Now my problem class is complaining about its grades and I cannot rest. Their e-mails are like those the Angry Professor sometimes reproduces. The people who might have grounds to wonder exactly why they have a C+ and not a B- are silent. Those on whose behalf I moved heaven and earth to find a way to give them a C- and not some form of D are angry because they do not have a B. Part of their problem is that they cannot do arithmetic, so percentages are a major issue. What I am too polite to say is: I have already curved the grades too much. If you have not at some point during this semester demonstrated that you can express an thought of your own in an almost spontaneously produced, almost correctly structured sentence, you can still have a C, but not a B. I have two obliquely related stories.
My First Non-Studying Student
When I was a T.A. I team taught and we had a student we could not understand. He was sharp as a tack and he spoke native English, but his papers were awful. He was also of Chinese ancestry and circumstances at our heavily Asian and Asian-American, highly competitive university confirmed the sterotype: Asian student? A or B, unlikely to do worse. But he did worse. Consistently. We kept having conferences with him to show him how to improve his papers. It did not work. Somehow he managed to squeak to a C-, which was the minimum allowed to pass this course. We remained mystified.
He liked us, as we discovered later, running into him on the street. He waved us over to the tamale stand where he was eating, smoking, and receiving calls on a pay phone. He was so friendly that I dared ask, what was the real deal on you and that class? Why were you having so much trouble formulating thesis statements and marshaling evidence to support them? He said, well, what I learned in that class was that in college, you have to read the books. I got away without it in high school, but in college – well, you know I barely passed your course, if you hadn’t been so nice I would have had to repeat it and might have gone on probation. Now I know, you have to read the books!
It was funny but I was floored. We had considered every possibility except the possibility that he was not studying. This idea was not part of our mental universe then. I still have this problem – that the failing student is not studying is the last possibility that occurs to me.
I Am Not a Militarist, But…
Military training does not teach people just to follow orders. It does teach them to read instruction manuals, which is different. It also teaches self-discipline. Most importantly, the military students always understand that the goal of a course is to learn skills and assimilate material, not just to earn points.
I know these things because I have been observing them in practice for years. People in rich states without so many military students do not believe me but I think such people are on what we used to call a “liberal trip.” I also used to be on that liberal trip but I have long since been proven wrong.
My point is not a pro-military one. It is that it is unfortunate that more institutions do not in the current age teach these skills. I have spoken.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
My point is not a pro-military one. It is that it is unfortunate that more institutions do not in the current age teach these skills. I have spoken.
Current ideologies have something against what they take to be “authoritarianism”. The paradigm they uphold teaches that it is possible to avoid causing students pain, and that pain is always unnecessary. Of course militarism of any sort is quintessentially “authoritarian” hence unacceptable.
Yet what is not seen is that pain is inevitable in the process of education and life. To not give the children the basic building blocks of self-discipline leads them to flounder around in all sorts of pain for an ongoing duration. And “self-discipline” isn’t what it seems to be. It’s not, as you rightly point out, obedience. I was, for instance, very compliant, timid and repressedly obedient for much of my early adult life. This was linked to the fact that I had no idea how the world worked (had been brought up in an entirely different context and even, suggestibly, a different historical frame.) I didn’t know how to maintain my sense of well-being, or that this was necessary. (Military training of sort sort would have taught me this — but as I said martial arts is also effective.)
I think that the building blocks of self-discipline are made up of the experiential knowledge that it is possible to change yourself as well as elements of the concrete world around you. Without this training, you can be incredibly obedient and compliant — but ultimately passive.
Ultimately kids these days are ostensibly “spared harm”. They are given intellectual and emotional baby food long and late. In a genuine sense, they are deeply harmed by this. The cultural indifference to their wellbeing is also indicated by the giving of ADHD drugs — “disciplining” them at arms’ length. It is not surprising that they feel chaotic and rebel.
1. The ADHD drugs, and the chaotic proliferation of ADHD diagnoses, are really bad. I can become quite long winded on this topic.
2. “I didn’t know how to maintain my sense of well-being, or that this was necessary.” This is something I always realized was fundamental, but which Reeducation cast into doubt.
3. “I think that the building blocks of self-discipline are made up of the experiential knowledge that it is possible to change yourself as well as elements of the concrete world around you.” Once again, Reeducation: that would be to have too much arrogance, power, and control.
4. Obedience undermines self-discipline. This is a maxim I should work on explaining and expanding but I think it is true. I could become a Nietzsche. I could win a Nobel Prize (I am joking).
5. Not to have self-discipline creates more and more protracted pain, correct. Also, bringing children up to be rude means bringing them up not to make friends. How “kind” is that, really…
6. AND Eureka! I commit a similar error with these types of students. The textbook is the last one I would recommend, but I am forced to force it on them, and I am not perfect either / do not feel I am doing a perfect job either, so I let them slide a little, too. It is a disservice. I have heard this before, I “know” it, and in many cases I also act on this knowledge. But only now do now I see it fully: their parents feel guilty and are too nice, and are yet angry. I am in a way the same.
No pain, no gain. Or, as my aunt used to say to us when we fell outside and got a scrape, “you play, you pay.” Basically, there is always a cost associated with a benefit.
I appreciate your appreciation of the military ethic that you describe. My dad and uncles were all in the service, and one of my cousins is now, and so I can relate to what you are saying. There’s this real sense of doing the work and getting it done because that is your job, your responsibility, and therefore it should be done well.
As for the not studying part, I hear that kid! When your school prep was not demanding enough, college can be a real wake-up call. I have heard other students express this as well – oh, here I will have to do the work! And I am guilty of this. I barely passed my first accounting exam in business school, and the prof. told me, after I’d described to him how I generally studied, that I did surprisingly well for a soc major with those study habits, but that was not going to be sufficient for accounting.
I spent the rest of the semester attending all the extra study sessions, applying my ass off, and received a B-, though I really deserved a C. I’ve never been more demoralized from school than after my accounting final.
You know, I think they understand no pain no gain but they want the pain to be meaningless pain – something to just endure and wait until it is over – not pain like muscle-building pain.
I am like them in a way because of the abuse background: one learns that if one pays dues in meaningless suffering and shows this, one will get relief, whereas if one achieves and grows stronger, one will attract abuse.
But the most demoralized I have ever been in school is when department chairs tell me that I have to accommodate the whims of students like this because they are paying fees, or their parents contributed money.
that the failing student is not studying is the last possibility that occurs to me. Funny, because as a student sitting next to other students this possibility is the very first possibility that I thought of. I heard daily stories about how so and so did not read and was able to fake it during discussion. In English-Literature, it was so frustrating, because I and a few others (who read the texts) did most of the talking, yet the rest wanted to gripe about the professor. I love when they get their face crack too, like the time we were reading Middlemarch, s-l-o-w-l-y, so everyone could truly grasp Eliot, yet when the red-faced Republican who bragged about Bush winning tried to say some crap that he heard on an Abridged Middlemarch on tape he was stuck with no answer. HA HA HA HA HA! I loved when the professor would say, “could you point to a passage in the text that supports your assertion.”
About your military students. I taught in the military and was responsible for a few curriculums. One thing that is consisted throughout all the branches is before any instruction, field or classroom is the stating of EO’s and LO’s, EO-Enabling objectives LO- Learning objectives. On every single test the member must prove that she or he knows the learning objective, “what was I expected to learn out of this course” and the enabling objective, “how will learning this material further whatever pursuit is the intent.” I am paraphrasing, it has been a while. It is very methodical and if someone fails, they (and there are many) are usually idiots. However, the military is very liberal, in other words, they will make that member sit in that class 100 times, if 100 times is necessary. What I found interesting in this was classes such as sexual harassment, discrimination, etc., vs. weapons classes. More people failed in weapons classes, but eventually got it after more hands on and more memorization. And if they passed, it would be safe to assume that they were in fact proficient with a weapon and could be trusted to utilize that weapon properly. But, the “cultural” type classes were often passed instantly, sometimes with 100%, but then many (most) would not practice a single thread of what was supposedly the “enabling objective.”
“But, the ‘cultural’ type classes were often passed instantly, sometimes with 100%, but then many (most) would not practice a single thread of what was supposedly the ‘enabling objective.'”
I’m not surprised!!! Very interesting comment – the whole thing.
Funny, because as a student sitting next to other students this possibility is the very first possibility that I thought of.
That made me guffaw, I have to admit.
Your post (and the comments) speak eloquently to the idea that rejecting something out of hand (like self-discipline or responsibility or learning to study) just because we don’t like the ideology of those promoting it is a mistake.