My students have been driving me nuts lately with comments like "this is too much reading," "I don't like Fantasy," "this is lame" (and in one case, saying that I am lame). They also routinely fall asleep in class, fail quizzes, and whine about how much work I give them.
So. Question for those of you who are college students. Why are you in college? Is it for the social interaction? The education? Do you feel that because you got accepted into a college, the teachers owe you good grades? How do you feel about your General Education (some places call them Core) requirements? Do you think they're a waste of time?
Seriously. I want to know. Because I'm ready to start arbitrarily failing people. I'm that pissed off right now. And I'd like to know if students are like this everywhere and if teaching is really the vocation for me.
(Letting me know what grade/level you are would also help this tremendously.)
Well, Blondie Bear, I am a junior English major.
🙂 You teach English, right? I gues I'm probobly not that qualified to comment on this thread as I LOVE British Lit more than my life....but here goes anyhow.
I'm in college because I want to be. It's that simple. My main objective is just expanding my knowledge in what I love (literature, film, theatre). I don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate and I don't care at this point. I'm sure I'll figure something out. I attend Seattle University, which is a Jesuit Catholic private college, and we have pretty substantial core requirements, including Theology, Ethics, Philosophy, and Math. Everyone has to take all of those no matter what your major is. Our Mission is to "educate the whole person". I've really enjoyed most of them, except for The Bible as Literature, which was to be honest pretty dull (It was due to the Professor, though.) I believe that in order to be a fully educated, intelligent and cultivated person one needs to have a general knowledge of all of the Humanities, so I absolutely support the core requirement thing.
It seems like a lot of students go to college in order to learn the skills to enter a specific field (like engineering or something) and that's great - but they graduate knowing a whole lot about that and not much about anything else, it seems. But at my college, we all come out with the same core knowledge, along with our major of course.
In terms of your complaint of students complaining about the reading - that's interesting to me. Are they in the class because they "have to be" or are most of your students English majors? Personally, I do find it very difficult to keep up with all my reading because of the 10 week quarter system at my school, and because I also have a job and am involved with theater on top of my course load. But I do not blame the professor for assigning too much reading - it's my fault if I'm behind, you know?
In regards to complaining about fantasy - huh? That's bizarre. Seems to me students would be down to read anything non-canonical and "unconventional" in a lit class. The best class I ever took was one called Science Fiction Overdrive. It was absolutely awesome.
I have noticed a general trend with my generation in regard to low ambition and apathy. Maybe that's it. Some people just don't enjoy reading. Who knows. It's their issue though, you know? If they fail it's because they brought it on themselves.
Hope this helps.
---------- Post added at 10:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:31 PM ----------
Although, if I was going to go with a graphic novel, I'd probably do Gaiman's Books of Magic because it's more self-contained; choosing WHICH Sandman to do would be difficult.
---------- Post added at 10:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:04 PM ----------
Me, too! I love Stardust! A few of my geekier students loved it, as well, but a lot of them found it "boring" and "unrealistic" (I'm ready to smack the next person who uses that word, by the way--of COURSE it's unrealistic; it's FICTION).
I KNOW, right?!
Today in class, while we're discussing the creation of the Monster in Frankenstein, this Freshman kid pips up with, "I just can't read this! For one thing, it would never happen. For another thing, it's totally impossible!" I was like, are you kidding me? My Professor was like, "Just try to deal with the concept, ok?"
HA. It was great.
