Students' lack of responsibility really bugs me

The BBQ Pit
1

So this student comes up to me (a week before the semester ends) asking what her grade will be. I tell her that, based on her papers to date, she would get maybe a “C” but I might (depending on her final draft) refer her to a semester of tutoring for her writing issues (her writing veers into almost total syntax-free gibberish at appallingly frequent intervals).

She tells me that she COULD have gone to tutoring this semester, when she has LOADS of free time, but it’s not convenient for her to do so during the summer or during the fall or any time in the foreseeable future. She informs me with some irritation that in not referring her earlier, I have wasted her tuition money.

Problem is, I informed her the first week, based on a diagnostic exam, that she needs tutoring, and she refused to take it, saying naturally, she was very busy and the diagnostic test didn’t reflect her true abilities. I have the diagnostic exam in my office, I think, but even if I were to show it to her with my recommendation and the concurrence (noted in their initials) of my colleagues, she could simply claim that I never showed it to her, never spoke to her about tutoring, etc., as she’s claiming now.

So I’m appalled by two things 1) the general issue of students shirking personal responsibility and 2)the knowledge that this student, like so many others, gets to fill out an evaluation form that affects my salary and other considerations, claiming that she was never taught how to write in my course, and got a low grade despite her intense effforts to do so, because of my incompetence and/or general hostility to her personally.

I could make up forms, I suppose, saying “I have heard Professor Ruber’s recommendations that I undergo intensive tutoring and am rejecting his advice, and am wiling to accept the considerable riskj of failing his course…” and asking them to sign the form–but I can’t make them sign the forms, as I can’t make them get tutoring. A sizable fraction of my students–maybe as high as 5%–seem determined to me to learn as little as possible and to blame their miseducation on the teachers, the courses, the curriculum, the textbook…

2

Why can’t you make them sign a form acknowledging that they’ve seen their test and have been recommended for tutoring?

Of course from the sound of it they wouldn’t be able to read the form…

3

As a responsible student, I couldn’t agree more. The majority of the students at my old school just <i>didn’t</i> care about learning. I have a natural tendency towards learning, so I can’t really explain why those who don’t have that tendency treat it so carelessly. But honestly… one of the things that bothered me the most about public school was the other students’ nonchalant manners in class, and still expecting good marks. Bring the whips back! Please…? No?? durn. I actually had a teacher a few years ago who kept a whip on her desk… she never hurt anyone, but her students appreciated that she respected them, and if they didn’t respect her back… well… you can figure it out. Good luck with your students, hopefully you’ll have excellent ones next year :slight_smile:

4

In my opinion, this is what has been happening to America for many years. People don’t take responsibility for their own actions (or inactions). It ticks me off to no end.

I’m sorry it could effect you salary-wise but hopefully, one bad evaluation could be shown as an outlier.

5

I think a lot of it has to do with the notion that education is not something to be pursued, but a commodity to be purchased and then exploited. The student didn’t think she was getting value for her money, and so it’s YOUR fault as the provider of the service, not HER fault as the recipient of an education. The customer is always right, and all.

Robin

6

Aaah the op is exactly why I decided not to go into teaching.

You can’t hold the kids accountable (this is their parent’s job… not that many parents even try)

and you can’t fail them (as this hurts their self esteem)

And they wonder why so many kids are illiterate these days.

I took some college classes a few years ago and was shocked at the number of kids who didn’t care what was happening in their classes. I had one kid in a group project where we each contributed to eachother’s grade (god I hate those things) where he flat out told us all his aim was a D since that’s all he needed to graduate.

My favorite story is of a tech writing class. We had to make an org chart. It had to be balanced on the page and all in black with connecting lines and boxes around the headers. I saw papers passed in with blue circles around the headers and these people wondered why they got crappy grades!!!

7

pseudotriton ruber ruber, could you really get in trouble about this?

Since when do authority figures take the student’s word over the professor’s?

Confront her with the test and remind her that you did indeed refer her to tutoring at the beginning of the semester. Hopefully she’ll take responsibility for her own laziness.

You know you talked to her and you have her diagnostic test as proof.

She takes it to the next level, you produce the test. “Just look at this test, Dean o’ the School. Of COURSE I referred her!”

How would he or she be able to take her word over yours?

Or am I missing something?

8

Going on what other posters have said, I have noticed that students have a tendency to blame everyone but themselves for bad grades.

Now, I’m not the best student out there- in fact I’m pretty damn lazy. But if I fail a class due to a lack of attenence, or not studying enough, I’ll know why I failed. I won’t make up some bullshit excuse about something the instructor did wrong, or deliberately try to find inconsistencies in the syllabus that suit my own sloth.

pseudotriton, your sentiments regarding evaluations is interesting, because in my college it is the STUDENTS who worry about giving bad evaluations. See, many of them are paranoid that the instructur will ‘know’ what student gave them a bad evaluation (even though they are annonymous) and they will be afraid that the instructor will tell his/her collegue hooligans about them so the following semester they would get hell from every instructor.

I have good classes, and I have bad classes, but if I do poorly, 90% of the time its because of something that is solely my fault. Even when it is a mistake on the part of the instructor, they are the ones who catch it and fix it before I even realize anything was amiss.

9

“Why can’t you make them sign a form acknowledging that they’ve seen their test and have been recommended for tutoring?”
I’m not sure WHY I can’t, but essentially if I ask a student to do anything that he or she refuses to do, I’m stuck. The “consumer” mentality that MsRobyn refers to says essentially that since I have ALL of the power of deciding grades, pretty much every other option is closed to me. Student refuses to do work? I can fail him, but I can’t, for example, refuse to let him sit in my classes. If he disrupts with inane irrelevant remarks, I might be able to have him physically removed from the classroom by a security guard, but if he’s paid for the course and wants to keep coming back, this becomes a daily process. If I complain to the Dean of Students, he gets to keep coming back until his appeals are exhausted, which pretty much means for weeks or even months.

The scenario above is very rare (I’ve been through the process once in the last decade) but the university is so eager for tuition money that we haven’t expelled a student in years, to my knowledge. It’s amazing, but an untold secret of my private university (and I suspect many others) is that a degree goes to any stubborn individual able to pay tuition. Performance, effort, learning–none of these matters ultimately, only the $$$$.

I’m working on an essay about this larger process, to be called “Death of the Gatekeeper,” which begins “I should know. I was the gatekeeper, and I’ve been dead for the last few years…”, all about the university having abnegated its role in seeing that some miminum level of literacy attaches to graduates of our institution. When I began teaching, we often spoke of our “gatekeeper” function (“We can’t allow someone with such poor skills to brandish a degree.”) But now my younger colleagues, in the name of “student empowerment,” flat-out refuse to give out "F"s, and claim that it is elitist of me to judge who is and is not minimally literate.

It seems useless to me to uphold ‘gatekeeper’ standards when most of my colleagues are endorsing the graduation of virtually any tuition-paying student, so I’m no longer doing so either.

10

<sarcasm>
But if I did everything my teachers want me to, school would be a full time job…then I wouldn’t have any time for going out with my friends, doing my makeup, getting a tan. And I might learn something. And we all know I’m only here for the social life.

</sarcasm>
That’s the one attitude I don’t miss in grad school - people want to be here, they’re not here because it’s simply expected of them. I do see this attitude in the undergrads (I work at the reference desk on Saturdays) - if it’s not quick and simple, some of them don’t want to put the effort in.*

*There are also many undergrads who will put the effort in. I think I just tend to remember the ones who come in saying "I’ve got a paper due Monday and I don’t even have a topic yet and I only want sources that I don’t actually have to read.

11

I was one of these students you are talking about. I just didn’t “get” the whole personal responsibility thing.

One day in college, I had a number of short deadlines on various projects. I was so angry and stressed about all these profs dumping all this work on me with the same deadline. I internally blamed them for my perceived inability to get everything done properly. I saw one of my profs coming into the library where I was researching a paper. I explained my concern to this prof. His response…

“You need to kick it into high gear and just get it done.”

I paused. With one sentence, my world had just been turned upside down. I had never thought of that before. If I get a bad grade, it’s because I chose not to do the work required of me. You mean that I should point the finger at myself instead of everyone else? Amazing!

At that moment, I stopped whining and laying blame, kicked it into high gear, and got it done.

Now, about 10 years later, every time I get swamped at work or in life, the image of that prof speaking those words pops into my head. I kick it into high gear, I get it done, and I secretly thank that prof for teaching me a valuable lesson in life.

Perhaps you can teach this student the same kind of lesson?

12

“pseudotriton ruber ruber, could you really get in trouble about this?”

I don’t know about trouble, Gazelle, but I do get bad evals all the time from pissed off students whose troubles are largely self-inflicted. As noted above, I no longer have the authority to back up what I’m claiming, other than to give the student a low grade. I can recommend a semester of tutoring, but the student doesn’t need to take it. Disputes are settled by the “he said-she said” method–i.e., the Dean says “what was said and wasn’t said is in dispute, so let’s settle this in some neutral manner. Let’s drop the grade, or let’s agree to a modified grade, or let’s…” which process usually takes up time and effort to document. I suppose that even I got her signature on the diagnostic, she could claim “I never signed that, it’s a forgery” or “I didn’t know what I was signing” or some such. The point is that the dean is charged with upholding “student retention” above all (as we all are) so the simpler, more draconian solutions rarely apply, because they might encourage the student to leave the university.

13

Even if you don’t have them sign a form, you could certainly document the time and date that you spoke to them, give them a written document regarding tutoring, and keep copies. You could ask them to sign saying they received it, and if they refuse, just note that on your copy. I served on several review boards for complaints against instructors, and that would have certainly satisfied me.

If the Dean really does settle like that- “lets drop the grade or agree to a modified grade”, I suggest you look for another university to teach at. By the sounds, the one you are at lacks the core value of an educational system: Educating the student is the most important thing. While money cannot be ingored, you cannot reasonably expect instructors to change grades because a student says they were “never told” something because you need their tuition dollars.

Very unfortunate situation.

14

That sucks major ass, Professor ruber.

I’m sorry you have to deal with this bullshit.

Grrrrrr.

15

pseudotriton ruber ruber

Might I suggest you tape record your negative student conferences, i.e., the ones where you know you’ll be telling a student something they won’t want to hear. Then you’ll have back-up documentation and won’t need the student to sign something they may not want to sign as it will cause them to shoulder the full consequences of their actions.

16

While that sounds like a great idea to me, I would make sure the student knows the conversation is being taped (and agrees to the taping on tape). IANAL, but I wonder about the legality of taping the conversation.

17

Thanks for all the support, folks. I’m really just ranting, not really searching for a workable solution, I fear. I could certainly document better (just now, I’m trying to remember where I filed those exams from late January), though the cost of doing so is to create a slightly more adversarial relationship with all the students who DON’T pull this crap.

Zette–I’d love to teach elsewhere and apply for every decent job at my level, or anywhere near it, I can find; My tenure gives me major job security, but unfortunately it’s job security at a school whose principles I don’t have a lot of respect for. I’m trying to see if I can stick it out a few more decades here, with stopoffs in the Pit as needed.

18

This drives me crazy, too.

I found that as a decent student, this could work in your favor. That is, honesty and a sense of responsibility are so damned REFRESHING to a professor’s ears, a student who exhibits it may get a break.

It worked for me as a student, and when I was teaching, it worked the other way, too. My attitude about a student who said “I screwed up and didn’t give myself enough time to work on this project” was far more benevolent than my feelings toward a student who tried to blame everything under the sun for his/her not doing well.

19

As long as one of the parties involved know the taping is going on, it is legal. But it might not be a bad idea to let the students know that the conversations are being taped as it may give them pause before before dismissing good advice outright (one can dream).

20

The thing is, most professors are willing to help those who make the effort-“Just come to my office, and I’ll help you out, blah blah blah…”

And I so took advantage of this.

But most people don’t, and then they blame their professor. It boggles the mind.