Pathetic Pedagogues.

A History adjunct from the South sends this:

Your site saddens me. RMP may well be useless, and allow hateful messages to be propagated on the internet, but how does flinging degrading and hurtful comments in the other direction help the matter? You seem to have admitted to yourself that it doesn't help anything, yet you've gone through the trouble of making and updating your little site for venting spleen and getting your 15 minutes anyway. Really, why? I'm looking for a rational reason here, not more emotional appeals to the effect of "OMG! Students are calling me names on the internet!"

I also find it really pathetic that so many pedagogues writing in feel so free (so entitled even!) to comment on their students' physical attributes. This goes way beyond parodying the "hotness" rating category on RMP. One writes "here's a bra that fits" for one of his (I'm guessing female) students. And there are other snarky, frankly gross comments like this (not to mention the ones that are otherwise sexist or racist).

Meanwhile, other teachers bemoan having their "jugs" commented on or their portliness discussed. Sexual harrassment and physical insults fly both ways throughout your blog. Having gotten some of the former from profs whilst I was a student, I am all the more determined to never, ever, treat my students with anything even bordering on sexualized disrespect. Silly me, I even find avoiding being disrespectful in general towards students to be an important goal. And that includes while posting pseudo-anonymously on the internet. It sets a terrible example.

I wish some of the folks writing in to your site had absorbed similar lessons during their earlier educations. I hope that as time goes on, you start to get better students, or re-vamp your teaching techniques, or come out of your depression, or all of the above. There are a lot of problems with American academia, and your site is just adding to the pile.

Silly Whining.

A student from the SUNY system sends this along this morning:

I hate to turn these things into a back and forth on the blog, but I have to call out the students are so "offended" by Professors here being human.

Students DO NOT post on RMP so that their professors can "become better." That is an utter lie to themselves and the professors. If you want your professor to take your advice seriously, use the Course Evaluation at the end of the semester. That's what Course Evaluations are for, not some silly public website that offers contests and spring break trips.

The majority of comments on RMP are not critical nor helpful, they're just silly whining and complaining of spoiled students. "He's too hard! He gives too much work! She has an accent!"

I really have to wonder why it's all right for students to make such silly and pointless complaints, and to rate professors at "hot," but when Professors turn it around with a touch of sarcasm, students get offended. It's a double standard.

For the students who don't appreciate the tables being turned, and who realize that their professors don't love and adore all of them, maybe you should think twice before you go on a berating tangent on RMP. Or before you attempt to use RMP to pick the easiest professors to breeze through next semester.

In the real world you can't pick your manager, so do us all a favor and learn to work.

A Newbie From Arizona.

A college professor at a large public institution in Arizona writes to us from the second semester of her first year on the job:

I did my Ph.D. work in the Pacific Northwest and earned most of my fellowships through editing and publishing, so my work in the classroom was very light before I started my first year on the tenure-track.

I wore a nice charcoal pantsuit to my first class last September and sweated through the jacket before I even got to class. I took it off in the hallway in front of my classroom before going in - I was wearing a perfectly normal camisole top that is quite modest - and two young men walked past me, one of them saying, "Pass me the JUGS, man."

I was caught up by that, but also just the nerves of this first day of all first days. When I walked into the classroom and went to the front, the two young guys I saw outside were in the front row. One was sheepish - thanks to something I imagine his parents might have given him while growing up - but the other just fixed me with a big grin.

I felt like I was in some sort of bad TV movie called "Teacher's First Day," and all I wanted to do was crawl back into the comfort of grad school, of my safe apartment in Seattle, my coffee, my friends, my sweatpants, my bookbag, and a dream that I was entering into the life of the mind.

I made it through the semester. I'm still on the job. But that first semester wiped clean any idea I ever had that teaching in a college is anything but babysitting. My students complained if I asked them to write 500 words. They would lie to my face about any and everything. One girl told me that the college's computer lab (there are 4, 3 of them open 24 hours a day), closed unexpectedly at 6 pm and she couldn't print her paper in time. I asked her about the other labs on campus and she whined, "They're ALL the way on other side."

I fielded an endless array of stories about dead family members. I heard about car crashes on every highway in and around the city. Nobody could make it to class when it rained. The heat index was 120 and when they were in high school they didn't have to go to class. They knew I'd understand.

I sat in my new and clean office and felt like a failure most days.

I went for help from my mentor, a woman about 25 years my senior, and told her everything. She nodded her head, took it all in, and said, "They're kids, honey. They don't know any better."

She hoisted me up, boosted my confidence a bit and told me to get tough. I wear dress shirts to class. I don't take any shit. I have policies on my syllabus about being in class - regardless of temperature. I have deadlines and there are consequences if they're not met. The students started this semester in the same way, complaining, whining, but I'm a new woman.

I wear my iPod - see, I have one, too! - and don't let their innocence and ignorance bother me. I teach what I know. I help when they want it - and more and more do. And when they act like they need sitters, I refuse to be one.

But this is not the life I thought was coming.

Unprofessional.

A student in the Carolinas sends this terrific post along this morning:

Some of the professors on your site come off as remarkably unprofessional. I realize that everyone needs an outlet, and professors are only human. I also realize the website is by professors, for professors. But, "We're the experienced adults in this context," says one of you. Act like it. I mean seriously, what is this:

"Here's the lowdown. Skeeter, you're a dimwit. I better slap that face next time I see it to even us up for you ruinin-ating my class this sem. Teeter, you got the look, hunny. But you ain't got the marbles. I hears 'em rollin' rollin' rollin'. Tweeter, you reap what you sow, baby girl. You may have the necessary ADDitude, but you got a loud mouth and you pissed this tizzo off one too many times. The rest, get you some Cs and Bs and gedd-da-fuq-out! Peace. I tha Frank-bomb, and I am outie."

Also, rating students' "hotness?" Disgusting. I really hope none of these people is a professor at my school.

By the way, I am not one of those bitter, spoiled kids you frequently complain about, so keep your assumptions to yourselves. I work hard, in spite of the general lack of intellectual stimulation my university supplies. This is supposed to be a place of learning and sharing ideas, but instead it is incredibly stifling, and is often nothing but a sounding board for individual professors' egos. If there is anything I have learned, it's that so called "facts" are slaves to perception and opinion. I am left floundering for a way to best reword my professors' opinions and turn my papers into mirrors in which to reflect their "greatness," in my quest for the almighty 4.0. It disgusts me. That is not to say that they have all completely disappointed me, just most of the ones in my major. Go figure.

I will admit, however, that a lot of the students you describe are the types I hate. I would rather massage my eyeballs with sandpaper than interact with them.

Hygiene and Pedagogy.

A longtime reader from North Carolina sends this along:

The last posting was indeed excellent, not least for being evenhanded. I particularly have to hand it to the writer for acknowledging the vagaries of the vinyl generation, of which I am a proud member. But one problem of pulling the Socrates quote out of the template drawer is that we can become blind to what is right there before us on a daily basis and which bodes very badly indeed for the future of the professional world.

One of my particular bugbears is simply this: when exactly did the 18-to-21 age male student become so physically off-putting? Fashion statements nothwithstanding, I have yet to see one young guy in my classes who doesn't have--through a combination of stubble, too much sun, too little washing, and a pervasive diet of junk food--an appearance of utter hairy-legged, grimy-toed slovenliness.

I visited some isolated Mexican villages last year that had no amenities like running water or electricity, and the sense of personal hygiene was far superior to what I'm seeing every day here in the decadent capitalist West. Guys, a bit of advice from a not-quite-extinct dinosaur: the Fecal Look doesn't work!!!

Who's To Blame For the Fix We're In?

I'm now in my forty-third year of college teaching, thirty-three of them full-time before I became Professor Emeritus at a university in the South. Since then I've served as Visiting Professor elsewhere in the South and another region. There's no question in my own mind that a great decline has taken place in the quality of students over these years, especially in areas having to do with civility and maturity of attitude--subjects well documented on your blog.

Surely much of this reflects cultural degeneration and parental permissiveness as well as the creeping acceptance of lying, cheating and other forms of dishonesty as tolerable by society at large. I want to focus, though, on the extent to which members of my own profession, the ones doing the complaining here, have contributed mightily to the fix we're in today. For years now, a high proportion of faculty have apparently made it a matter of personal pride to dress like barn rats, toss verbal obscenties around in class, spend endless class time retailing their political views and personal opinions, cancel classes and alter syllabi as private agendas develop, and generally treat professional responsibility as a matter of constant reinterpretation in light of travel plans and out-of-town visitors. Why shouldn't a student show up in pyjamas if his/her instructor comes to class in bermudas, a filthy work shirt, a four-day stubble and a matted grey ponytail? Why should that student get very serious about attendance when every week or so a class is called off, via a department secretary or a note on the classroom door? Why buy a textbook when the whole term will be devoted to political ranting, sexual and domestic revelations and discussions of whatever Hollywood drivel happens to by on at the local movie house? For years and years I heard these complaints from students (I was an advisor as well as professor) about courses in a wide variety of subject areas. One associate professor made a point of collecting his mail just before class and spending the first twenty minutes or so opening and reading it aloud. Another wore the same pee-stained seersucker trousers for weeks at a steretch. Another discouraged the males in her class from asking questions or making comments, lest they prove intimidating or draw attention to their presence. Time and time again students complained about coming considerable distances to class only to be greeted by a terse "class cancelled" notice.

I'm not optimistic about the prospect of students ever returning to past standards of dignity and seriousness, but I think they might at least deserve the examples of teachers who adhere to professional expectations beyond simply picking up the paycheck.

A Few Gripes, A Few Shoutouts. Our Post of the Week.

An English professor from the mid-South is stil not sure about what we're doing here at Rate Your Students, but has helped things along with a truly excellent post:

Although I'm charmed that anyone cares what professors think of their students, one real failing of this concept is that students are at least rating us as individuals. We're rating them in the mass, and that means error and generalization. That said, though...by and large students are the best part of my job. A lot of the quirks of the so-called IPod generation are the vinyl generation's quirks in another register: dare we say it, I too cut a certain amount of class back in the day, especially on sunny days or when I was falling in love. I too have occasionally been known to skim when I should've read.

One of my colleagues complained recently that "this generation¨ seemed to have no work ethic, but I think that when we're talking moderately privileged middle-class kids, the person with the hard-core work ethic has generally been the exception and not the rule.

Even though the best way to respect someone is sometimes to fail him (it really is), comfortably-off eighteen-year-olds really haven't changed that much since Plato's day. That's the bulk of my students: maybe less committed or focused than I'd like them to be, and annoyingly unwilling to be clones at eighteen of the person that I've become at forty (how inconsiderate!), but by and large okay, even good, people who will go on to do okay, maybe good, things. And that doesn't even count the alumni who're already doing more okay things with their lives than I ever intended to do with mine.

Or the returning students with kids, the ones whose work ethic puts mine to shame--no one's mentioned them yet, or the way the professorial spirit lifts in joy and hope when we see a middle-aged woman sitting in the classroom.

But in the spirit of the cathartic gripe, I'll also admit that the good stuff doesn't count the few who bring out my what's-wrong-with-this-generation gene. Given the study demonstrating that the incompetent don't know they're incompetent, those who fit this profile probably don't know who they are, so I'll mention a few, just in case any of the guilty are listening:

Pajamas to class? I mean, folks, we don't ooh and ah at your radical savoir-faire; we snort coffee out our noses laughing. For which we should probably thank you, come to think of it, so never mind.

Calling each separate member of a department you've never visited, on Sunday afternoon, looking for someone to proofread your doomed-to-failure law school application because you were too busy¨ to go to the writing center on Friday and too incompetent to proofread your own work in high school? As we used to say in the Pleiocene, puh-leeze!

Lying about the death of your brother? Yeah, and you even intercepted one of our just-slightly-suspicious condolence cards to your parents, but you didn't get the other one, did you? Bummer, how badly your parents took that.

And you plagiarists, a new vocabulary word: when you believe we're so stupid we can't spot your five-minute Google rip-off, that's known as contempt, and contempt is what you get back. If somebody insulted you and made work for you, wouldn't you have some feelings about it?

And do you really have to pee slowly and deliberately twice in a fifty minute class, three times a week? Now, do you? Give us a little credit here. And if you do, for God's sake go get that test at the health center. It¡s free!

Yawning in class: my parents would say that maybe you should, oh, I don't know, learn to yawn with your mouth shut as a matter of common courtesy, the way we did back in the day. Me, I'll settle for your covering your mouth. That's all. Just a good-faith effort not to share the gum, the tonsils, and the dental plaque.

That said, though...the ones I'm complaining about, along with a bunch who don't merit those complaints, are also the ones who have to watch me deal with my messy cold in front of them (sorry about that miss with the hanky, folks), the ones who must wonder why my mother never taught me any posture, and the ones who really wish I had to put a quarter in a jar every time I swear. Dumbass moments are pretty universal. And some of us always have to learn things the hard way. Many an eighteen-year-old dumbass has become an impassioned activist at forty, or even a teacher.

So, you know: a few gripes, a fair number of shout-outs, but mostly a pretty good life. And generally, kids, if state and federal administration gave me as little worry as you do, I'd feel like I was having a banner year.

Where Someone Gets Us Back to Our Roots.

From an adjunct instructor at a four-year university in California who doesn't get paid enough to put up with this:

M: You don't have mono. I saw you on campus today with your sorority sisters, giggling it up and having a great time. Don't lie to your professors. Your paper is now late, and you may not pass the class. Good luck with the doctor's note and this class next term with some other professor you can try to dupe.

R: Dead grandmother? I saw *Ferris Bueller's Day Off* when you were probably still in utero. In fact, I was voted "Most Likely to Become Ferris Bueller" my senior year in high school. At least try to be original. I get 17 dead grandmothers every term. Try a dead step-godparent next time, and maybe I might believe you.

S: I don't want to see the "slut signature" tattoo on the base of your back. Please pull up your pants when you come to class and stop staring at my ass when I write on the chalkboard.

F: The books aren't expensive. They cost less than the rims you have on your Lexus. Prioritize or get a job.

P: I am not mean. All I ask is that you follow directions. I give you a very detailed expectation of what I expect, and if you don't get the grade you want, it's your fault and no one else's. I know your Baby Boomer parents have made you believe you're perfect and that your failures are everyone else's fault, but they lied. Just like those contestants on American Idol who think they can sing, you need a reality dose. Here it is in the form of a no-pass grade. Have fun not reading these books again next term.

Bad Ratings a Substitute for Own Failings?

A Computer Science Prof from the Northeast sends in this post:

I am one of those who takes a beating on RMP, and I'll grant that I have had a few teaching flaws in the past that have led to less than stellar evaluations. But I think some students use those flaws as an explanation or substitution for their own failings.

For example: a common criticism is that I have a very quiet voice. Negative criticism stops there as students claim they could learn nothing. Positive critics, however, point out that I answer email promptly, welcome office visits, provide much useful assistance during visits, and answer the questions they pose in class to their satisfaction.

Another common criticism is the difficulty of the homework I assign. The positive critics will say that this forces them to think; graduate applicants will come back to me later and say they could not have passed their candidacy exams without the grounding I gave them. But since the negative voices are so loud, I sometimes feel like my position is at risk.

I received a note from the department head regarding some of the grades I gave to the graduate students in my senior-level undergraduate course. This was probably a special batch. Some scored less than 50% on exams, where the undergraduates averaged above 70-75%. One graduate student even requested a chance to retake the final exam (again under 50%) during which he asked if I could replace a question he didn't know how to answer with another one that he did.

My A students are a real delight. I don't see all of them during office hours, but those I do see are always prepared, have interesting questions, and ask how it can apply to other courses and other areas. They often come back later to talk aboutt heir graduate work or just to shoot the breeze -- which somehow makes all the other pain worth it.

A Sense of Experimentation Has Been Lost.

A visiting professor at a California university sends along this insightful post:

I realized early on in my teaching career that the students I was teaching were the products of "self-esteem" building in grade and high school. The majority of them were terrified of criticism, and needed a great deal of hand holding throughout the entire class. These were Clinton-era kids who were into a false sense of empowerment that made them better students.

Now with the new regime and the supposed return to standards, everyone is incredibly results and test oriented. I've adapted by delivering discreet packets of information to them, by casting ideas and concepts that I believe to be much more ambiguous and complex in simpler terms. Perhaps I am a better teacher -- it's certainly less stressful because I "lose" fewer students. And I get better evaluations.

But I think what has gotten lost is the sense of experimentation in teaching undergraduates. I used to be much more open-ended about my courses, more willing to test ideas out loud, and to build arguments in a multi-dimensional way.