Are Students Given Enough Credit?

I've heard time and time again that "our undergraduate students" are by and large disinterested, lazy, and looking to coast by on as little effort as possible. Indeed, I've often been quite explicitly warned of this (though, for obvious reasons, I won't go into detail about who has warned me, or where). 

My experience with undergraduate students has, however, been quite different (albeit complicated, as I'll begin describing shortly). Having been a teacher for a number of years now -- I was a TA all throughout grad school, regularly taught summer courses in grad school, taught a couple of courses at a community college, and have been full-time faculty at two institutions, one a large research institution and the other an SLAC -- I've had a great deal of experience with undergraduate students from many walks of life. Because my experience with students has, over time, diverged quite a great deal from the "lazy student" narrative, I'd like to share my experiences with you all. Because, in relating these experiences, I will describe some of the teaching strategies I've adopted for engaging students, I want to express before I proceed any further that this post is in no way, shape, or form intended to be self-congratulatory. Although I am proud of some of the advances I believe I've made as a teacher, my aim in writing this post is not to present myself as "an awesome teacher." My aim is to simply relate to you all why I profoundly disagree with the narrative that our students are lazy and disengaged -- and in order to do this I need to tell my story.

My attitude toward teaching has always been somewhat idealistic in the following sense: I've always wanted to do it right (as I understand it), and to accept what comes along with doing it that way. In other words, I've never attempted to "satisfy students." I assign a ton of reading, a ton of work both inside and outside the classroom (short daily reading responses, in-class group exercises, and multiple term-papers), and I grade like a beast (C's, D's, and F's on assignments and term papers are common) -- things I've always been warned will lead to student uprisings and terrible evaluations.

Now, when I first started teaching this way several years ago, they did lead to student uprisings and terrible evaluations. I had a least one student come into my office and accuse me of incompetence, student after student complain about their grades, and my evaluations were well below my university norms. At this point, I faced a choice: I could either change my ways by "going easy" on them -- which I know some people do -- or I could try to find another way. I chose to try to find another way, and the other way I tried, surprisingly (and cheesily) enough, came to me while I was watching The Karate Kid (the original 80's version) with my wife.

I couldn't help but notice while watching the movie how similar the character Daniel was to "our students." Daniel was kind of like most teenagers and young adults are: he kind of did want things to come easy. When he didn't see the point of doing what his teacher, Mr. Miyagi, was having him do -- namely, wax his cars, paint his fence, etc. -- Daniel lashed out, complained and threatened to go home. But Mr. Miyagi ultimately got through to him. How? Just as Daniel was about to quit, Miyagi showed him that the tiresome things he was having him do were teaching him how to do stuff in karate, like block kicks and punches. Now, of course the details here are quite silly. But the overall point stuck with me. Young people want to put in effort and learn, but only when they see the point of what they are doing and see actual, tangible benefits of the often tiresome routines a teacher challenges them with.

That, at any rate, is what I started to believe. Maybe I was foolish to believe it -- I had gotten it from a movie! -- but it seemed to cohere with my own experiences in life; so I ran with it. I made a couple simple changes to how I taught.

First, I let my students rewrite their first term-papers as many times as they wish for a higher grade. The first thought here was that since I'm an incredibly tough grader, and students hate terrible grades, they would be motivated to rewrite their papers. The second thought was that, as long as I gave them good comments, as they rewrote their papers, their work would improve. They would actually start writing grammatical sentences, organized paragraphs, summarize philosophical material correctly, raise cogent objections, and more generally, get into the philosophical game. The final thought -- and I had to take this somewhat as a matter of faith the first couple of semesters I adopted this practices -- was that, as students worked hard to improve their work and actually did so, they would begin to appreciate what it is all about; that is, that they would actually appreciate having to work so damn hard, because the results were tangible.

Second, I started communicating with my students about all this. When I hand back my first term-papers, I show them a couple of clips from The Karate Kid and give them a brief lecture on their paper grades, my comments, and the value of failure. I have this line I like to throw out there. I say, "I am not here to make you happy; I am here to make you better." I tell them that many college students can't read effectively or write a grammatical sentence, and I tell them when they are done with my class they will. But I tell them it will take failure. Just like one cannot learn to shoot a basketball well without shooting, and missing, a ton of times, so too, I tell them, can they not expect to learn how to read, write, speak, and argue effectively without a lot of work. I tell them that I have faith in them, and that I believe that if they work at it -- if they take their paper grades and my comments not as punishment, but as a challenge to do better -- they will see the results for themselves.

I started doing these two things exactly one year ago, that is, two semesters ago. I worried each time that it would all blow up in my face -- that my students would hate me. But they didn't. I was shocked at how hard most of them worked, how much most of them improved, and how much most of them appreciated the hard work and challenge. They were not lazy or disengaged, not most of them anyway. They may not have even known it when they walked in the door (many of my students take my classes just to "get a core requirement out of the way"), but the reality was, somewhere deep down, most of them wanted to be challenged to become better. I take it that few, if any, of them wanted to know the truth: namely, that when most of them walked in the first day, few of them could consistently write a grammatical sentence or a coherent paragraph or summary, let alone develop a halfway decent philosophical argument. But here's what I had faith in: few people want to suck, and most people want to take pride in themselves. And the funny thing is: time and again (the past two semesters at least), this faith has been repayed. My students have worked hard, improved their work markedly, and most of them are explicit in their evaluations about appreciating it.

Again, I hope this post hasn't come across as, "Look at what an awesome teacher I am!". That, sincerely, was/is not its intent. I am just sick of hearing about how terrible, and lazy, our students are, and I don't know any better way to explain my deep disagreement with this view without telling my own personal story.  Yes, finding a way to get through to students can be difficult. Have young people ever been any different? They are typically short-sighted and immature, and yet it is precisely now -- when they are in college -- that they can begin to learn to be otherwise.  It is, I think, our job as teachers to find a way to get through to them.  And it has been my experience -- after a lot of hard work -- that it is possible to do so.

Comments

[Bret B]

I have little to add, except I agree.

To the credit of the detractors, students *do* come in unmotivated and lazy much of the time. For whatever reason, a number of instructors have tacitly agreed to the disengagement compact (http://insocrateswake.blogspot.com/2011/02/academically-adrift-part-i.html), and thus the students have little opportunity for expert guidance in building the skills needed to write, read, and think well.

It does take work—and a lot of it—on both sides to opt out of the compact. When you're balancing your social life, teaching, researching, and perhaps even the job-hunt, the easiest to cut down on is grading and class preparation. No hassles with the deans or students makes one's life very easy.

[anon]

timely: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/01/16/essay-teaching-students-who-seem-unengaged

[Anthony]

Thanks for that, Marcus! I have some questions. I work at a school where I too get many students who have severe writing deficiencies. How exactly do you get these students to write grammatically? The work that *this* would require (as opposed to the work required to help a student develop argumentative skills who already knows how to write) seems extremely great. I'd be curious to hear about any strategies you utilize.

Also, how many students do you have each semester? I have about 120. Similarly to you, I make my students write a paper which they can re-write (but only once), and I leave a ton of comments on their work to help them become better writers. The paper grading easily eats up 5-6 weeks out of my semester where I do nothing but grade papers and teach classes. So, I would be curious to hear about any strategies you have utilized to be a more efficient grader.

[David Morrow]

Anthony, there's a recent thread on that very topic over on In Socrates' Wake: http://insocrateswake.blogspot.com/2013/01/time-saving-tips-for-adjuncts.html

[David Morrow]

Thanks for this post, Marcus. It reminds me of R.M. Hare's claim to have never met an undergraduate who was a moral relativist.

I have to say that the "lazy, unmotivated student" trope doesn't fit very well with my experience either. In reading the Inside Higher Ed post that Anon 7:41 shared, I did recognize experiences that I've had with a few students, but those experiences aren't the norm for me. Plus, as one of the commenters on that post noted, we need to be cautious about generalizing from the students who come to our attention because of some problem.

On the other hand, perhaps what many faculty mean when they say that their students are lazy and unmotivated is simply that it requires a tremendous amount of effort to get the students to do much work (or to do good work). And that's probably true. But I doubt that it's only true of "kids today." I suspect that very few people will work hard at something when they don't understand the point of it. Most of our students (like most people) are not naturally excited by (most) philosophical questions. Most of our students (like most human beings) don't see any benefit to doing what we ask our students to do. So it's no surprise that they won't work hard unless we push them to do so.

Also, I fully intend to, um, borrow your "I'm here to make you better" line.

[Marcus Arvan]

Thanks, everyone, for the comments!

Anthony: Getting students to write grammatically can of course be very difficult. Here's one strategy I've used to good effect: I ask students to try to write like they *speak* -- as though they are just having a conversation with another person (I then tell them to go back and clean it up so it's less colloquial).

I think this strategy is effective because most (though by no means all!) students can speak relatively grammatically in person. The problem is that when they sit down to write, they see it as something completely different than what they do when they talk to someone. They write convoluted, ungrammatical, paragraph-long sentences with words they don't understand that are *nothing* like the way they would attempt to communicate in person with another living, breathing human being. So, I have them bring together. I have them treat writing as an out-growth of *speaking*. I've been utterly amazed at the improvements this can lead to. Just this past semester I had a female student whose first term paper was an unreadable disaster of epic proportions, I sat her down in my office, told her to explain to me what she was trying to summarize and argue in ordinary, intuitive language -- and she came back a couple of weeks later with a paper that knocked my socks off (well, it was a low B, but still, compared to what she had turned in previously, I was amazed!).

The other thing I do is have them write something short *every* day (they have paragraph-length daily reading response assignments to bring to class). Since I grade and correct the grammar in these with draconian rigor, they have a very strong incentive to work at it every day -- which leads to real improvement.

Finally, there are the unlimited re-writes of first term-papers -- which brings me to your question about the number of students I have. I teach three classes a semester, each with between 20-25 students: so, 60-75 students total. I fully recognize that a lot of my strategies just aren't feasible with 120 students (a situation I've been in before). As to what to do with 120 students, it's hard to say. It took me a couple of years of experimentation (and a lot of failed experiments!) to come up with the strategies I use in my situation. I suspect it would take a similar amount of time to work out which strategies work best with larger numbers of students. And perhaps there just aren't any that work quite as well in that context -- in which case I guess I would say it's not our students who are at fault so much as it is the fault of an educational system that presumes that one can teach writing and philosophy well in a large lecture hall. But I digress... ;)

[Anthony]

Marcus: thanks for the thoughtful and informative response. I'm very impressed that you assign and grade daily writing response papers, even if they are just a paragraph long. Even with 60-75 students, that must take a lot of time. Kudos.

My load is 5/5, and like I said about 120 students per semester. I think I am doing some good by making them write one substantial philosophy paper that I give a lot of feedback on that they then revise (in addition to some quizzes and a final exam), but I'd prefer to have them write a lot more. Like you said, I need to experiment a little bit.

David: thanks for that link to In Socrates' Wake.

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Anthony: yeah, it takes a ton of time, and I absolutely hate it. But it's the only thing I've found that works. Every time I've experimented with other alternatives (to lighten the burden on me), my students' work and engagement -- and my student evaluations -- have gone sharply down. There's just something about making them write something daily that is short and substantive that gets them "in the game".

[Dan Dennis]

Fascinating, and helpful. Thanks for posting it. And good for you for putting the thought in and working so hard.

[Marcus Arvan]

Thanks for the kind words, Dan.