Marc Carter wrote:
...an examination of enrolments in history, biology (other than pre-med), philosophy, and other areas suggests that education in the liberal arts isn't valued in the way it once was. But maybe I'm wrong about that.
Valued by whom for what? Majorities of undergraduates wouldn't seem to be the best place to look for validation of one's values. You have to justifiy it to yourself before you can transmit it to others. The fact that universities have catered, over the past 40 years or so, much more (than before) to people who are going to have to work for a living means that students have more of a legitimate worry in that regard than, perhaps, many of those who preceded them in university. Still, perhaps one of the things universities can teach is that an education is not measured *entirely* by the size of one's starting salary upon graduation. They have to be brought to appreciate the benefits of a "broad" education.
And the "high-school" reference is about the fact that college now seems a requirement for many students, and an increasingly large part of our jobs is trying to generate student interest in things, and sometimes playing disciplinarian, and sometimes babysitting. A student who enrolls in university for him- or herself is very different from one that enrolls because of some outside pressure. I don't really care so much about the abilities of students; I care much more about how willing they are to apply themselves to the subject.
This is all true (though I doubt that it was ever as "untrue" as we might like to believe). In any case, you might simply resist the various pressures to behave in these ways. The more you explicitly attempt to *generate* interest on the part of the students, the more they will come to believe that this is actually a significnat part of your function. By contrast, I design my courses for students who are prepared to pay attention and do the work (whether or not they are actually interested in the topic). After all, they paid large amounts of money to take the course. If they didn't want to learn the material (at least in the minimal sense of wanting to satisfy the requirements for their long-term goals), then why would they have registered in the first place? I don't actively attempt to be boring in class, but I am almost wholly task-oriented (that is, sometimes we simply have to struggle through boring and difficult bits in order to get where we want to go in the long run). As for "babysitting" and "disciplining," as long as students don't disturb others (or me) I don't care much what they do in class (though I'm surprised they don't find more comfortable places to read a paper or surf the web). And I *never* require students to come to class. That's their business, though I try to make it clear what the consequences are likely to be on their understanding of the topic (and thereby on their course mark) of regularly not attending or of attending but not paying attention. If you don't act as though they are responsible for the consequences of their actions (perhaps helping them out with a hint here and there), they certainly won't.
Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ============================ .
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