I can't tell you how many times I wanted to throttle people in my college classes who had decided that having conversations in the back of the room while the prof was trying to teach was the cool thing to do. (This was before cell phones and wireless laptops had become ubiquitous.)
If I had gone into the professorate as I once considered doing, there's no question in my mind that I would have been likely to do the same thing Professor Thomas did. I think there is a lot of truth in what he says about the culture of diversity having contributed to the decline of respect and civility on campus.
The spoiled brat child who wrote
We the students are the customers, the consumers, the ones who make the choice every day to pay attention or not. I pay approximately $30,000 to go here, whether I text in class or not. Laurence Thomas gets paid whether his students text in class or not. Does he think that this is the first time this has happened on any college campus? Had he acted like nearly 100 percent of the other college professors in this country, he would have shrugged it off and continued with his lecture, which he is getting paid to do. His deterring of the class and exit from the lecture only serves to highlight is own selfishness, as he will get paid while his paying students are having their time and money wasted. He needs to get over himself here.
doesn't seem to understand who the selfish person is. I have no idea where the "I'm paying for this so I can do any damn thing I please" attitude has come from inside the academy. You're paying to be educated, you little fuckwad, not to sit in class and ignore the lecture while you text or surf or chat up the cute girl next to you. I don't think Professor Thomas needs to get over himself anywhere nearly as much as you do. And why do "nearly 100%" of other professors just grin and bear it? As Professor Thomas says elsewhere in the article:
"Back in the day, a professor could have gotten into a student’s face and said ‘don’t do such and such.’ You would be up for a lawsuit if you did that today, and if student says no, there is a stalemate, and I look like a fool." With a female student, he added, a professor could be accused of sexual harassment."If you walk out, you make a statement," he said. And in the past, the statement has generally made the point, he said.
I'm sure it has. Now, get this:
Gerald Amada is the author of Coping With the Disruptive College Student: A Practical Model and Coping With Misconduct in the College Classroom: A Practical Model, and gives workshops on these topics at colleges all over the United States. His books were published in the 90s, before cell phones were permanently attached to most students, but he said that in his workshops, he hears constant complaints about students who receive calls or text during class.Asked about the idea of walking out on a class when a student sends text messages, Amada said: "It’s a horrible strategy. There is something inherently wrong from a moral standpoint with collective punishment. It’s punitive. It’s unreasonable because it holds all students responsible for the behavior of all other students. It’s not legitimate."
Well, of course it is, you fucking moron. The point is for the students who want to be in class listening to the lecture -- you know, the ones who are paying to actually learn something, unlike the fuckwad up above -- to put a stop to the unacceptable behavior by their peers. But I suppose with all the feel-good multi-culti bullshit being infused on campus these days, peer pressure for the purpose of punishment is only good if it's being applied to white people for being less than appreciative of anything other than their own culture.
Amada said that while he understands the frustration professors feel, "there’s only one person in that room who has the bureaucratic, legal, and moral authority to establish discipline — and that’s the instructor." He said that he would have no problem with an instructor telling a student who is texting to leave the class. If the student refuses (or even if the student complies), the instructor should write up notes with the student’s name and report the student (assuming the instructor has made this a clear rule at the beginning of the semester).Telling a student to leave "may not be easy or pleasant," Amada said, but it’s fair.
Sure, except that as noted above, most professors are probably scared to death of being sued, disciplined, or losing their jobs over this kind of thing. In point of fact, punishing the whole class for the actions of a single wrongdoer is probably exactly appropriate in our squishy-left collective farms, er, universities these days.
The bottom line is that the problem is not the instructors, and in all fairness, it's not really even the students. The problem is the universities that have encouraged anti-social activity in the classroom by not doing anything to discourage it.
Before cell phones and wireless networking, it was a lot easier to keep order in the classroom. Perhaps universities should consider a summary ban of phones and laptops in the classroom, and back it up with serious penalties. I got through school scribbling lecture notes like mad. (I still have them. They fill a couple of file drawers.) If I could do it back in the late '80s, the kids of today can do it now.
I'm no Luddite, but in my opinion these electronic devices are best left outside the classroom so that they don't have a chance to become a distraction.
(Via Instapundit.)
