-hybridized carbons are chiral centers. Go ahead, do it. No? Have your professors do it. No? Have Uncle Al do it.
Whatever you’re smoking, Al, I want some of it.
Unfortunately the experience in the article is quite common. Often not that massive, but sometimes there are apparently positive feedback loops within a class starting from a few complainers (invariably those which struggle most with the material but put least time into the work) and then spreads through the class.
Of course, there are almost always a few who are there because they want to learn (interestingly not always the top scorers, but almost always above average). If not for them, teaching would feel like a total waste of time for everyone involved.
Liberalism explained: “There is free beer at the bottom of the hole.”
I hate to state the obvious. Surely it a great deal to do with a diet of :-
Tv sound bites
Text word bites
Conversational word or phrase snatches.
Video , visual snatches.
Abbreviations generally
We have made society into a cropped short style.
We are reaping the whirlwind!
Mike
I think this issue lies with educators. If students aren’t doing something, it’s because they haven’t been determined to do such. And that determination begins with the education they’re given. That’s my psychological spin on it.
As I’ve said in an SFN thread before, I think the reason a lot of people aren’t so sharp around the edges is because they spend more time and effort trying to earn the grade than learn the material; and this is due to the way classrooms continue to be developed by modern educators.
Now, if you want students to have curiosity?
I don’t necessarily have curiosity. I do have political goals, though. Those inspire me.
Also there are a variety of ways I have been taught to cite materials in papers. Really, I would say a paper should be filled with citations except for anything original I have to say, something absolutely concise. But educators might say, “Well, this paper isn’t really all yours then.”
Duh? Because I’ve only inched the field of research into this topic a little bit by what I have discovered? I stand on the shoulders of others? Duh?
Such an insult whenever I get a rhetorical argument from educators. They must not believe in determinism, I suppose. And to think that many of them are atheists? Outstanding!