Friday 28 November 2014

Would you send this e-mail to your boss?

Ok.  I get it.  We spoon feed you everything.  We print out all of the lecture slides for you because you can't be bothered to download them yourself. We're supposed to allow you to come into class whenever you feel like it because you've paid up to £9,000 a year for your education...never mind the fact that everyone ELSE has also paid that amount and manages to get to class pretty much on time (not 1/2 hour late to a 2 hour lecture, coming in with a steaming cup of Starbucks!).  No...your coming in to a packed class of 150+ students where the only seats left are in the middle of the rows or in the front (God forbid you sit in front), so you make 12 students get up from their seats in the middle of the lecture to let you pass as you greet your buddies....is absolutely awesome and in no way a disruption to anyone else's learning.  Hey, what does it matter anyway because, yes, you expect me to give you the answers to the exams.  And yes, some of my co-workers succumb to this practice in order to meet their 95% pass rate target.  So I admit it, I am a horrible person for asking you to at least TRY to learn what I'm working so hard to teach you, and telling you that anything we've gone over in classes is fair game on the exam.  I understand that I, as a lecturer, am failing you in your quest to not actually learn anything and still pass my class, as evidenced by the e-mail sent to me by a student (below), and I'm ok with that.  I sleep pretty well at night over this, though I'm not so sure that whomever taught grammar/punctuation to this student should be...  Here is the e-mail that relates to an upcoming exam; would you send this to your boss?

"hi
since you refused to tell us the topics to focus on and you said read all of the topics you taught us can you at least give us some revision questions to focus on and the answers you expect.  because this is so stressful.  all other lecturers have given us topics to focus on but i dont know why you are making it so difficult for us."


Because I'm a horrible meanie, that's why.  And because no one in the real world is going to give you the answers.  Did I mention that this is a MSc student?  Not a first year...a MASTER'S student.  What are we teaching this generation?  Are we teaching them the skills and knowledge that will help them to get good jobs and lead productive lives?  Or are we teaching them that if they pay their money, they'll be considered 'clients' (yes, we're actually told by management that this is what we're supposed to call students) and they don't actually have to take responsibility or develop a work ethic.  I mean really.  I don't know about you, but I don't want the people who are designing aircraft I fly on or the cars I drive to have a degree simply because they passed by learning the 20% of the overall information that the lecturer told them would be on the exam.  Is that wrong?

No comments:

Post a Comment