I bring all this up because his column published today hits close to home.
Every teaching assistant at a large state university has had the experience. At least I did as a TA in the University of Missouri's history department. Sometime during the semester you'd get a call from a junior assistant coach -- as new to the academic life as you were -- who just wanted to drop by and have a Coke.My first thought, of course, was "No, not every TA experiences that," but I got the gist and played along, besides we all have to generalize from the particular every now and again. My second thought was that Paul must have been a TA in nineteen-dickity-two, and that is one hell of a generalization from the particular, given that we have invented cars, electricity, and thinking since Paul was a TA.
Of course the young [buzz-cutted, one imagines] coach goes on to encourage him not to flunk some football player. Paul slyly lets it be known that he played ball, so to speak.
The young coach had carried out his assignment, I'd done my duty, no hard feelings. That's the way it worked. Every system has its little accepted corruptions that accumulate like sludge on the gears.The next sentence is the one I loved most in the article:
I don't know if that kind of visit still happens. It shouldn't.See, you know that times have changed since Paul was a Tiger, because we have invented thesis statements since then. You know, opening sentences that let the reader know what the rest of the article will be about. Paul's was about the universality of an experience. Four paragraphs in, he has acknowledged that he has no idea if his initial argument is actually true. This is not going well.
From these petty corruptions that make society work, Paul moves on to the real horror taking place on our college campuses today.
There's been one big change since my days behind the lectern. It's no longer the coaches who appeal, wheedle, growl, grovel, or whatever it takes to raise a student's letter grade. It's the students themselves.The horror![?] Actually, as we've discussed, there have been a lot of changes at Mizzou since Paul was behind the lectern. I can think of one giant change to college life at a Southern university since Paul taught there. Can you?
What could be worse than having actual students beg their TA for a higher grade? Academics studying such a thing.
Ha, ha, ha! Academics. Have they nothing better to do than study a phenomenon that affects tens of thousands of people? I mean, Paul was unaware that it was an issue until he read about their study in the New York Times, but come on, isn't this just a giant waste of our time that also just happens to alert us to one of the greatest threats to civilization itself? Ha, ha, ha. Academics.Naturally enough, a team of academics has written a paper about this sad trend. ("Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting and Motivational Factors"). The syndrome now has a name (Academic Entitlement) and an abbreviation (AE) -- just like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Doubtless there will soon be federal grants and endowed chairs to study AE and a drug to treat it. And sure enough, it'll turn out to be more widespread than anyone ever suspected.
The four scholars who did this Pioneering Study trace the origins of AE to parental pressure, material rewards for good grades, competitiveness, and "achievement anxiety and extrinsic motivation." They conclude that AE is "most strongly related to exploitive attitudes towards others and moderately related to an overall sense of entitlement and to narcissism."
At the risk of putting all that in plain English, these kids are spoiled brats with character problems.
Paul goes on in the "kids today" vein for a bit until he gets to his point, which is toward the end of the column, rather than, well you know where the point of an article belongs because you were educated after people stopped wearing onions on their belts.
Consider this newly named syndrome another argument for universal military service. Call it Greenberg's Theorem: There's nothing wrong with these kids that six weeks of basic training at an Army base in some barren clime wouldn't cure -- if they didn't manage to have mama or papa get them out of it.It's true you know, six weeks of basic would settle their hash. Plus, then we'd have lots and lots of kids to fight in the twin threats to civilizations itself, Iran and North Korea, those haters of freedom, what with their forced military service and all. Oh, if only we didn't have that so-called "natural-born citizen" Obama in charge, then we could get something done in this country, I tell you what.
Let me leave you with the words of one of Paul's more insightful readers, Patrick from the great state of Texas:
LIBERALS LOVES TESTLIBERALS USE TEST AS A WAY TO SHOW NEED FOR THEIR GREED. NOT I.Q. TEST, NOT DNA TEST, NOR ANY TEST THAT CAN PROVE ANYTHING, THEY USE TEST TO CLAIM PREJUDICE. TEST SHOULD BE USED TO SEPARATE THE STUDENT FROM THE ENTRY LEVEL CAREER PERSON AND THEN ENHANCE THE SKILLS TO ENABLE BETTER PEOPLE.
Paul couldn't have said it better himself.
1 comment:
Thank god I have an answer now! I'm just going to start telling my students, willy-nilly, they need to join the damn Army. That oughta teach 'em.
What's horrifying is I've heard this theorem bandied about before. In our schools. By educators.
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