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61 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Valuable Look at the College Teaching Experience, April 23, 2000
I taught part time for several years at a major state university, and full time for two years at the community college level. I last taught almost a decade ago. I found much, though not all, of the author's account of his experiences to be consistent with what I experienced.The author believes that most students have the consumerist attitude that because they're the ones paying, it is the teacher's responsibility to teach them, not their responsibility to learn. I would put it a little differently. The overwhelming majority of my students were quite indifferent to whether they learned anything. Their consumerist attitude wasn't so much about trading money for learning as it was trading effort for grades. They wanted to pay the least in effort for the highest grades they could get. Why do 50% of the reading if you can get the same grade by doing 10%? Why torture yourself writing a term paper if you can obtain one over the Internet? Why learn the material you're to be tested on if you can just review old tests that your fraternity keeps on file for this instructor? To put more effort into a class than you absolutely have to would be as pointless to them as paying $2 for a loaf of bread that costs $1. Learning doesn't enter into it. The author laments the way the TV generation students need to be constantly entertained, to have their micro attention spans indulged. That was somewhat true when I was teaching, and I think it might well have gotten worse since. A friend of mine once made an interesting point about this. He noted that if you talk to students, or if you listen to the conversations they have with each other, when they have anything positive to say about a teacher, by far the most common term of praise you'll hear is "funny." At least 75% of the time, and probably more, you'll hear, "Oh, that's a great class. He's so funny!" "You should take a class with so-and-so. He's really funny!" Etc. The author feels that students and their evaluations are far too influential in determining such things as tenure decisions, and hence that instructors know to suck up to students by giving them everything they want. In my limited experience, I did not find this to be a significant issue. In fact, at one institution, a committee had to decide whether to hire me on permanently after I had completed a one year assignment with them, and I was quite surprised when they mentioned to me that they had never thought to even look at my student evaluations. The author laments the extreme grade inflation of recent years, and the way that students feel entitled to high grades for mediocre work. That fits my experience completely. The student attitude seems to be that adequate work deserves an A+. If you are going to give anything less than 100% of the available points to a student on an assignment, you had better be able to cite egregious errors in their work. If I told someone they had gotten a B or even an A- on a paper, the most common response was a surprised or angry "What was wrong with it! " The author attributes some of the negative attitudes he encounters to the versions of "postmodernism" and such that have filtered down to the student level. I tend to agree. Things were already headed in that direction when I was teaching, and what I have heard since then leads me to believe they've gotten worse. For many students, there is no "truth," no one can possibly be more intelligent or more learned than anyone else, and it is ridiculous and offensive for anyone, including a teacher, to pass judgment on other people by something like giving them grades for their work. Indeed, even for many "educators" (using the term loosely), college is far more about providing therapy and boosting the self-esteem of the students and indoctrinating them with some nebulous version of cultural relativism than it is about traditional notions of learning. One of the worst things you can do to a student-sure to raise hackles now since it's so unheard of-is to state or imply that they're wrong about something. All opinions are equal, after all, and their opinions are just as "true for them" as yours are "true for you." Apparently it's better that students be socialized to be thin-skinned ignoramuses than that they have "Western logic" and "linear thinking" imposed on them. While I mostly sympathized with the author's complaints, I did wish he could have found a way to maintain high standards and teach the way he felt was best instead of giving in to the pressures he perceived. In spite of all he says that I largely agree with, I genuinely liked the vast majority of my students. You certainly don't get the impression he does. Yes, there are a high number of students who have absolutely no business in an institution of higher learning until they grow up. But there are also a handful of motivated students with positive attitudes about learning, and considerably more "fence-straddlers" whom a skilled teacher can inspire into the "good student" category. I always felt that I had to work on improving my teaching and on getting through to more people in any way I could. Whether I was 1% or 99% responsible for their learning didn't matter; I still wanted to do the best job I was capable of doing. Yes, it would be nice if more students would cooperate in the process, but you work with what you've got. I wish the author could have warmed to that challenge more.
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54 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An important book that doesn't go far enough., March 2, 1999
By A Customer
One day a colleague loaned me a copy of "Generation X Goes to College", and ruined my night. Desensitized by long exposure to poor students, impelled by my own need to survive, and inundated with propaganda from the community colleges, I had begun to doubt everything I knew. Community colleges give you the best possible education. An A in Chemistry 101 from one is just as good as an A in Chemistry 101 at Cal Tech. Yeah, sure. Lazy, unmotivated students who find "1984" incomprehensible do better at universities than top high school graduates. OK, I believe it. The most highly qualified college instructor has a master's degree from a second-rate university. People with Ph.Ds from top schools are stupid and bad teachers because, well, they just are. Right. Research makes you dumb. Excellence is elitism. Bad is good. Lies are truth. I didn't fight it any more. I had gotten comfortable, or at least, less uncomfortable. As I gave lazy, unintelligent students As for memorizing and regurgitating a few facts, I was happy in the sure expectation of being rewarded with the immoderate praise I routinely find on my teaching reviews. I pushed away the knowledge that I had been co- opted. Sacks' book woke me up, reminded me that excellence is not elitism, and lies are not truth, and made me too angry to stop reading until I finished every page. Sacks has written an important and courageous book, but one that did not go nearly far enough. Sacks deserves praise for exposing the scandalous truth about the exceedingly poor quality of most community college education, but his analysis of the reasons for this "dumbing down" focuses almost entirely on the least guilty: the students. Like any other, the most recent generation of students have virtues to balance their faults. The pursuit of excellence in learning is not one of those virtues, but how could it be? They attend institutions where eighteen year olds without experience of higher education dictate who shall teach what, and how; and where literature in modern English is pronounced "too advanced" for adult college undergraduates. (When do they get to Shakespeare? Graduate school?) Throughout this book, Sacks continually misses the biggest target of all. The substitution of "lite learning" for substance and comprehension may be initiated by administrations at the behest of students, but it occurs with the total complicity of the tenured faculty. The culpability of the faculty at The College permeates Sacks' book, and yet they escape the meticulous examination of their motives to which he subjects students and administrators: Why? Obviously Sacks has discovered what his colleagues certainly know; if you shut up and cater to administration interests the rewards are generous. Tenured faculty roll in to work at 10 am or head out at 1 pm, and don't come in at all some days; any unattractive assignment (too early, too late, too close to the weekend) is shuffled off onto one of the army of part-timers who rush off at the end of class to another college. Though Sacks complains bitterly about his poor pay, he surely enjoys the long, lazy summer vacations in Europe, the six weeks at Christmas and the week at Easter. No doubt he likes the twenty hour work weeks, the sabbaticals and the load bank leaves (teach six classes instead of five and take a semester off with full pay every two and half years to do whatever you like). Sacks' friend Chris summarizes the reason that tenured community college faculty are unwilling to challenge the status quo: "Instructors get three months off, work half days, they take life easy. So if you can smile at your students and be happy, you can have all that too." It's also hard to understand how Sacks could have overlooked the huge role that part-time faculty play in consumer- oriented education since they probably teach around half the classes at his institution. Part-time faculty don't ever have the protection of tenure, often cannot afford to get even one poor review, and must always cater to student demands for easy classes and good grades. Students become accustomed to the light workload imposed of necessity by part-time faculty, then when they encounter a demanding professor, they are naturally resentful and resistant. Of course, The College saves lots of money by paying the part-time faculty somewhere around a quarter as much per class as full-time faculty. These savings pay for the sabbaticals, load bank leaves, and light work schedules enjoyed by the full-time faculty, including Sacks. Perhaps that's why he never got around to mentioning part-time faculty. Ultimately this is a cynical and self-centered book. It's loud in condemnation of the practices that have hurt its author, but silent on even worse practices that benefit him. Students, administrators and Sacks' colleagues are equally self-serving. Students want to get good grades for very little work. Administrators want high enrollments which increase their own power and rewards: the "dumbing down" and grade inflation necessary to achieve high levels of retention is not their problem. The tenured full-time faculty long ago abandoned their integrity in favor of light workloads and copious free time paid for by overworked part-time faculty, so predictably, when they have to choose between educational quality and their perquisites, quality is forgotten. Given his own obvious self-interest, I cannot understand why Sacks finds this so amazing. Still, at least someone has broken the silence about the deterioration of quality at the community colleges, and by extension at the universities into which they feed. These colleges cost the taxpayers a fortune, and it is clear that we are not getting a good return on our investment.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must-read for anyone concerned about higher education!, July 9, 1997
By A Customer
Everyone with an interest in the present and future of higher education in America will find this book to be at least interesting, and for many, dismaying and perhaps frightening. Most college teachers, I think, will find many things to which they can relate. I found the chronicle of Sacks's college teaching experience so similar to the kinds of things I have experienced as an educator that I couldn't put the book down.
The first part of the book is a tale of Sacks's experience teaching journalism at "a large suburban community college in the West," which he refers to only as "The College." Prior to being hired there, he was a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist. For various reasons, he had doubts about his future in that profession, and when a teaching job presented itself, he decided to give it a try. Whatever ideals he had about the teaching profession were quickly replaced by "confusion and bewilderment" brought on by the behavior and attitudes of Generation X students.
Sacks began teaching with the assumptions that students would read the assigned material, take notes, attend class, and turn assignments in on time. He also assumed that "C" represented average work. He very quickly learned that not only were these assumptions unfounded, but that in order to achieve tenure, he would have to play a different game. He came to realize that what these students wanted, for the most part, was to be entertained rather than educated. And that they believed that just by paying tuition they were entitled to a grade of "B" or higher whether or not they did any significant work. If these conditions were not met, he would receive negative student evaluations. And student evaluations were the main evidence cited in tenure decisions.
In discussions with colleagues he discovered that there was tacit agreement that this was the prevalent situation on campus, and that if he wanted to succeed as a teacher his student evaluations would have to improve. He was constantly admonished to "teach to the evaluations." When he changed his methods to become more entertaining (described in a chapter called "The Sandbox Experiment"), and in particular when he inflated his grades to a B, rather than a C, average, his evaluations improved dramatically.
Along the way, he encountered (either in his own classes or those of colleagues) students who asked such questions as "Do we have to read the text?" and "Why are colleges trying to force this stuff down our throats and trying to make us think when our minds and opinions are already formed?" He gradually came to see that a vicious circle existed: high academic standards meant higher attrition rates which meant budget cuts which meant loss of faculty jobs. The key to success was to ward off student failure in any way that worked.
Part 2 of the book is a more general discussion of the relation between higher education and the phenomenon of postmodernism. Sacks is quick to point out that he is not an expert in the philosophical foundations of the latter. Nevertheless, his explanation is reasonably clear, and he draws a pretty convincing picture of a generation in which skepticism and critical thought is replaced on the one hand by paranoia and distrust, and by credulousness on the other (e.g., belief in UFOs, astrology, etc.), in which "truth" is merely a social construct, everyone is entitled to succeed (where success is defined by standard of living), and in which anti-intellectualism is a virtue.
In the final chapter, Sacks makes some recommendations as to what might be done to help rectify what he obviously sees as a dangerous situation. He realizes that merely to perpuate teaching strategies that don't work in a postmodern world, even when augmented by the latest technology (an important point), will not suffice. The focus of education must shift from what you learn to how one uses that knowledge--or in Sack's words, "any given course would be one in learning how to do something, and at the same time...thinking about what you're doing, wondering why you're doing it, and imagining new ways of doing it." The role of the teacher would shift from being a "transmitter of knowledge" to that of an "expert consultant," who "[guides] students in the use of information-gathering tools, i.e., helping them learn how to learn," and "[helps] students imagine new ways of looking at knowledge, while prodding them to appreciate subtle complexities about a discipline not obtainable from machines and databases."
Sacks realizes that simply to adjust the role of the teacher as above isn't enough, however. For him the key question is the survival of higher education as a meaningful institution in our culture against the "onslaught of hyperconsumerism and amusement." Grade inflation is an obvious place to begin work, and Sacks suggests some positive steps institutions might take to combat it. The use of student evaluations in tenure decisions also needs to be scrutinized. Further, Sacks suggests that performance assessment (he cites Alverno College as an example where this has been used with success) be tried as an alternative, or at least a supplement, to traditional grading. Finally, he thinks that America ought to look more seriously at the idea that a universal college education maybe isn't for everybody after all, and that some sort of "comprehensive, national system of vocational and technical education" ought to be tried.
The debate between modernists and postmodernists will continue in spite of books like this, until postmodernism has run its course or until some new synthesis is reached. But Sacks has undeniably put his finger on a real crisis in current higher education. This is a book that should not be passed by lightly, regardless of one's philosophical position on the fate of modernism.
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