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. Kulig, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Coordinator, Psychology Honors
Plymouth State University
Plymouth NH 03264
==========================
----- Original Message -----
From: Stuart McKelvie <smcke...@ubishops.ca>
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu>
Sent: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 14:18:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: RE: [tips] The decline of intellectual curiosity
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 think that the best
students today are just as intellectually curious as those in the past.
Sincerely,
Stuart
___________________________________________________________________________
"Floreat Labore"
[cid:image001.jpg@01CFD994.C1E6F680]
"Recti cultus pectora roborant"
Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Phone: 819 822 9600 x 2402
Department of Psychology, Fax: 819 822 9661
Bishop's University,
2600 rue College,
Sherbrooke,
Québec J1M 1Z7,
Canada.
E-mail: stuart.mckel...@ubishops.ca<mailto:stuart.mckel...@ubishops.ca> (or
smcke...@ubishops.ca<mailto:smcke...@ubishops.ca>)
Bishop's University Psychology Department Web Page:
http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy<blocked::http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy>
Floreat Labore"
[cid:image002.jpg@01CFD994.C1E6F680]
[cid:image003.jpg@01CFD994.C1E6F680]
___________________________________________________________________________
From: John Kulig [mailto:ku...@mail.plymouth.edu]
Sent: September 26, 2014 1:42 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] The decline of intellectual curiosity
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. Perhaps without
instructions, students will just sit and wait for instructions. I like the joke
about the class on creativity that starts with "Here are the 6 steps to do be
creative ..." I think the same happens with "critical thinking". Some texts
have bullet lists on how to think.
I don't remember getting detailed outlines and rubrics for papers as a student.
At some point I knew that a paper had to have a beginning which laid out the
main themes, a middle section with data or arguments, and a conclusion. Did I
learn it the way Thorndike's cat learned to press levers? or the way a person
learns to swim quickly when thrown into the water? Successive approximations to
B and A grades?
Students sometimes ask me for a study guide and I tell them - gently - that
they should do their own, and talk about different ways to do it, but I won't
tell them one specific way to do study guides. But then again, most of us
probably sat in the front row, walked 5 miles to school in the winter etc etc
etc
==========================
John W. Kulig, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Coordinator, Psychology Honors
Plymouth State University
Plymouth NH 03264
==========================
________________________________
From: "Christopher Green" <chri...@yorku.ca<mailto:chri...@yorku.ca>>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)"
<tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu>>
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 12:38:45 PM
Subject: Re: [tips] The decline of intellectual curiosity
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 general) seem less
curious about the world now because of the ubiquity of entertaining
distractions. I can remember times decades ago, when I was a student myself,
when I would be very bored with the work I had to do, but after an hour or so
of doing pretty well nothing at all, I would, in some exasperation, return to
my work as “better than nothing.” As often as not, I would soon become
re-engaged with it and work for several hours. TV and radio were there with me,
of course, as were my own collections of music and books, but they were much
more limited than now, and often became boring and repetitive themselves. So I
would go back to work, faux de mieux.
Now, however, there are a zillion possible distractions — 900 channels on TV,
hundreds of satellite radio stations, the entire world wide web, video games,
music streaming, texting, social media,... it goes on and on and on. One can
(too) easily fritter away a whole day, being at least mildly entertained the
entire time. It is difficult for the entertainment value afforded by "finding
out about the world" to compete with all that, except among a very small number
of us who are obsessively (pathologically?) interested in such things. Everyone
else can go on killing time with relatively non-challenging amusements that are
specifically engineered to be maximally engaging without ever having to search
for “something to do,” and perhaps coming across learning as a worthy pastime.
If that seems to exotic an explanation for you, then perhaps the massive
emphasis that is now placed on the extrinsic rewards for college education
(getting a middle class job) as opposed to the intrinsic rewards of becoming a
knowledgeable person. As we (psychologists) all know: extrinsic rewards can
rapidly undermine intrinsic ones.
Just a couple of thoughts,
Chris
…..
Christopher D Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P#
Canada
chri...@yorku.ca<mailto:chri...@yorku.ca>
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
………………………………...
On Sep 26, 2014, at 10:15 AM, Annette Taylor
<tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu>> wrote:
> 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 studies/books/websites on the topic? ... it is hard to understand why so
> many students do not care about why things are as they are.
>
> Any insights on this from the list?
>
> And BTW:
> Thanks to all the great responses to my query about the "systems" part of
> history & systems.
>
> Annette
>
> Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D.
> Professor, Psychological Sciences
> University of San Diego
> 5998 Alcala Park
> San Diego, CA 92110-2492
> tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu>
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