Subtle Damage to the Senses

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Sealynx, I concur with everything you wrote! I believe that the problems we are seeing with narcissistic college students can be traced back to the culture of "protecting their fragile little egos" instead of giving them a healthy combination of love and discipline. I believe that we grow best in an environment that produces "optimal frustration" --- if you frustrate a child TOO MUCH, that's bad, but also if you don't provide ENOUGH frustration, that's bad too. It is in the range of "optimal frustration" --- saying no when his/her desires encroach upon the rights or needs of others, but not overdoing it --- that a person learns that other people have needs that are distinct from one's own, and that the social world is one of mutual help and interaction.

If you are interested in parenting styles, Diana Baumrind has produced a lot of research on the various parenting styles and what kind of results they produce.

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Another thought: most Americans tend to think that intelligence is something you're born with. Most people in the various Asian cultures (especially Chinese and Japanese) tend to think of intelligence as something you develop with effort. First-generation Asian-American families stress intelligence as something that can be improved, and therefore they do all kinds of things to develop their kids' intelligence, and these kids are the ones that created the "stereotypical smart Asian kid." As the generations in America increase, Asian-American families tend to gravitate to the status quo.

[sKePTiKal]

Another fine image of the amazons at work, Hops! Weaving, embroidering, and creating a "whole cloth" of vivid color, intricacy, compassion and wonder...

the magic of the universe!

[Sealynx]

HP,
One of the studies in the book did a cultural comparison between American and Asian parents.

They gave both groups an extremely hard test and then told their mothers that their child had performed seriously below the norm.  The mothers were then let in for a brief visit before the next test and the interaction was recorded on hidden cameras.

Without fail the American parents did NOT discuss the test failure. The talked about mundane things like what was going to be for supper! The Asian parents immediately sat down with their children and went over what had gone wrong with their test. Both groups showed equal physical and verbal affection, but the American parents completely ignored the failure.

Thanks for the link to Diana Baumrind.

[Sealynx]

BTW. Teachers are getting the brunt of that "refusal to be challenged". I don't know if I mentioned it but I had a student write to the dean this semester, saying that I basically wasn't doing anything for the money I was being paid.

He or She created a fake Gmail account to send the vicious email and used an assumed name. Apparently the person wasn't smart enough to realize that the dean would look at the class roll and find that there was no one by that name. My crime? Challenging them to read the book in order to pass an online classes. They expected to get a list of exactly what was on the test and which pages to skip!

That kind of letter could have caused serious harm to a young teacher who wasn't well known to the dean. These students have gotten so bad so quickly that we have not developed any means of coping with the attacks. We've never had anyone impersonate a student before. I asked that the matter be turned over to Campus Police who could trace the IP address  and haul the student up before the Judicial Committee. I doubt this was done. Making matters worse is the issue of dwindling funds for Higher Ed. We are being forced to compete against each other and treat students like "customers".  Education is quickly becoming a lot like shopping with colleges being forced to do "info sales" in order to outbid the competition.

Increasingly the question is not, what do you need to learn to get a degree, it is "what would you like to learn?". College degrees are not as valuable as they used to be and the whole idea of being a person who can think critically is being replaced by the need to flow toward what is emotionally gratifying. Forms of marketing that stream into young brains via the internet and now Iphones (unchallenged) have replaced the need to "think".

What happens to a society that wants all ideas to be simple, emotionally attractive and unchallenging? I think the next ten years will be very interesting.

[BonesMS]

BTW. Teachers are getting the brunt of that "refusal to be challenged". I don't know if I mentioned it but I had a student write to the dean this semester, saying that I basically wasn't doing anything for the money I was being paid.

He or She created a fake Gmail account to send the vicious email and used an assumed name. Apparently the person wasn't smart enough to realize that the dean would look at the class roll and find that there was no one by that name. My crime? Challenging them to read the book in order to pass an online classes. They expected to get a list of exactly what was on the test and which pages to skip!

That kind of letter could have caused serious harm to a young teacher who wasn't well known to the dean. These students have gotten so bad so quickly that we have not developed any means of coping with the attacks. We've never had anyone impersonate a student before. I asked that the matter be turned over to Campus Police who could trace the IP address  and haul the student up before the Judicial Committee. I doubt this was done. Making matters worse is the issue of dwindling funds for Higher Ed. We are being forced to compete against each other and treat students like "customers".  Education is quickly becoming a lot like shopping with colleges being forced to do "info sales" in order to outbid the competition.

Increasingly the question is not, what do you need to learn to get a degree, it is "what would you like to learn?". College degrees are not as valuable as they used to be and the whole idea of being a person who can think critically is being replaced by the need to flow toward what is emotionally gratifying. Forms of marketing that stream into young brains via the internet and now Iphones (unchallenged) have replaced the need to "think".

What happens to a society that wants all ideas to be simple, emotionally attractive and unchallenging? I think the next ten years will be very interesting.

I don't know what's worse...the way colleges/universities "market" themselves or the end results when their graduates are unable to get jobs.

Bones

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Too bad universities aren't figuring out that they are way overpriced, and that they would do better to provide more basic critical thinking skills and use all that money they're using on marketing to lower the cost. I think the way colleges could compete in this market is to stop trying to provide bells and whistles, and provide a good basic education for a much lower cost.

I think this idea might be behind the rise of community colleges. I know there are some "MIckey Mouse" community colleges out there, but if a student is savvy and careful, there are plenty of community or junior colleges that provide a good education for a much lower cost. At the very least, a savvy student can get a much more economical first two years, and save the big bucks for the last two years.

Isn't there a college in the Ozarks where students work at traditional crafts to fund the school and their own educations? We ought to be looking at models like that.

Sealynx, I am sorry you have to go through crap like that. I have taught both community college and at the university level as an adjunct, and although many students at the cc level are pretty unprepared for college work, I still generally prefer them to the university brats I've encountered. Students also need to know that it's not just academics that makes you a success in the real world, it's how well you can navigate the social world. People with horrible "people skills" will only succeed at jobs that require no interaction with others.

[Sealynx]

Bones,
I wish we could fix that but the world economy is changing and has been for many years. The housing/banking crisis is being blamed because people can understand it easily and feel its fixable. The real causes of joblessness go deeper.

No one stopped buying Dell computers when they fired their Texas work force and moved their help desk to India. No one stopped Boeing from firing its engineers in Seattle and selling technology paid for by American tax breaks and other incentives to other countries then moving its plants there. All over the country major corporations have been bringing foreign workers into the US and training them to take our jobs away using something called an L1 Visa. We don't buy American. We buy at the cheapest price we can find and don't ask about the conditions provided for the workers who make it.

Other issues also affect our companies. Most American companies are older than the competition. Toyota's job force is relatively young and new compared to GM who is saddled with paying retirement and health benefits for generations of workers. Japan forbids for-profit insurance and does not provide many of the bells and whistles we have here. In spite of that, office visits are free, its infant mortality rate is lower than ours and its people live longer!  No health care system is perfect but the resistance in the US to subsidized health care means that our companies have to absorb the cost and pass it on to the consumer, making our products even less competitive on the open market.

Add to this our extremely litigious society that mounts enormous product liability lawsuits and you have an economy that will continue to fall behind as the Asian rim takes over more and more of the technology and (what few) manufacturing jobs we have left. I think we will continue to see the American standard of living decline with fewer jobs that pay really well.

Most of the Companies we supported are no longer even American. Workers used to have the option of moving to foreign countries when their corporation set up shop there. Now these jobs are being exchanged for favors in those countries. Look at the billions we've paid to Halliburton...It moved its offices to the Grand Cayman Islands to avoid US taxes!

Given all of this I still think the best worker is an educated one who can think critically, if for no other reason than to understand the big picture of why his job may be precarious and anticipate where the next job will be found.

[Sealynx]

HP,
I work at a community college. Unfortunately, while administrators are still being hired at the 100K+ level, all the cuts are aimed at faculty.

1) All of our raises have been frozen.
2)They have raised both the required numbers of students for a class to make and the upper limits we have to teach. This means I taught the equivalent of two extra classes for free last semester. A work load increase of 33%.
3) The pressure to give good grades and please students is pitting faculty members against each other. Those who insist students cover the material and show superior ability for a superior grade lose students to those who create easy classes and make the students happy.
4) Instructors must please 70% of their students to get a good year end review from their supervisors. Student comments on these reviews have gone from helpful to ridiculous over the last few years. The most common comment is they don't want to use the textbook because they don't want to read.

[teartracks]

Sealynx,

Thank you for a clear and understandable assessment of some of the current economic issues.  Brilliant!

We buy at the cheapest price we can find and don't ask about the conditions provided for the workers who make it.

I try to support American owned businesses.  I grieve everytime I go to the SUPER STORES and feel coerced for the reasons you mentioned to buy from them.   I know on the other end is a poor worker who most likely works for a pittance to supply an out of touch American with what in times past would have been viewed as an inferior product.   Not because the worker is incapable of making a better product, but because the business bullies dictate the terms and the worker has to comply. 

Not everyone has their head in the sand, but there may be too many who do for the eyes wide open ones to make a difference.   

Thanks...

tt

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Sealynx, Yes, the conditions you teach under don't promote academic excellence, do they? And yes, it is ridiculous that administrators continue to give themselves raises while the real producers (faculty) have to do more and more with less and less. And, it sounds like you have the same problems with cc students that I had at the university level! My main problems with students at the cc level were that many of them could not write a decent paper ... I think many of them just "slid by" in high school and didn't even consider that someday they might want more education.

Nonetheless, I preferred the academically unprepared to the "academic stars" that were Ns. Some of these students with horrible attitudes were perfectionists about their school work but were terrible to have to work with. Both fellow students and teachers disliked them. And, they never saw that their attitudes were the source of the problem. This type of student might do OK in the traditional classroom but because they don't have an humble attitude, they will destroy their careers eventually.

[Sealynx]

HP,
A friend who works at UGA told me that the main reasons that students used to file Grade Appeals was for failing grades. Now the main appeal she gets is for an A+ rather than an A since they went to the plus minus system. Its really disgusting.

[Butterfly]

Wow - having to please 70% of the students who take your class!!  It is a wonder that any teacher can please half so many.  It's like trying to instill values about education into students without a proper value system in the institution itself to back you up.  And an institution with sales as its priority . . .

What about the the movement away from the liberal arts in many universities?  Without this intellectual base that many students are opting out of, one would expect a decline in the ability of the modern college graduate to sustain a rational thought process.  Yet, even outside academia, it seems that intellectual capability is outranked by charisma and the ability to clinch the deal or snag the client--in other words, logic versus emotion.  Nevertheless, without the former, the dealmaking will end for any business. 

[Sealynx]

Academia is slow to change. We require some general education courses like "Speech and Humanities" studies. We should be making everyone take Mass Communication because they get most of their information from the media and not books or talks.

Yes, 70%. I already have student who tell me some of the things they are learning are "Stupid and worthless". They have no respect for people with more education then they have and are more likely to associate wisdom with someone who has great aps on their Iphone. The inmates are running the asylum.

[sKePTiKal]

Hey Sealynx - my condolences for being in "higher" ed...  <sarcasm>.

My experiences started when I finally overcame the bureaucratic hurdles to get accepted/registered - at 28. Then, being ostracized because I did the assignments, enjoyed them, got good grades, and felt more comfortable with the faculty than my immature classmates. In fact, I felt a bit cheated and disappointed at the level of material.

Later, I taught tech subjects FT at the CC level... and then spent 9 years managing online ed software systems & integrations...while training my underpaid/overworked faculty in how to teach with it. I've become well-acquainted with a lot of the issues and yeah, some people even listen to my opinion! 

Any discussion of ed comes back to the fact that we no longer fail students, nor set absolute criteria for grades - you can always challenge a grade and many students do. Back ups of online courses are frequently called upon to prove that the student didn't do the work required. But in their minds - that shouldn't matter. Why? Because they were passed along when they were younger, they didn't become acquainted with the old-fashioned concept of "learning from your mistakes"... oh no - we couldn't even point out those mistakes. At my husband's CC, 70% of the students are enrolled in remedial courses simply to bring their skills up to the range of college-level work.

A common complaint I've heard from faculty, is that the student strongly believes that it's the instructor's responsibility to magically transfer "knowledge" to them... and that simply attending class is enough to "qualify" them in that knowledge. The result, that I've seen first hand when hiring students... is that they are resentful of being expected to actually DO work and literally don't know how to do many things - and have no interest in how things work, how to make things, how to solve problems. If you just ignore the problem, it will "go away"... because one can't fail.

This translates into an economy of workers who don't know HOW and don't WANT to "make things" - i.e., manufacturing or solve problems - i.e., creative innovation. Thankfully, my soapbox rant is a wide generalization. There are some very notable exceptions and schools are seeing an increase in young people wanting to learn real hands-on skills. It may take another generation or so, but the pendulum will swing back around... away from the "I'm so special... so I'm entitled" mentality.

and don't get me started on the administrations... sigh. They'll be the last to "get it".