What's Wrong With Students Today?

Today's online Chronicle Careers is an article by Thomas H. Benton entitled "On Stupidity". In it, he briefly reviews a spate of books warning of America's burgeoning anti-intellectualism. He then lists a number of complaints that come out of his own direct observations as an educator. He sees too many students who are:

• Primarily focused on their own emotions — on the primacy of their "feelings" — rather than on analysis supported by evidence.
• Uncertain what constitutes reliable evidence, thus tending to use the most easily found sources uncritically.
• Convinced that no opinion is worth more than another: All views are equal.
• Uncertain about academic honesty and what constitutes plagiarism. (I recently had a student defend herself by claiming that her paper was more than 50 percent original, so she should receive that much credit, at least.)
• Unable to follow or make a sustained argument.
• Uncertain about spelling and punctuation (and skeptical that such skills matter).
• Hostile to anything that is not directly relevant to their career goals, which are vaguely understood.
• Increasingly interested in the social and athletic above the academic, while "needing" to receive very high grades.
• Not really embarrassed at their lack of knowledge and skills.
• Certain that any academic failure is the fault of the professor rather than the student.

Among other things, he proposes,

"We need to reverse the customer-service mentality that goes hand-in-hand with the transformation of most college teaching into a part-time, transient occupation and the absence of any reliable assessment of course outcomes besides student evaluations."

I was struck by his recommendations, coming as they do from an undergraduate, university perspective, as they are similar to issues that we are discussing at our seminary. I spent three profitable days last week at a Higher Learning Commission workshop on making student learning assessment a core institutional strategy. Graduate theological education faces many of the same trends and challenges that Benton notes above.

I also increasingly feel the importance of one solution that he does not mention in his article: Libraries can play a significant role in addressing student learning barriers. To the extent that higher education today is trying to make (keep?) education a marketable commodity by side-lining traditional learning environments, it often does so by also diminishing the role of the library. Libraries are significant places of learning, and librarians are well-positioned to engage student interest in learning at that most critical stage of learning: research and discovery.

To misquote Shakespeare, "Stupidity, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere." Libraries are one place, though, where stupidity's light grows dim.

Teaching, Learning, & Faculty Collaboration

Most of my time during the first day of the conference was focused on issues surrounding library involvement in teaching and learning. (Though there was the ever highly stimulating ATLA business meeting led with decorum and aplomb by Martha Lund Smalley and distinguished members of the ATLA staff.)

Paul Myhre from the Wabash Center conducted a juiced-up roundtable on teaching and learning that took us through about two days' worth of Wabash seminar-style discussion in just one hour. (And we even got chocolates for attending!) Paul began by shamelessly flattering us, telling us all the wonderful things about theological librarians that we have so much difficulty communicating to our administrators. Then he split us into groups and took us through a series of reflective questions on teaching and learning that forced us to critically examine our assumptions about our roles as librarians. Some tidbits of collective wisdom that floated to the surface of our frenetic thinking:

• Librarians should sit in on classes to observe teaching
• Even when rebuffed, we should patiently persist in seeking opportunities to collaborate in teaching and learning
• Even when it is out of character for us, we should cultivate our inner extroverts
• Make opportunities to discuss course content and syllabi with faculty
• Invest the time necessary to build a relationship of trust with faculty
• Provide faculty with free beer/coffee/chocolates
• Actively volunteer to teach in the classroom; begin with the assumption that faculty welcome our involvement

Two more books that I want to track down and add to our collection:

Assessment & Learning: The ICE Approach by Young & Wilson

Library Assessment in Higher Education by Joseph Matthews

Then, in the afternoon, I took part in the first-ever meeting of the newly formed Teaching and Learning Interest Group (TALIG). There was discussion of how to pronounce the acronym -- with a short "a" or a long "a"? (Kudos to Paul Myhre for suggesting the Brit-sounding pronunciation, "talley-gee".) The by-laws were approved, and the steering committee was elected. We then spent the rest of the meeting brain-storming ways that TALIG can encourage librarian involvement in teaching and learning. We left the steering committee with quite a list. It will be interesting to see what they choose to tackle first.