Sigh.
I did the latest grade workup for one of my classes a week before Mid-Terms. Of the thirty students, exactly eleven are receiving a grade of C or higher. If I add in those who have thus far earned D's the number grows to 17. What the hell is going on here? The class is a gen ed physical science course that has almost no math and whose ideas are clearly communicated.
What makes the course different is that I don't emphasize a rote memorization of facts. I don't think that's what science really is. Science is a creative process and I try to teach that process through a series of activities and examinations of how the process arrived at a certain model of something in the physical world. The examples we've looked at so far are models for electricity and for the atom. I require that the students be able to explain to me how an idea or model was arrived at and what supporting evidence there is for the model.
Some of the students are having real problems with this. Since it isn't memorization and they are unable to move above the loswest level of learning in Bloom's taxonomy they're stuck. What's annoying is that they've gotten to this point and haven't learned to learn at a higher level.
The bigger issue though is the number of students who just won't work. They won't study, they won't turn in homework, they won't read the source material for the course. I did away with the $110 paperback textbook and substituted in web-based resources and they won't even look at them. Several of the resources have handy simulations that woudl really help them see what's going on if they would only look at them.
I never thought I'd say this but about half of the gen ed students I see don't belong in college. They aren't equipped with the personal maturity or personal drive to do the things that need to be done to be successful. We're documenting this across our institution: student increasingly lack the skills necessary to participate in an academic environment. We call it "academic literacy" and more and more often our students lack it. They don't know how to study, manage their time, take notes or even ask an intelligent question in class. They think that college is one big party that may or may not involve drugs or alcohol but that is here merely for their entertainment.
I gave the class (at least the ones who showed up for the quiz today-21 out of 30) hell about their performance and told them to get with the program or get out of the class. I am tired of wasting my time on students who don't care about their education. They should go get a minimum wage job that doesn't impinge on their ability to screw around on their Playstation or X-Box and leave the serious work to those who want to do it.
Sorry about the rant.
Thanks for reading.
