112 of 126 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertains and educates without delivering surprise, January 11, 2006
This review is from: My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student (Hardcover)
Like other reviewers, I have misgivings about the ethics of "Rebekah Nathan's" undercover exploration of student life. Anthropologists may become participant observers but certainly her fellow students might feel betrayed.
At the same time, I couldn't stop reading. Few university press books combine academic discourse with readability as well as this one does. I was a college professor myself for 20+ years, but in the business school. And I didn't find a single surprise -- except, was Nathan really unaware of her students as much as she claims?
Several years ago, I remember a summer school student complaining, "You give too much work! Who has time for this? I have a wedding in my family and my folk dance lessons..."
Nathan's glorifies international students, who criticize Americans for shallow friendship and lightweight classes. But I taught international MBA students who said calmly, "We won't be in class next week. We're going sightseeing. It would be a shame to come all this way and then not see [a local attraction]." And some international students have less than ideal motivations -- not to mention disregard of female professors.
Nathan bemoans the lack of student participation. In the business school, we were encouraged to motivate students. I rarely had trouble getting students to participate: discussion groups, in-class activities and more.
But she's right about so many elements of student culture. I returned for my PhD when I was in my 30's (deemed the "older woman" by my professors - I wish I were kidding). So in a way I experienced some of her frustrations, including time management, conflicts, inexorable deadlines and arbitrary administrative policies. I also realized that students knew the university better than the professors; as a professor, I remember one student getting annoyed because I had no idea where the bookstore was.
And she's depicted student networks in a fascinating way. Students rarely made new friends after freshman year. Many retained ties to high school friends. And she's captured the businesslike way today's students approach college life: like a 9 to 5 job, she says, and she's right.
I would have expected Nathan to dwell more on educational values in society, which may account for a great deal of student lack of academic interest. In the US, the appearance of intelligence can disqualify us from jobs and political office. Corporate recruiters have told me, "I don't want the egghead A student -- give me the hard-working C+ student, who's also working and joining a fraternity." In what may be the most fascinating and revealing anecdote in the book, Nathan shares an exercise she gives her students. Okay, we know there are no witches. But if there were a witch in this classroom, who would it be? Inevitably, she say, the most motivated students get named.
Mostly I was surprised that Nathan doesn't discuss faculty evaluations from the student perspective. Many academic weaknesses, I believe, are directly attributable to the role of faculty as entertainers rather than educators. In fact, an adjunct at a non-traditional school acknowledged, "To keep this job I live and die by student evaluations. I've become an edu-tainer."
Fear of negative evaluations has led to some dumbed-down courses and discouraged faculty. Study after study shows students don't take these evaluations seriously, yet professors have lost tenure, rank and jobs when students express dislike, for whatever reason. That's why students get away with disrespectful behavior and why they rarely get C's, let alone D's and F's, even when they don't study. When faculty believe grades are correlated with evaluations, they take note. Students have even said, "I can't evaluate my professor till I have a sense of what my course grade will be."
I remember a student who wrote on his evaluation, "The course was no good. You had to read the book to pass." As a colleague pointed out, his evaluation -- rating me from 1 to 5 -- counts just as heavily as the scores of a motivated student.
And I remember teaching a class while I was still a graduate student. My students were commuters who worked full-time, often at demanding jobs. One young woman said, "I like this class. Can we have a party?" And we ended up with a potluck, where students brought in homemade dishes. (My rule was that I wouldn't cook.) It was an amazing experience, creating the kind of community Nathan yearns for.
Yet not a word about this event appeared in the student evaluations -- all that's real to the university administration.
Nathan mentions the gulf in understanding between students and faculty. But I think she overlooks some elements in systems and society that drive a wedge between those committed to intellectual enterprise and everybody else.
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34 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is an Important Book to Read, September 7, 2005
This review is from: My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student (Hardcover)
I urge potential readers to ignore the harping over perceived intellectual slights suggested by many reviewers of Rebekah Nathan's "My Freshman Year". The intent of the book was to help students in their college experience by informing faculty and administrators about the current student culture, both its limitations and its potential advantages to learning. As such, the book deserves to be read by all parents of college- bound high school students, college students, teachers and professors, and administrators interested in giving students the best education possible. I too am a college professor and find that the intellection aspirations of my freshmen are now different than my pedagogical expectations. Nathan's book provides at least some answers for the differences, which I rapidly am using to make my classes more accessible --while still providing students the content they need and deserve.
So, I am frankly astounded at many of the reviews I have here read, which center not on the content of the book, but on how Nathan got her information--by posing as a freshman to make students feel comfortable around her. As a physical scientist, I am dumbstruck that some social scientists and others think this approach was somehow "unethical." Nathan went to great lengths to avoid reporting things that might be construed to be improper, didn't report actual names, certainly was not "spying" (the intent to do harm or gain advantage over those in the dark), and even became friends with students for whom she obviously had great affection and respect.
I intuitively know that if Nathan's freshmen had been aware that they were being observed, they'd have behaved quite differently. Look at Reality TV to see my point, as one extreme of a continuum of "behavior modifications" when being watched. The great anthropologist Margaret Mead was even duped by the islanders, who knew they were being studied, in her classic investigation in the South Pacific.
Nathan did no harm in "My Freshman Year," but rather, did a great collective good for students and faculty alike. Read this book.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mandatory reading for professors, August 29, 2005
This review is from: My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student (Hardcover)
This book is oriented to the relationship between today's college students and their academic work. Thank goodness it skips the juicy bits that attract journalists: binge drinking, date rape, fraternity hazing. Instead, it wonders, why are students so disengaged from the world of ideas? Why do students almost never ask to have a word defined? Why do they assume deadlines and strictures against plagiarism and cheating infinitely elastic?
The traditional explanations by college profesors run along these lines:
(1) It's all the fault of K-12 teachers and administrators;
(2) The new generation is just no good.
This book looks at the passage of today's college students from consumerism (as entering freshmen) to careerism (as graduating seniors), and observes that this particularly modern transition never quite passes through the life of the mind. There are also discussions of conformity, community and diversity, and the views of Americam students given by foreign-exchange students. We find that pairing hard and easy classes, and grouping classes into two or three days a week, are perfectly rational time-management techniques, and don't pose particular problems once the students master their use.
If you're a college professor you'll find this book filled with insights about your students, and why they do what they do.
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