Have you ever walked into class only to realize within 10 minutes of lecture that you should have stayed in bed?
It happens all the time. You look to your right and find someone slumped in their seat as their eyes begin to droop. You turn left to find a student on Facebook while the person in front of you plays solitaire.
You begin to think: Why am I here? Why are they here?
This unfortunate situation, in which students come to class without any eagerness or enthusiasm, is all too common in today’s university. Students have taken a consumerist approach to their education. Focus is on the GPA and actual learning goes to the wayside. Just take a glance at Bruinwalk.com ““ after reading 20 comments you will realize the trend: Students look for professors who are easy and give A’s.
And a lot of students have gotten what they want.
The desire for easy grades praises a professor who is a buffoon that never gets to any substance; another is young and cannot command a class; the third uses the word “um” so many times that it becomes apparent they have nothing to say.
One cannot help but to think: Could Plato have become Plato if Socrates spoke like this? Could Aristotle have become Aristotle had Plato sounded like this?
Certainly not!
My own experience has taught me, and I know I am not alone, that attending lecture is no longer necessary for getting good grades. What is offered in class can be gained by simply doing the assigned readings or browsing Wikipedia.
A good instructor is essential to a student’s success. A brilliant teacher can inspire students and bring out their full potential. When a teacher fails to offer her students something original or challenge them mentally, we get what I described above, namely people on Facebook and others playing solitaire. Ideally, a student should long to attend lecture, not for their grades, but for the opportunity to learn.
The Academic Personnel Manual Section 210 has several instructions to review committees, which advise on actions concerning the hiring and promotion of professors. When considering appointment and promotion, the first criterion is teaching. The review committee assesses teaching performance according to several criteria, which include command of the subject; ability to organize material and to present it with force and logic; capacity to awaken in students an awareness of the relationship of the subject to other fields of knowledge; fostering of student independence and capability to reason; spirit and enthusiasm which vitalize the candidate’s learning and teaching; ability to arouse curiosity in beginning students, to encourage high standards and to stimulate advanced students to creative work.
As the list goes on, it becomes clear that few professors truly encompass what is required for appointment and promotion. The majority are failing in several areas.
But we cannot place all the blame on professors or those who hire them. To a certain extent this is what students often want: easy A’s and classes they can skip. As the consumer, students have the right to demand that and the university must respond accordingly.
Yet, in the end, it is a lose-lose situation for students. They don’t get intellectually challenged and the value of their degree decreases. When everyone at UCLA is graduating with Latin honors, that isn’t a good thing.
Students should embrace the hard classes and challenging professors that have something new to offer. Students shouldn’t go on Ratemyprofessors.com or Bruinwalk.com looking for that easy class with an entertaining professor. Students shouldn’t fill out their evaluation with all 10s when they haven’t learned a thing just because they are expecting A’s, and bash the professor who actually cares because you got a C.
To maintain the quality of education at UCLA, students and faculty must maintain their integrity. Teachers must be teachers and not entertainers; students must be students and not merely consumers.
Email Zaki at azaki@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to opinion@media.ucla.edu.