By Lee Trepanier, Sep 10, 2009 in Pedagogy and Teaching
In a February article in The New York Times, “Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes,” and in a subsequent commentary blog by Michelle Cottle of The New Republic, “An A for Effort? Talk About a Lousy Idea,” we see on display a culture of entitlement at universities, where students believed they deserve a high mark for their efforts and not for their results. The notion that results matter more than effort seems to elude students: “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?” asked one student. A third of students surveyed at University of California at Irvine expected a mark of ‘B’ just for attending lectures and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required readings. Theories about this sense of entitlement among students abound, from increased parental pressures, to competition among peers, to the preparation of taking tests in their K–12 years.
The description of students in the article may correspond with your own experiences in the classroom—at least it does with mine, as witnessed by all the busywork I have to put in my courses such as “reflection essays” and “pop quizzes” (as an aside, one of my favorite stories I like to tell my colleagues is about the time when I had a student ask me if I could tell her when the pop quizzes would be so she could prepare for them). But I wonder whether this is just another form of student-bashing that faculty engages in from time to time? Haven’t students always felt entitled to certain marks, especially in aristocratic societies when members of a certain class believed it was their right to certain honors? Aren’t faculty members better protected today, with processes like grade grievances that were nonexistent before?
Of course, the sense of entitlement is a genuine problem for students and teachers: for the former because it does not prepare them for the realities of the world outside academia and for the latter because it incentivizes the inclusion of busy-work in our courses. Although all students may get an ‘A’ in the classroom, only a few will be employed in the marketplace. The argument that I would make against the entitlement culture of academia is that it does not prepare our students adequately for the pressures and demands of work. In other words, we are setting them up to fail. Better that they learn these lessons now, when there is still adequate time to recover without permanent injury (e.g., they can always re-take the class next semester), rather than in the world of work where the consequences to them and to society as a whole are more costly.
3 Responses to "Everyone Deserves an ‘A’"
Anonymous on Sep 11, 2009
Perhaps the sense of entitlement isn't new. I suspect that entitlement to a B for marginal effort and showing up is new. Isn't the problem here really grade inflation, then? A gentlemen's C is now a B and you better have an explanation ready for the legalistic student ("I did my work") if that becomes a B- or a C-. That is rather how I feel as a grader, anyway.
Anonymous on Sep 12, 2009
Part of the problem is that students are told from the time they enter school, "You can be anything you want to be." Sorry. That just is not the case. My chances of being an engineer stopped when I took Calculus I (ugh!). Student bashing could be a problem with stories like this. I think that good teachers will show their students how to succeed while demanding excellence from them. This is easier said than done, I concede.
Gerson Moreno-Riano on Oct 26, 2009
Thank you all (Lee, David, and Thaddeus) for your responses and for reading my post. Here are my thoughts:
1. It is our task to persuade and convince our administrators regarding the virtues of content-based education. And when we think of employment offers, we should think carefully about the types of administrators for whom we may work. I think persuading them is possible but not necessarily easy.
2. Unless teachers become philosopher or philosophers become teachers, then I am against teachers being therapeutic in the classroom. I agree with you, David, in principle.
3. Content-based education, as Lee suggests, implies a methodology. Understanding it solely in terms of just a type of catechism misses the boat. It implies a dialectic methodology. What you propose is more like ideological education rather than content-based.
Just some thoughts- thanks for reading.