Posted on 03/29/2025 5:10:50 AM PDT by Rummyfan
I’m Gen X. I was pretty young when I earned my PhD, so I’ve been a professor for a long time—over 30 years. If you’re not in academia, or it’s been awhile since you were in college, you might not know this: the students are not what they used to be. The problem with even talking about this topic at all is the knee-jerk response of, “yeah, just another old man complaining about the kids today, the same way everyone has since Gilgamesh. Shake your fist at the clouds, dude.”1 So yes, I’m ready to hear that. Go right ahead. Because people need to know.
First, some context. I teach at a regional public university in the US. Our students are average on just about any dimension you care to name—aspirations, intellect, socio-economic status, physical fitness. They wear hoodies and yoga pants and like Buffalo wings. They listen to Zach Bryan and Taylor Swift. That’s in no way a put-down: I firmly believe that the average citizen deserves a shot at a good education and even more importantly a shot at a good life. All I mean is that our students are representative; they’re neither the bottom of the academic barrel nor the cream off the top.
As with every college we get a range of students, and our best philosophy majors have gone on to earn PhDs or go to law school. We’re also an NCAA Division 2 school and I watched one of our graduates become an All-Pro lineman for the Saints. These are exceptions, and what I say here does not apply to every single student. But what I’m about to describe are the average students at Average State U.
(Excerpt) Read more at hilariusbookbinder.substack.com ...
I understand where the professor is coming from but to be effective (like writing a book) one must consider the wants and needs of their audience/students. How many can and
will afford the time and money for each class - it all adds up only so many hours and dollars to dispose of - which
sorry to say likely means you have to spoon feed them like
a baby. Without any moral foundation there’s not much to
build upon.
dohhh - always review before posting - below is better eh?
I understand where the professor is coming from but to be
effective (like writing a book) one must consider the wants
and needs of their audience/students. How many can and
will afford the time and money for each class - it all adds
up, only so many hours and dollars to dispose of - which
sorry to say likely means you have to spoon feed them like
a baby. Without any moral foundation there’s not much to
build upon.
Can we expect the schools can fix the problem? The 5-year-olds that enter kindergarten are well behind their peers from 100 years ago. Five-year-olds are now three-year-olds. Eight grade students from 100 years ago are probably more well-rounded than college graduates today. They would be behind technically, but that is more easily taught than reading, writing, arithmetic, and reasoning.
We have a lot of spoiled, entitled children and young adults that are going to have to endure a lot of suffering that they will not understand and are not prepared for. May God have mercy on us all.
I was a commuter student and have a BS in computer science with a minor in math. I earned my degree at age thirty four.
I had a full time job was(and still am happily married), and was buying a house. So I had a full plate.
Since I had put off all the social foundation classes; Philosophy, Art, et al, by my universities rules I had to take those classes at a junior or senior level, no ART 101
it was ART 301.
It blew my instructors away!
I did have one class that I really clashed with a very liberal instructor. He started bitching about the Blue Angels who were in town and practicing for the upcoming,
show. He also ranted on about how bad the military was.
This was a “History of the new testament” class!
Costing me $1000! Tuition was $200 per credit hour at this private university.
I went to see him privately. Told him I was a Vietnam era VET with over 5 years of service and that the Blue Angels parked in front of my office on Boeing Field when they were in town.
This is a class on the history of the New Testament, not a place for political diatribes. Stop it or we will have a meeting with the University president.
Most professors aren’t used to students that stand up to their BS. I only earned a ‘B’ in that course. Normally I’m an ‘A’ student.
But he stuck to the class material after that meeting.
To whom? Maybe that's the problem. This isn't for everyone. You have to already be "academic" to read that stuff. But I can tell you I'll learn anything from somebody who is a master at teaching. Some the descriptions of the well-meaning teacher shows that people don't read not for lack of ability per se, but because they just aren't interested. Learning is a social activity. Birds of a feather and all that. If there is such a thing as general education, it must be had before age 18 or else it's remedial.
And Skinner is obsolete!
And Grok is free.
OTH, learning is a pragmatic/social thing. Get a ticket to participate.
That's his own exam question!
If you were to examine him in English and French poetry, I know not where you would find anybody his superior... He has translated Virgil's Aeneid... the whole of Sallust and Tacitus' Agricola... a great part of Horace, some of Ovid, and some of Caesar's Commentaries... besides Tully's [Cicero's] Orations...Letter from John Adams to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, former tutor to John Quincy Adams, pp. 324-325In Greek his progress has not been equal; yet has he studied morsels of Aristotle's Politics, in Plutarch's Lives, and Lucian's Dialogues, The Choice of Hercules in Xenophon, and lately he has gone through several books in Homer's Iliad.
In mathematics I hope he will pass muster. In the course of the last year... I have spent my evenings with him. We went with some accuracy through the geometry of the Preceptor, the eight books of Simpson's Euclid in Latin,.. We went through plane geometry... algebra, and the decimal fractions, arithmetical and geometrical proportions... I then attempted a sublime flight and endeavored to give him some idea of the differential method of calculations...[and] Sir Isaac Newton; but alas, it is thirty years since I thought of mathematics.
Compare that curricula to what we teach children today. It's not just what Adams was teaching his son, it was also that Adams was reasonably fluent in the subject matter, too.
-PJ
I went to tech school out of high school. Learned what I needed to for my field, and got the heck out. One year. I was very engaged in school.
Years later, my employer would pay for college, so decided to go back to school to get my bachelors. In some respects, that was good, because life experience gave me some knowledge about stuff. Like a PO (purchase order) for a business. I would have had no concept of that as a 19 year old. Totally got it in my business classes as a 30 year old. And while I didn't need it, I really enjoyed my World Religions class. Very interesting, probably wouldn't have thought so at 18. But at times, and for some classes, I was, "I just need to pass this class with a C or higher (to get my company reimbursement). I didn't see the point of studying my ass off to get an A.
When you read or are read to as a youth, your brain needs to picture the action and follow the story
When the pictures are already made for you (video) that part of your brain never develops.
Well, at least that's a higher percentage than the number of people who call themselves “Christian” or “Jewish” who have actually read and somewhat understand their respective scriptures.
The first semester I taught college, I tried to give "D" grades to two students, and was called on the carpet by the Dean, who insisted that I justify their grades, preferably raise them, which I refused to do. One was not doing any work or showing up to class, and the other was very talented but had skipped out of the dorm to live with an undesirable man who was quite obviously not in support of her need for study time.
Eventually, other professors flunked out the no-show. But I prevailed on giving the "D" to the talented but distracted student, who soon pulled her performance up. By senior year, she won the department prize, and her parents thanked me specifically at graduation for having given her that wake-up call in the first semester of her sophomore year.
Alas, this was decades ago. Today, the entire higher education racket is in deep decline.
I taught public school for 17 years AFTER a 25+ year career in the software biz. During my teaching career I made a conscience effort to keep “an outsider’s” view.
I struggled to put into words a succinct summary of the problem(s) enumerated in the article.
Here is the closest I have come...
The education system will continue to fail until students are held accountable by someone (anyone) for their learning.
Parents have long abdicated this responsibility. As it now stands, students are allowed to not learn. At some point in time this became accepted behavior.
You are correct. Except parents and grands think that their children are getting the same education that they received.
Exactly.
And people need to eork
Actually schooling needs to be cut back to 12 or 14.
Then work.
Not everyone is made for vock.
The trades I see do well are smart guys. Most of them are Essentially hands but the know their math geometry and physics .
My homeschool kids have done remarkably well.
It became apparent to me early on that it wasn’t that they were particularly bright.
It was that they were classicaly well educated and taught how to apply their knowledge.
And they have.
They were furlongs ahead of their peers in that respect.
And
My son is taking welding to get a certificate. He’s required to take a psychology class, plus one on equity.
I knew a gal who grew up speaking Spanish. Learned English when she was 10. The community college required her to take a second language. She pointed out she was fluent in 2. But they wouldn’t accept that, so she took Spanish. She said staying awake in class was tough!
And people wonder why colleges are graduating idiots.
They’re run by them.
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