A college in our math department sent me this email today:
I have been here for 31.5 years and the students are not getting any weaker or
any stronger. The one trend I notice is that they are losing their intellectual
curiosity. They care less and less about why. Do you know of any
I’ve probably been too noisy of late, but I’ll give this one a shot (without
benefit of citations, so take it for what it’s worth). I generally think that
people who blame everything on the internet and video games are silly buggers,
but in this case I’ll posit that students (and people in
It is true there are too many distractions. Another speculation is that the
lack of curiosity is simply passivity caused by the lower educational levels
being overly structured with rubrics and outlines. My boys (one in HS another
almost there) have very detailed instructions for coursework.
Dear Tipsters,
Both Chris and John make interesting points. Perhaps I could add one more:
sampling. Over the years, a greater proportion of high school graduates have
been admitted to higher education. Perhaps the perceived decline in
intellectual curiosity is related to that. Anecdotally, I
I think yet another variable (I agree with what everyone has said so far by the
way) is that students today don't necessarily view classes and professors as
the place to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. Before the internet mass
audience events were the place to satisfy curiosity (sure
Hi
There is that classic survey showing the changes in first year students values
from developing a meaningful philosophy of life to more material concerns with
financial matters.
http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/culture/consumerism/materialism.html
Perhaps related to
Stuart, This is also true ... My better students are very very good. But we are
going through a decline in enrollments and it looks we are letting in more
students who struggle and it is those weaker students who color our perceptions
of students in general.
==
John W.
Dear John,
That makes sense in understanding our perception. We went through a similar
experience a number of years ago. Then the university got serious about
recruitment (hiring a qualified officer) and as enrolment improved, admission
standards seemed to tighten again.
To focus on these
