Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on[.]

The comments on Farley’s post about grade inflation and student effort had convinced me not to read the article that inspired them.  Then Shahar excerpted a different part of the article and I changed my mind:

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

Did that prepositional phrase modify the researchers (they are at UCI) or where they did their study (at UCI)?  I couldn’t tell from the excerpt.  So I read the article.  It didn’t say.  So I read the study it cited.  It didn’t say outright—but it hinted.  The ethnic diversity of its sample breaks down like this:

51.2%	East or Southeast Asian
18.9%	Caucasian
10.7%	Latino
1.1%	African American

The ethnic diversity of a closely related fine public university in a similar location breaks down like this:

51%	Asian / Pacific Islander
24%	White
12%	Latino
2%	African American

Participants in the study were recruited through handbills “posted at the Social Sciences Human Subjects Laboratory.”  Where do I teach?  This means that while everyone else can speak hypothetically about whether their students resemble those in the study, I must come to terms with the fact that sixty-percent of actual students actually sitting in my actual classes believe that if they “explain to [me] that [they are] trying hard, [they] think [I] should give [them] some consideration with respect to [their] course grade.”  I must accept that fifty-percent of them believe that they deserve a B if they “have completed most [of the mandatory] reading for [my] class” or “have attended most [of the mandatory] classes for [my] course.”  I must deal with the fact that twenty-five percent of them “would think poorly of [me if I] didn’t respond the same day to an e-mail [they] sent.”

I could learn to deal with that.  But I’m not sure I can live in a world in which sixteen-percent of my students think that I “should not be annoyed with [them] if [they] receive an important call during class.”

(x-posted.)

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

I'm shocked that these students have such poor ideas about how to game the system. Most profs couldn't care less whether your attendance is spotty if you ace the midterm and final, but the opposite is not true. And cramming for two tests is a lot easier than dragging yourself into class every day.

[Thers]

I wouldn't worry about it. I bet most of the students who responded to the survey were only copying from the kid at the next desk anyhow.

[Ahistoricality]

And cramming for two tests is a lot easier than dragging yourself into class every day.

Some of us are not so easily fooled: a class which involved just a few tests and in which the material covered in class wasn't necessary would be.... well, typical in the psych department, but quite unusual in history or literature.

[Comrade]

The study was completed last year. Why report on it now? Because it's a perfect opportunity to confect a morality play pertaining to the "economic crisis" (ie, depression) the US faces. Predictably, people will be horrified. What about "personal responsibility"? And of course what this means is that the fact that such a response from students is entirely in keeping with the logic of the culture which surrounds them will be lost. Let's go back to Theodor Adorno for an insight:

"What has become alien to men is the human component of culture, its closest part, which upholds them against the world. They make common cause with the world against themselves, and the most alienated condition of all, the omnipresence of commodities, their own conversion into appendages of machinery, is for them a mirage of closeness. "

The root of the problem, then, is not ungrateful or cynical students gaming a bankrupt system, but the society which makes such activity seem necessary. IN a world modeled after the market-- which is, in a word, false-- is such falsity surprising?