I teach college level anatomy and physiology courses and have recently noticed a radical shift in the attitude of my students. Note, most of my students are moving into pre-med and pre-nursing programs in order to work in the medical field. Needless to say, most of us would prefer to have competent people taking care of us.
Lesson number one of anatomy: Anatomy is hard.
Not like it's difficult to grasp-- anatomy isn't nuclear physics. It's hard in the way that learning to read was hard. That learning to write was hard! (though, judging from my students' handwriting and rudimentary grasp of the English language, that lesson wasn't quite learned) Do you remember way back in 1st grade when you spent an entire morning writing row after row of the letter G? Or struggling through your first reading assignments? Probably not, but I'll remind you. IT WAS HARD!!! This is the kind of hard that anatomy is; you're basically memorizing a new language plus recognizing structures, vessels, nerves, functions, etc.
Now people all over the country, all over the world even, go through this course and come out the other end all the smarter for doing it. Somehow, somewhere my students have forgotten (or failed to learn?) how to study. They are the most entitled generation of students I've ever seen. I warn my students each and every week that they should be reviewing past material and studying new material every day if they wish to get an A or B in the class. The first exam average was around a 65%.
My A students are no big deal. These students will get an A come hell or high water regardless of the challenge. The rest, however, are up in arms that I would have the audacity NOT to pass them by giving them all extra credit. I wish you could have seen their faces when I told them I would rather my doctors and nurses get where they are based on knowledge and would not be passing people out of the kindness of my heart.
I don't teach high school, but I sympathize with the challenges that those teachers face in the classroom and also from the powers that be. That being said, I'm wondering if our society has reached the point of giving credit for education when nothing has been learned just for the sake of pushing people through. The other day I had to stop class to teach my students how to use an index rather than flip through their books page by page. I have students who come to my office to argue for half an hour over a point on an exam or quiz while standing next to my A students, who are actively studying for the next exam. They don't seem to realize that they could have gotten 5 or 10 more points on their next exam if they had just studied for that half an hour instead of argue with me for partial credit on a wrong answer.
It's sometimes absurd to the point of being comical. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that this isn't a practical joke, this is my new breed of college student. So what is the solution? Do we maintain the bar of success and turn out a handful of well qualified people while flunking the rest? Or do we lower the bar to include everyone we possibly can in the joy of getting a degree (and not always an education)? It's a real dilemma for me. I take teaching very seriously. I don't dock points for technicalities, I accommodate working students and athletes to give them every opportunity to succeed, and I hold far more office hours than I am required by my institution. You can lead a student to school, but you can't make them learn.
This disconnect between me and my students is worrying and frustrating. I simply cannot find a way to inspire my students to succeed. They will perform absurd tasks for extra credit, but they will not apply themselves to studying in order to get additional points on an exam. It makes me feel like a failure of a teacher. My top students are all wondering why I'm trying so hard when they are clearly succeeding and the failing students are wonder why I'm trying so hard when they think they should pass regardless of their performance.
Funny, though. I may not have to worry about this for too much longer as it's my job on the line this coming election.
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