I've been teaching college biology and ecology for more than 20 yrs,
and I'm not convinced that this supposed decline in student
preparedness and attitudes is real. I've always had a mix of poorly-
prepared, bad attitude students and well-prepared, intellectually
adventurous ones. Of course, that's just another piece of anecdotal
evidence.
Where are the data that show education is really getting worse?
Charles
Charles W. Welden
Departments of Biology and Environmental Studies
Southern Oregon University
Ashland, OR USA 97520
wel...@sou.edu
541.552.6868 (voice)
541.552.6415 (fax)
On Jan 19, 2010, at 6:28 AM, Val Smith wrote:
Dave, you are not being unreasonable at all. The responses that
you mention stem from intellectual laziness and/or short-term-
oriented learning strategies. I, too, have had my students say,
"just tell me what I need to know", and it is very clear that they
indeed wish to shovel in the information, play it back to me on an
exam, and then purge it from their memory banks. The "ideal" of
obtaining a broad education is largely irrelevant for a substantial
portion of the student population, whose goal is simply to pass
their exams and to get acceptable grades /*now*/.
They also consistently ask me to prune or restrict the lecture
content: if a fact, concept, or idea will not appear on the MCAT,
for example, it is deemed irrelevant because it does not help with
their short-term goals (these same students forget that my General
Biology course is required of all Biological Science majors, and
not just pre-Health Science majors). This problem is particularly
apparent during the general botany and the general ecology portions
of my 400-student General Biology class, but I help them to /*see*/
the relevance of this material by, for example, pointing out that
the human gut is functionally an ecosystem whose microflora obeys
the known principles of population and community ecology. One
could equally well create teaching slides which refer to the
literature that links ecological principles to outbreaks of Lyme
disease, or other human pathogens. If you /*show*/ them how and
why a key concept or fact is relevant, they are less likely to
complain about it.
I have stopped pandering to this attitude entirely: I have stuck
with question-driven, active learning methods, and I simply accept
the increased probability that I will likely receive lower
evaluation scores. I also make it very clear within the formal
wording of my syllabus that mine is a very demanding and highly
interactive class, and that all exams will be based upon a mix of
multiple choice + short answer + essay questions (even in the 400-
student class; we hire GTAs to grade the short answer and essay
sections of these exams after providing each of them with a formal
grading rubric). If they choose not to enroll, and wish to wait
for a semester when my course has a different professor, then that
is their own personal choice. My teaching rigor has not stopped
students from nominating me for the best teaching awards that KU
offers (some of which I have indeed won), confirming that the
student population still contains a significant number of students
(including pre-Health Science) who really /*do*/ care about
learning, and who respect my methods. Thankfully, I have and am
completely supported by an Upper Administration at KU that strongly
believes in teaching rigor, and thus I do not risk reprisals; I
fear that this is not always the case in every U.S. university or
college, however.
Best wishes,
Val Smith
University of Kansas
On 1/18/2010 2:18 PM, David M. Lawrence wrote:
I watched my evaluation scores decline when I switched to "active
learning." I got tired of lecturing from powerpoints that the
students could memorize, regurgitate on tests, and quickly forget.
Somehow, it was unreasonable for me to expect the students to show
up for the lectures prepared and willing to participate in class
discussions. It was even more unreasonable for me to refuse to
"just tell us what we need to know," when they couldn't answer
very simple questions that I'd toss out to stimulate discussion.
It was also unreasonable for me to expect them to ask questions
relevant to the material we discussed in class. I had students
complain they didn't learn anything from me, but it seems to me
that if they weren't asking questions -- either in class, on class
discussion boards, or via e-mail -- they couldn't have been trying
very hard.
Maybe I am unreasonable...
Dave
On 1/18/2010 12:17 PM, James Crants wrote:
On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Val Smith<vsm...@ku.edu> wrote:
I lay much of this decline at the feet of their parents, who
seem to care
progressively less and less about knowledge. I recall a
particularly
notable incident from over a decade ago, when my youngest
daughter's grade
school Principal retired. The new Principal unilaterally
decided that
Science Fair projects for grades 2-6 should become completely
voluntary,
rather than remaining as a formal requirement that had long been
embedded in
this school's outstanding science preparation curriculum. On
the day of the
science project evaluations, I expressed dismay about this
undesirable
change to another parent, who at that time was almost 20 years
my junior.
Her response was to shout across the room to her husband,
"John (not his
real name), this guy thinks everybody should have to do a
science fair
project, and /that this is all about learning science/!" and she
then turned
to me to say, "If everyone has to do a project, that lowers the
chance that
our child will win the Best Science Project award. That's unfair
competition." And she walked away.
As I was reading your post, I was hoping you would mention the
role of
parents in any decline in the quality of the American education.
I think it started with the baby boom. After the Depression and
World War
II, parents wanted the best for their children, but by providing
the best
materially, many raised children with an inflated sense of
entitlement and
self-importance. When these children raised my generation, self-
esteem was
seen as the most important quality you could promote in a
developing mind,
so many of us grew up feeling even more entitled and important.
Also, since
self-important people like today's parents don't respect
authority figures,
parents now tend to side with their children over teachers when
there is a
student-teacher conflict. Worse, since the entire class is, on
average,
not as prepared as it should be to learn the material you're
trying to
teach, disgruntled students can look to low average performance
for the
whole class to assure themselves that it's your fault if they
don't get high
marks. With students and parents both blaming you for low
grades, and a low
class average apparently supporting their arguments, it's easiest
to lower
your expectations and standards. (And you'll probably get higher
teaching
evaluation scores if you do.) When you do, you end up passing on
students
who aren't prepared for the next level of education.
I understand the importance of questioning authority, and Wendee
Holtcamp's
example of childbirth in American hospitals attests to that
importance (though I believe the doctors rush the delivery
because they're
trained to believe it's best for the patient, not because they
put their
spare time ahead of patient care). However, there's an important
distinction between questioning authority and assuming authority
is wrong.
With respect to the original conversation thread, while I
certainly agree
that it's a problem that people with the appearance of authority
are making
BS claims on television, I don't think that's the only major
threat to
scientific authority. Another threat is the widely-held
perception that
any scientist who thinks they know more than you do about their
area of
expertise is arrogant (and wrong). Because scientific knowledge is
contingent on future results, scientists sometimes find
themselves admitting
that they were wrong about something. Unlike pundits or
politicians,
scientists can't blame some other party, and people will hold
onto those
errors as evidence that we're not as clever as we think we are,
so they can
ignore us if they don't like our message. Also, some people just
don't like
smart people much, so mistakes made by smart people are cherished
as proof
that they aren't so smart after all.
Mind you, I have little evidence for most of the generalities I'm
making
here, but this is just my model of why students seem to be less
prepared
than they used to and why scientific authority doesn't get the
respect I
think it should.
Jim Crants
