So I spot a NY times article titled “Remaking the campus tour”
And I expect to read an intelligent discussion.
Maybe an intelligent discussion about how universities use new techniques sell themselves to a new generation of students.
Or maybe an intelligent discussion about how universities encourage more teens and parents to visit the campus.
Or maybe an intelligent discussion about how universities use financial aid to encourage new students.
But no…the only thing the NY Times discusses is tour guides walking backwards.
Huh?
Now, I admit, it’s been a couple decades since I took a campus tour. So maybe I don’t remember…after all, I was an excited teenager, all agog at hearing the guides tell stories about the both the classy library and the wild fraternity parties.
But I sure as hell didn’t pay any attention to which way the guides faced while walking us around the campus. Is this really a major issue? Is this the ONLY issue which the NY Times could find to write about under the heading of “campus tours” ?
I went on a campus tour last winter when we took my cousin to see the University of Pittsburgh. The guide was excellent. She did indeed walk backwards.
If you’d have given me the chance then and there to drop everything and go back to college as an undergrad with no responsibilities and the opportunity to do all those fun things, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Snow and all. (And it was snowing like all fuck and nobody seemed to think that was any reason not to hoof it all over campus, which was weird.)
Of course they want to walk backwards. Walking backwards, they can address everyone they’re speaking to, as well as make eye contact. Walking forwards would only work if they were giving a tour to one, maybe two people.
Has anyone ever been on a tour where they say “And we’re walking… and we’re walking?”
I have never seen it, but it seems so ubiquitous on sitcoms that I have to wonder. And If anyone has ever seen someone do that annoying shit, did you kick them in the face, or use a blunt weapon?
I went to UCLA to return some library books about a week ago, and I noticed the walking backwards thing. “On my left and your right, you’ll see…” one of the guides was intoning. They were also wearing odd white garments over their heads that looked like the shadors, if that’s the word, worn by many Muslim women.
When I gave tours, I asked people to warn me if I was about to hit something, but it didn’t come up often. You can take a glance every 10 or 20 feet, and it’s not like the route changes.
UC Davis has Picnic Day, a major, all-campus open house, every spring. And there’s a parade that is heavy participated in by student groups. The tour guides walk in the parade backwards.
Now if I were on the tour and using a wheelchair, I would be majorly pissed off. “And we’re walking and – oh, not you, you’re rolling – and we’re walking and rolling . . . and we’re walking and rolling!”
This is what I did, when we went from point A to B we all walked together at a normal pace. It also gave visitors a chance to chit-chat with me/ask question between stops, while I was “off”.
Not that I’m an expert, I did this as an unpaid volunteer. I gave short secondary tours of our Engineering campus. The main campus tour was on an air-conditioned bus.
The guides at the Pentagon do this, too. They are required to memorize the entire route and be able to walk it backward without looking behind them - stairs and all - before they ever perform their first guided tour.
Just a little vent about the college tour here – our department went as a cheap outing and the guide said how in New Hampshire, cars have to stop for pedestrians, so we should just walk right on out there across the road.
Um, pedestrians in crosswalks. :smack:No wonder the students walk out willy-nilly and almost get hit; it was taught to them during the tour!
I personally think this practice is inanely stupid. The advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages. Establishing eye contact has little to do with whether you can remember information, which is the sole purpose of the tour guide. (If she’s trying to convince you to attend that college, and can’t do so on facts alone, then the college isn’t very good, anyways.) Otherwise, I could walk myself with a map. I don’t need to be impressed with how great a speaker the guide is. Sure, it takes a little training to refine your body language, (which does not, in any way shape or form provide 90% of communication. My post is my cite.) but that isn’t that big a deal.
On the other hand, when you are walking backwards, you have to memorize everything that is behind you at a level higher than even a blind person, who is at least smart enough to carry a stick or guide dog to see in front of them. And, if you are actually capturing everyone’s eye contact, then there is nobody looking carefully behind you. Add the average ability of humans not to even detect things that are right in front of them, and it is very possible for the guide to be injured. And I haven’t even factored in the jerks who will go out of their way to mess up the guide for giggles. I find they are a significant percentage of the attendees of a “higher institute of learning.”
And, anyways, you can have your cake and eat it too, now. We have the technology to let someone see behind them. And I’m not necessarily talking about expensive cameras, either. Glasses and mirrors have existed for a little while now, I’d think.
Unfortunately, most people don’t work like that. It’s very rare that someone will make a purely facts-based decision (if they don’t outright reject the facts that disagree with the ideas they’ve established). It’s the tour guide’s job to make a personal connection with the people they’re giving the tour to, so that they can sell the university not just as a set of facts, but as an attitude, as something the student will want to belong to. Otherwise, the university would just hand you a fact sheet and a map, which would be much cheaper.
