A Caring Paradox

May 10th is the day of my last exam of my undergraduate career, and although I will save my complete book of rants about NCSU until after I graduate you'll hear me talk about the education system in general over the next month or so. What I would like to talk about today is the issue of teacher and student apathy in the classroom.

The one thing I realized from my high school experience was that the vast majority of my peers were incredibly apathetic towards the free education they were receiving. Most people took the education for granted and what was worse is that a lot of people took some of the most caring and concerned teachers for granted.

For whatever reason, I had much more passionate and caring teachers in high school than I've had in my 4 years of college. I'll save any possible hypotheses about why that is for later, but while high school (for me) was domianted by teachers caring and students taking them for granted - the exact opposite has been the case in college.

I'm sure a big part of the change in attitude of students is the simple fact that in college, you're paying to be there (in some cases a *lot* of money) so you might as well care about it. What's interesting is that although professors in college bring in higher salaries than high school teachers, for the most part, they seem to care less. Now this is definitely a generalization, as it does not apply to every single college professor, but I will say that in my four years of undergrad I've had a total of 4 or 5 professors who actually cared.

I'll start with the worst: The worst type of professor is one who has received tenure and as a result becomes complacent with his/her teaching style and material. I've had a number of these professors; they are either teaching at a university as a necessary evil to do research sponsored by the university, or they are honestly fixed in their ways and do nothing to adapt to each succeeding generation of students.

There are other professors who may want to teach but are honestly horrible at it. Any professor who becomes defensive of his/her ways and will not approach teaching with an open mind with a desire to help the students does not make a good professor.

Some professors teach by PowerPoint and although I appreciate the use of technology in the classroom, if the class is taught as little more than a recitation of slides then the professor becomes fairly useless. Anyone who has been through high education is probably intimately familiar with this teaching style.

I've encountered entirely too many professors who honestly don't even try to make their classes interesting (and I'll get to possible reasons why in a bit). I've even had professors who understand the uselessness of the class they are teaching and just accept it as a fact and move on. Your professor admitting to you that the class you are taking is a waste of time does wonders for a student's enthusiasm about his/her education.

My dad is a professor and he has a lot of the same complaints I do. He sees people in his department that are guilty of the very complaints I've voiced above - and it frustrates him too. Some of his students are putting every dime they have (and don't have) into getting this education and they're essentially being taken for a ride. It's just not right.

Some of this has to do with the fact that the curriculum is often times poorly made or decided upon by equally apathetic individuals. Another problem is that some professors are honestly turned off by students who are apathetic. I'm not trying to paint this angelic picture of students, because honestly there are even more bad students than there are bad professors, but it's a self feeding and repeating cycle.

Those professors who could care are often turned off by students sleeping in class, reading newspapers in class or just plain not coming to class. I've been in classes of close to 100 people where only about 30 have shown up. Ask the students why they don't come and they'll tell you that the professor is boring, the material is useless (or that they already know the material - more on this in another blog) or maybe a more invalid excuse. Some students don't care so some professors stop caring and things just get worse and worse.

So how do we solve the problem? I'm not exactly certain, but I definitely think it's one that needs to be addressed. And this is only the tip of the iceberg; class is over so I've got to run, how ironic, complaining about student apathy while blogging in class :)

Take care.