Vent du Jour
My students did lousy on their midterm. There were 16 failures (out of 61 students) and the class average was 65%. But guess whose fault it is? Right - mine. I received a very nasty email from a student with the usual "the exam wasn't fair, you didn't tell us what to study" crap - very inappropriate. I expected bad feelings, but sometimes I am amazed at the gall of some of these "adult" learners. I will pretty much bend over backwards to help my students, but piss me off with snotty behaviour and my motivation to help disappears.
Do you remember being in school? Would you ever tell a teacher or prof what you were really thinking or feeling? Would you ever vent to them? Would you ever tell them that an exam, test, assignment was unfair? Would you ever try to get your final exam schedule changed because you couldn't possibly write 2 exams in 2 days? Would you ever write that your teacher "sucked" on an evaluation? Would you ever be excused for plagiarism because "you didn't know what plagiarism was"? Welcome to post-secondary education in 2007.
posted by Marta at
9:31 pm
4 Comments:
Nice...and they're adult learners? Sound more like adult whiners.
Why should you have to tell them what to study? Isn't it their job to know the material and you just pick and choose what's the most important info?
Ridiculous, if you ask me.
11:16 am
Regardless of what their ages are, they are NOT adult learners but rather pampered children who have spent most of their K-12 lives being spoonfed by teachers or parents. I stopped teaching at the post-secondary level as a sessional because I was having the same experiences (and as a sessional I had NO clout). After I returned the first assignment to a group of students, at the break I had about half the class lined up to 'discuss' their assignment. Most of those lined up were recent high school graduates, not the 30 and 40 years on the evening class. They wanted higher marks because they worked 'hard' on it. When I pointed out that they had not answered the questions and those questions answered were largely incorrect I got more arguments about 'fairness' and not telling them what to do. I finally had to address it by being very blunt and stating - "life is not fair, you need to answer questions, and guess what - if you think you worked hard on this assignment you will never last in the really world." Unfortunately most of them will last in the real work world, because employers are so desparate for employees they will tolerate almost anything to have a warm body in the workplace. My advice is to not worry about the complainers - they will not be satisfied and you will go grey trying to accommodate them.
5:03 pm
Don't stress about it.... hopefully they'll realize how to approach things more appropriately for the final, and may actually learn what they need to know to get by in clinic - and you'll have done them a service!
The problem with higher education these days is the mentality that school is a product that is marketed to students - students become customers, and the "customer is always right".
Look over the exam again, and if you truly think it was fair and that students should know what they didn't, stand by it!
You know you're a good and fair teacher/evaluator, so don't let them get you down.
6:54 pm
Thanks for all the comments! I totally agree with what everybody has said - and this generation really needs to smarten up. Life doesn't come with entitlements. I may be accused of being a "tough" teacher, but I think that most students find me fair.
(Thanks esp. to anon - don't know who you are, but I appreciate your input!)
9:50 am
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