Posted on 01/05/2004 10:14:06 AM PST by Atlas Sneezed
Welcome back! I hope you had a good Christmas break (or Kwanzaa break, or whatever you celebrate). Mine was great but now its time to get back to work as we kick off a new semester. Those of you who have had my classes before need to pay close attention to this memo because I am changing some of my class policies this semester. Specifically, I am changing the way that I deal with those who interrupt class by either walking in late or by allowing their cell phones to ring during a lecture.
At the end of last semester, I decided that something had to be done about this diminishing level of respect shown by students towards their professors and their fellow classmates. This decision came shortly after I sat in on another professors class. While I was listening to a 75-minute lecture, the students interrupted the professor at least 58 times before I lost count.
First, a student came in class three minutes late. Then another student came in 15 minutes late. Then another student came in 25 minutes late. Then the first cell phone went off. Then the second cell phone went off. The other 53 interruptions were variations of what was that again? and could you repeat that? A raised hand accompanied none of these 53 interruptions from daydreaming students. They just shouted at the professor to get his attention. And they didnt seem to care whether he was in the middle of a sentence. Interestingly, most of these students were in their third year of college.
I havent ever had a major problem with the hand raising issue. I just dont answer students questions if they dont raise their hand. But the cell phone and tardiness problems have exploded over the last five years or so. Most of my liberal colleagues have just allowed these problems to get worse. No matter how bad it gets, these PhDs just cant seem to find a solution. Actually, that isnt fair. They could find a solution if they wanted to, but they just dont like imposing their own truths upon their students, who may live according to a different set of truths. And, of course, being disrupted by late students with cell phones gives them something to whine about during department meetings.
As most of you know, I take a different approach to these problems. First, I shut the door at the beginning of each class period. Then, if a student walks in late, he (it usually is a male, no offense to tardy feminists) gets three points deducted from his final average. If his cell-phone rings (no offense to co-dependent feminists), I deduct three points from his final average per ring. And if she (sorry guys, it is usually a female) actually answers the call, she fails the course. And, last semester, I actually started deducting points from the students average if they (regarding gender, this is a closer call-no pun intended) are merely in possession of a cell phone. But, unfortunately, last semester, four different students let their cell phones (which were hidden in their pockets) go off in class. All four were one-ringers. I also had one student in each class who decided to repeatedly come to class late.
In light of the on-going problems with tardiness and cell phones, I am going to modify my class policies this semester. I am not going to follow the advice of my anti-war colleagues who think that we need to talk to tardy cell phone people in order to find out why they hate us. Instead, I am going to let them do most of the talking. The specifics of my new policy follow:
If your cell phone goes off in class, or if you are late to class, you must write a 2500-word paper (minimum) entitled The Death of Civility at the Postmodern University. In this paper, you will be asked to write about the decline of civility in our public universities in recent decades. Please note that if you are late more than once, or if your cell phone goes off on more than one occasion, your paper must be a minimum of 5000 words. If you have three separate transgressions, you automatically fail the course. Finally, the paper must be of A quality in order for you to stay in the course. You will receive no other credit for completing this project, except, of course, for its positive impact upon your character.
Since you have probably never written on this subject, and since the paper is fairly long, I have listed a couple of suggestions to help you get started and to help you fulfill the minimum word requirement. These suggestions are not exhaustive, nor are they mandated, but I think they will be helpful.
Suggestion #1. Interview a person who was alive during World War II. Ask them the following questions:
1. How often did students walk into class late when you were in school? 2. How many of your failures in school were the result of a lack of nurturing by your teachers? 3. Did your teachers spend a lot of time boosting your self-esteem and soothing your inner child, even when you failed to adhere to the rules of the classroom? 4. Did any of your teachers ever suggest that punctuality was an antiquated Western notion with racist, sexist, and classist overtones? 5. Did students ever get up and leave in the middle of a lecture if they had to go to the bathroom, without asking the permission of the teacher? 6. Did students ever take long potty breaks in the middle of exams, without asking the permission of the teacher? 7. Did students ever get up and leave class just because they were bored? 8. Did you ever appeal a test score in front of the entire class or help other students do the same? If so, did you predicate your complaint with hey Dr. Ummm, or dude, you ripped me off. 9. Did you ever interrupt a professor to ask whether what he was saying was important or whether you had to know it for the next test? 10. Did people actually manage to finish school without having a cell phone with them at all times?
Suggestion #2. Interview an employee at the Office of Campus Diversity or any professor currently teaching in the social sciences or humanities. Ask them the following questions:
1. Is it possible that the diversity movement, with its emphasis on moral relativism, causes students to dismiss the rules a professor establishes with regard to appropriate class conduct? 2. If it is good to refrain from judging other people, doesnt that mean that we should stop expelling people for plagiarism? 3. Isnt the statement it is good to refrain from judging other people itself judgmental? 4. Is it possible that liberal professors who teach that people are not responsible for their own behavior unwittingly encourage their students to engage in anti-social behavior such as compulsive tardiness? 5. Is cheating wrong just because a professor says it is wrong? 6. If a student claims that cheating is acceptable in his/her culture, is he/she exempt from punishment for cheating? 7. Can a student be given credit for an answer that the professor deems to be wrong, just because the student feels it is right? 8. What if everyone decided to come to class late every day? 9. If tardiness becomes even more prevalent than it is today, can we just write whenever, man under the designation for class meeting time in the course-scheduling catalogue? 10. When professors come to class late, does that in any way encourage their students to do the same thing? Does that undermine the professors moral authority?
In closing, let me say that I hope you dont put yourself in the position of having to write a civility paper this semester. If you do, I would advise you to follow the first suggestion and interview a person who was alive during World War II. I dont mean to stereotype, but these people tend to be very helpful and patient.
Unfortunately, you may find the second suggestion to be less fruitful. University professors and administrators tend to be less patient and less accessible. After all, theyre usually busy constructing a Utopian society. They seldom have time to talk about civility.
Mike S. Adams (adams_mike@hotmail.com) is an associate professor at UNC-Wilmington. While he was jogging in 1998 he was nearly killed by a 90-pound woman who ran a stop sign in her 6000-pound SUV. She was talking on her cell phone and appeared to be running late. Dr. Adams still has nightmares about that woman.
Don't be. What they present in these classes is no more than an entry-level pro would be expected to know. I am taking a class in English grammar this semester. It was a surprise to find the course listed since I thought that English consisted of reading Chaucer and modern poetry and that grammer wasn't necessary or desireable anymore. Good luck in your courses and hope you find them challenging.
I must be lucky. My students always bring pencils for their exams. I rarely have a ringing cell phone in class and when it happens there is a comical mad scramble by the student to turn it off.
There has been an increase in students coming in late though (the class starts at 9 a.m.) It is quite annoying and I'm going to have to do something about it.
Poser, good for you for charging for pencils. During my finals last month at least 5-6 students in each class forgot pencils, and a lot of them forgot scantrons in one course which required them. How can you forget this sort of thing when you know you're there for an exam? Wondering if I could get rich by inventing a pencil vending machine for classrooms.
And we didn't have cell phones then, at least not as we know them today. Thank God, or I could see some of my professors doing jail time for killing students when one of those things rang and the student started yapping over the top of the lecture. Actually, that visual puts a grin on my face.
All in all, though, I stand by my point, which is that a blanket condemnation of all the rudeness, courseness and general lack of civility is fine by me. There are going to be honest, decent people caught in the finger-pointing, sure, but hey, into every tuna net a little dolphin must fall, right?
It was a chamber music ensemble class, so maybe she wasn't kidding. After all, we are required to perform even with distractions. What is school for if not to prepare one for the real world?
You must be kidding.
I have students
who when I shout at them
just go on talking
(either on the phone,
or just to their neighbour).
I have students who talk continuously
throughout the class
every class.
If I shout at them
to tell them to shut up
they just grin,
it's all a game to them.
I recently have taken to telling students to move
as they do in high school
when they repeatedly refuse to stop talking.
(Often the noise in the classroom is so great
it almost is impossible to make myself heard).
As for coming late,
students wander in and out
at various times
but most annoying
are those students
who come in
only at the end of class
to ask what the homework assignment was.
Such is the situation
in a 'major' Canadian university.
What do you do about students who are too dumb to turn off their phones during class despite repeated warnings?
What should I do about the moron who left his phone in his briefcase
left the briefcase in a pile at the side of the room
and the phone rang repeatedly during a three hour exam?
Please stay out of my class.
Mostly, I'm talking about the rules about tardiness and missed classes. If there is nothing I want to hear from the professor on a certain day, or if I have something better to do, and I'm passing the work and the exams, the professor should leave me alone on attendance. I can look at a class schedule or syllabus and schedule my time accordingly.
It's just one of my pet peeves and annoyed me to no end when I was taking night classes after work on my own dime. If I had to work late, or I had a family committment, I could get points deducted because I missed a class or came in late or left early. Often, the professor was covering material I already knew and I didn't want to waste my time listening to it.
Cell phones may be annoying, but 3 points deduction per ring is criminal.
I've had professors that pull that little trick. When there's ten minutes between classes and you have to get from one side of the university to the other, it's a lot of fun. And the students are blamed for being late!
It's even more fun waiting half an hour, regularly, for someone else to get out of class, like I did when my sister and I carpooled last semester... her math professor routinely kept them until 9:45 pm, when the class dismissed at 9.
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