Dire Education

The professor's joy is when he can see a light bulb turn on inside the mind of a student, who then shows recognition and understanding in this new found perception.  Of course, it is the student who ultimately determines whether the Aha! moment will happen.  The professor should not take credit for it when it does occur, especially since quite frequently the same environment that the professor creates evinces no such reaction in other students, even those who dutifully go about their studies.  They remain unaware that generating a spark of insight about the subject matter should be their quest.  They are quite content with getting the right answers on the homework assignment, without knowing why those answers are right; hence without being able to transfer the lesson they supposedly learned in the context of the homework to some other situation.

This type of professor's joy has eluded me this semester.  I may be too old to tap into student's intrinsic motivation, possessing no sense whatsoever what buttons to push. Where five or six years ago it was otherwise, the last few times teaching this has been the result.  But until this semester, I would always have at least a couple of outspoken students I could pretty much count on to chime in when I'd do my schtick as Socrates, so we could generate a little back and forth in class.  Now trying that feels like pulling teeth. To the extent that I've performed any social service with my teaching, the value lies elsewhere.

For the first time I can remember, I wrote a note to a Dean (first in the LAS office, then in the Dean of Student's Office) about a student I thought might be going over the rails emotionally.  I'm not sure whether she had already been getting assistance before I wrote that note or if my writing triggered that assistance would be forthcoming.  That's not something I need clarity on.  However, I do want to observe that doing this is probably outside of what most instructors perceive as their job description.  In my case, while I'm unlike my students in many ways, I did go through a rather serious depression in 10th grade and then again during my sophomore year in college. So while I'm no expert, I do have some sense of what is going on and some empathy for the students who are struggling this way.

The thing is, this student is by no means the only student in my class who is struggling emotionally.  Indeed, such struggles may be the new normal. There is discord between (a) very high tuition, (b) pressure to get a good job after graduation, and (c) the students don't know what they want for themselves.   To this I'd add the following.  Many of the students I see in my course don't appear competent at a cognitive level in the course prerequisites.  They've had years and years of school as credentialing, without it producing a foundation for further learning later in life.

If it is not these kids as rotten students, but the system as rotten in what it seems to be producing all too often, you have to ask: when will we wake up. Frankly, it seems nobody gives a ____ about these students.  At the U, we focus on the successes.  They are the targets for alumni contributions.  While these others we admitted, once their performance seems substandard we seem ready to discard them.  We let them graduate in some major that the campus doesn't get bragging rights from, such as economics.  But we're essentially sweeping them under the rug.  Of course, they get that.

The new thing on campus is trying to address inequality of income of the families of students, so we will admit those whose parents have below $60,000 in household income (approximately the median nationally) and fully fund their tuition. But we are not yet doing anything to address inequality as measured by SAT/ACT scores and, for example, the disadvantage that a student who is first in the family to attend college faces, as compared, for example, where both parents have advanced degrees. There is substantial intellectual inequality on campus and it is ripping us apart.  But we don't know how to address the issue, so we ignore it. And even if we attended to it, we would be divided by those who advocate for survival of the fittest approach versus those who would prefer a nurturing approach.

I used to think, circa 2012 and 2013, that with my insight from years in educational technology I could cut through all of this and produce something that was reasonably good for the bulk of the students I taught.  But now the circumstances are burying me.  I'm no longer up to the challenge. Yet the need to rise to the challenge is, if anything, greater now than it was then.  So what do we do about it?

As I've written elsewhere, I'm afraid people are too willing to offer up answers before they've done a complete diagnosis of the problem.  And in this case, I'm afraid that the biggest problem is that we're not willing to admit there is any problem.

You can't score a run if you don't reach first base.