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NastyStudentNation.com. Bitter&Longsuffering.edu. WitsEndFaculty.org.
These are some of the Web sites begging to be started, judging from the deluge of e-mail messages I've received -- and continue to receive -- in response to last month's column about dealing with nasty students. I mean, I knew there was a problem, but I surely didn't realize just how frustrated many faculty members are in dealing with difficult students.
Students are more apathetic, more infected with an unwarranted sense of entitlement, more lacking in basic civility, and more downright rude and abusive than they've ever been in the history of American education. At least that seems to be the conclusion of the vast majority of you who wrote to me, including faculty members, deans, administrators, and even some schoolteachers.
One adjunct recounted how some of her students, angry at their poor test scores, verbally assaulted her, then stood up and blocked her from leaving the classroom until she muscled past them to safety. Dozens of adjuncts and full-time faculty members told of being "reported" to the higher-ups for giving low grades or assigning demanding projects, and then of being forced to adjust their requirements by those higher-ups. Several teachers in secondary education told of being verbally and physically assaulted by their students -- shoved, called "bitch," "whore," and other names, and pelted with wadded-up paper in the classroom -- and of being required to keep those students in their classes.
Indeed, the schoolteachers who wrote to me suggested that faculty members in academe are struggling with our students more than ever because the climate and culture of elementary and secondary education has declined in this country, especially in public schools. For a host of reasons, problematic behaviors are tolerated, by both parents and school officials, in today's public schools. Students grow up thinking those behaviors are OK, and they bring all that with them to their first day of college. Then, shocked and enraged when their behavior is challenged by faculty members, they complain to the dean. Since the students have critical mass and tuition dollars to withhold, many deans and administrators bend to their will.
The most common suggestion I got this past month for dealing with problematic behaviors in class is one I didn't mention in...