This column was written in response to the Viewpoints article published Monday, Sept. 22 entitled "Professor's attitude most important attribute."
As a fourth-year Carolina student, devoted to my studies, I take severe issue with the position of a recent Viewpoints article, which does little more than vilify “professors’ attitudes” as unilateral culprits responsible for the undergraduate classroom experience gone wrong.
Ms. Schipano’s article, though evidently emotionally driven, fails to focus upon the composition and support of a strong rhetorical position, looking instead to lodge unproductive complaint where it might be heard receptively by a sympathetic audience.
It also foregoes the opportunity to unfurl thoughtful and explorative discussion of the dynamics of undergraduate education and the purported effects on students.
In response, I seek to offer a carefully weighed rebuttal: not an exhaustive siege upon the author or her opinions, but rather an educative trailhead that might guide the more intellectually motivated constituents of our university community on a pathway away from academic myopia and into a realm of rewarding ambition and well-earned scholarly pleasure.
Many times, we often associate education with the passive word receive. I worry that this ubiquitous idea — that students attend university to “receive a quality education” — might be a root source of the endemic sense of entitlement that plagues undergraduate student bodies across America.
By assuming it is the professor who dictates the quality of education attainable within a course of study, the student forfeits responsibility for their learning to someone who indeed may fail to consider as a priority the inculcation of wisdom and wonder into the minds of the angelic undergrads seated before him.
What of the two to three hours of independent preparation that most courses expect of students for each classroom hour? Or of the infinite possibilities for inspiration contained within even a page of a given course material? Heaven forbid a student should hazard to raise an independent hand to enrich himself by partaking of the intellectual richness available at this university.
The best classes of my undergraduate career, whether at this campus or halfway across the world at the American University of Sharjah, have been those that I chose to engage with wholeheartedly. There is no substitute for a student’s efficacy in their education, and, to be honest, I grow weary of chronic complaint serving as a crutch for those who are unwilling to persevere through obstacle.
The goal, at least once upon a long time ago, seemed to be the pursuit of true understanding in place of convenience and A+ handouts. If you are a student looking to gain something from college, stop giving the responsibility for that acquisition away to an external force. Such an approach will never make for a convincing argument against less-than-personable faculty members.
However, if we are to examine the sources of professors’ obtuseness and not simply treat the symptoms, I would advise you to exercise your newly-discovered educational responsibility and do yourself the favor of reading "On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping For B" (which can be accessed via Google or through the Business Source Complete database available on our library system website.)
A masterpiece in management literature, Steven Kerr’s piece productively dissects the problems inherent in the practice of using one metric of behavior for performance evaluation to encourage results in a totally unrelated category.
Indeed, it seems sage advice not to reward young children for punctuality and at the same time expect them to necessarily blossom into competent athletes.
As this concept pertains to our discussion, it is well known that university professors are not granted tenure for excellent classroom reviews, but instead for the quality and frequency of their research publications.
Of course, this begs the question: does a university care more for its faculty-produced research than for the quality of lecturing observed in its academic halls?
I am neither qualified nor willing to give counsel on an answer, but I should at least place the question before you to introduce the multiplicity of topics one might explore whilst searching for a solution to the myriad of problems in undergraduate education.
I don’t really care what the answer is, though. I am more prone to worry that a bevy of entitled, irascible adolescents, who consider the unilateral receipt of a quality education to be a right earned by the payment of tuition, does more to discourage a professor’s will to teach than any other form of misplaced incentivization can.
We ought to remember that we as students are the first and last word in how we choose to learn within the surrounding environment and whether we will enjoy doing so.
Any other excuse would cause us to succumb to a gravely entropic decay that proves inimical to true scholarship.