I just read some very interesting commentary from a professor who believes that all civility in the university classroom/lecture hall is gone, and that he needs to express and enforce rules of behavior for his students.
One of the more extreme pronouncements:
But of course, don’t forget the equally vile rationale:
The newsletter that published this originally conducted a survey of readers’ response to this article. The opinions seem to be strong on both sides, ranging from “we should treat college students like the children they are” to “but this will sink my teaching evaluations”. (paraphrasing mine)
Now, I know I have very limited teaching experience, but I have never had students behave in a manner that would justify such an extreme, authoritarian approach. And additionally, the rules seem so arbitrary. I’m far more concerned that my students do their work honestly than I ever will be about them wearing hats in class!
So, what say you? Are rules like these a necessary evil, or is this particular professor unnecessarily evil?
This guy needs to chill out. I’ve never had students do so much in a class that I couldn’t handle it myself. I don’t teach anymore, but when I did I was someone who was fair and the students knew it. We also had a strict Honor Code where I was and if a student effed up they went infront of a panel of their peers to decide their fate. No one liked that and the honor coade was taken quite seriously. Granted my classes were fun, and students generally had a good learning experience in them…from what they say at least.
No I don’t think rules on civility are necessary in many cases…
Some bad habits and quirks are controllable, but coughing, sneezing? Come on. It’s disruptive, but a guy with a mild cold should skip an exam just to prevent us from hearing him cough, when the poor guy can’t even help it?
Word. And, by the way, dude with a mild cold, you’re not allowed to sniffle or blow your nose either, so do what you did in first grade and leave your boogers under the desk. Or, um, you could use your sleeve. :smack:
This seems vaguely reminiscent of some strange argument awhile back about whether teachers should provide elementary school kids unfettered access to tissues in class.
Control freak. Speaking of control freaks, I took an exam earlier today in this classroom. The desks are swivel chairs, and I’ve taken at least 4 exams in this room in the past. They have a natural bias to swing out to the position most folks are sitting in that picture, but you can also swing them fully to left for the foreground desks, or the right for the background desks. In this position your leg is uncomfortably crunched against the step up and are extremely close to the back of the person in front of you. Unlike professors of better days, this one insisted we sit in this awkward position so he knew we weren’t cheating.
What about eating in the classroom? I don’t mind a cup of coffee or tea but when people break out the giant zip lock bags and start passing around the chex mix? Uh?
Diagnosis correct, treatment futile and probably counterproductive.
Many, many college students *are *rude, self-centered, inconsiderate and arrogant. It may or may not be worse than previously; I suspect so. But rules won’t fix a mentality.
I don’t necessarily agree with this particular set of rules (except for #1, #7, and #9), because a lot of them strike me as pet peeves rather than genuinely disruptive behavior. Personally, I’d pick different battles. I don’t care whether my students wear hats or cover their mouths when they yawn; I do care when they text message.
That said, I don’t see anything inappropriate or unreasonable about having guidelines for civility in the classroom in general, and the only element that strikes me as truly unreasonable in this set of rules is the prof’s failure to acknowledge that many of the “negative test-taking behaviors” he describes are involuntary. The students know the score up front, while there’s still time to drop the class; the rules are clearly stated and easy to follow; and the prof has every right to run his classroom as he wishes.
Sounds like over-the-top posturing from a Professor with too much time on his hands. That being said, I do wonder how bad standards are at Eastern Conneticut State University if he’s driven to writing this sort of thing down.
It’s easy to be philosophical if you teach at a good School. If a student walked into one of my lectures 20 mins late, wearing a baseball cap and eating a sandwich, listening to their ipod; I really couldn’t care less. It would never happen in the first place, and if it did it would be such an anomaly that I can afford to just dismiss it.
On the other hand, if you’re seeing this day in day out like distinguished professor Neil Williams evidently must be then you’re going to start getting chafed by it. I don’t see what’s stopping him from implementing these rules in his class - it could end up being a huge energy drain going to war with students over trivial shit like wearing hats in class, but if he is a good teacher he would probably prevail.
So, no one else has picked up on the “letting the hoi polloi into our hallowed halls” vibe? I might just be a little sensitive, but that rambling up at the top indicated to me that he believe that the expansion of education to include the uncultured poor and the furriners is the real root of the problem. It smacks of elitism. I just hear this undercurrent of “We need to teach these ruffians how to behave like us…sigh…if only I were at an ivy…then I could focus on educating future senators and oil tycoons…”
It’s funny, though, because the traditionally “snobby” schools (Harvard, Stanford, etc.) are now making a concerted effort to allow these types of people to have access to their educational institutions, through reduced and/or free tuition. Maybe that’s offended some of the old guard?
A couple of years ago, I needed to take several undergraduate courses at a local university. This was approximately 10 years after I received my undergraduate degree. Although this is not a very controlled study, as it was a different college than I initially intended, I was shocked by student behavior on a number of occasions. In one class of approximately 20 students, one student would regularly walk in after the lecture had started, put his head down on a desk, and go to sleep! In a second class, the professor often had trouble beginning his lecture at the scheduled time because students would not stop talking.
Prior to seeing situations like this, it never would have occurred to me that classroom rules might be necessary. If I was the professor in these situations, however, it certainly might cross my mind.
I am not sure if this indicates a declining trend in student behavior or a correlation between poor behavior and lower admission standards (the second college had admission standards that were considerably lower than the college at which I received my undergraduate degree).
I allow beverages in my classrooms, as many of my colleagues do. Whether it’s the heater, the a/c, some amount of oral communication, hot weather, etc., we all need our fluids.
The college higher-ups discourage chowing down in class for very practical reasons: problems with rats and insects; added work for the custodians, who already have quite a bit to do on a very large and crowded campus.
In my syllabus and on the first day of class, I propose fairness and courtesy–i.e., please don’t start chattering with your pal when I am answering another student’s question; chomping and popping bubble gum is equally rude and distracting, and so forth. In other words, don’t do anything that is disrespectful to those around you.
We are advised to talk with disruptive students about their behavior. If they keep it up, they can be asked to leave for the duration of that class meeting and the next one, and in the interim, a report is made to the Student Life office. They send a letter to the student requiring him/her to come and discuss the matter; in the meantime, a hold is placed on their records, no library check-outs allowed, etc. until things are settled.
There was a guy I knew who trained horses. He was asked what you needed to know to train a horse. His answer was, “Well, first you need to know something the horse doesn’t know.”
I think this example needs to be examined by that rational.
Does this teacher know enough that you don’t know to be worth putting up with their arbitrary rules in order to learn it? If not, find another teacher. If so, do it, and don’t waste your time, his time, and all the other students time whining about it.
I think this smacks of elitism too. His rules mostly make sense, except for the hat thing and the “Hello” thing. I hate it when people try to 1) assert arbitrary cultural habits as rational ones or 2) force me to be nice. Coughing or chatting is distracting. Texting or wearing a hat is not. Ban the former, allow the latter. I also reserve the right to hate your guts, so don’t make me be nice to people. It’ll just make me hate you more.
The thing that really bothers me, though, is when professors treat students like children. I’m a war veteran. I own a house. I have a job and a car. Exactly what is childish about me? I think professors forget sometimes that we students are paying customers. I’m not giving them money so they can treat me like a subordinate. Assholes.
It is the professor’s classroom – her or his place of work. You are the subordinate. Your money has not bought you the right to defy the authority of the professor. If you don’t like the rules, your options include talking some sense into the professor and going through channels if the rules become a problem in fair and reasonable treatment.
This professor is a nutcake and some of the rules are unenforceable. You can’t be penalized for sneezing, blowing your nose or coughing. I doubt that Dr. Notcake can enforce the hat rule, but I would be a grownup and not push it. Maybe.
It’s not his classroom. It’s the university’s room. You’re right though, my money hasn’t bought me the right to defy his/her authority. My point is that he doesn’t have any authority other than the course material and my grade, which he’d better do fairly or else I’ll go over his head.
In what other industry does the customer get pushed around by the employed? When a parent comes in to my place of work (daycare), they’re not subordinate to me. I’m subordinate to them. That professor works for the students, not the other way around. How dare they tell me what my manners will be. Manners don’t have anything to do with African Literature (or whatever) so they can drop it. The only recourse a professor has against my rudeness is the same as what they’d have against, say, a rude passenger on the bus or movie theater patron.
I don’t see rules for civility as necessarily being a bad thing though I suppose you can take it too far. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask students engage in behavior designed to treat the professor and the other students with respect. Of course being respectful entails a lot of things. It means not making a habit out of getting up in the middle of a lecture to use the bathroom or make a phone call. It means not text messaging while I’m standing in front the class presenting material. It means not being habitually late. It means treating other students politely even if they hold views you may not care for.
I think most universities allow their instructors to run their classrooms as they see fit, within certain parameters of course. I’ve seen instructors who didn’t care if you recorded them or used a computer in class and I’ve seen others who banned them altogether. I’ve seen some instructors who didn’t worry all that much about cell phones going off in class and another whose policy was that if your cell phone rang then you had to exit the class that day. I saw another who docked students points if their phones went off but gave the whole class points one day when hers went off.
Generally when I hear students complain about the seemingly arbitrary rules a particular instructor might have I don’t really care all that much. Suck it up.
Marc
PS: In my experience the majority of college students are doing just fine in the etiquette department.
So, this brings up a good question…how many rules, unreasonable or not, would it take to make you drop a class?
I can tell you already, if presented with a list like that, there’d be about a 75% chance I would drop. Then again, I’m to the point where any class I take is done of my own accord. It’s not so much I wouldn’t want to follow the rules, it’s just that it speaks to a fundamental style on behalf of the professor that I don’t think is compatible with my own learning style. In other words, no matter what he’s teaching, I’m probably not going to be able to learn it from him.
