This is an open letter to professors, TAs and educators of all kinds.
The message is simple: Stop babying us.
Stop complimenting students for the most irrelevant, underthought comments. Stop going easy on essays that can hardly cobble together a complete sentence, much less a complex argument. Stop sheltering us from intimidating texts because they’re too long or too difficult.
We chose to be in the kitchen. We can handle the heat.
We’ve all heard of grade inflation. A study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy asserts that the A’s awarded in American universities have risen to 43 percent of all letter grades, an increase of 28 percent since 1960.
Those trend lines seem conclusive. Either students have gotten dramatically better at this school thing, or professors are working extra hard to grant students that unalienable right to an A.
In a New York Times Q&A, Rojstaczer wrote, “There are no indications that college students have been getting better nationally and some indications that at the end of their four years they know less than a college graduate of the past.”
To the extent that this is a problem, it is a structural one that will probably be solved by a simple change in definitions.
“A B today is probably more like a C from 15 years ago, and an A today is probably more like a B was 15 years ago,” said Alexander Astin, professor emeritus of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. “And so people adjust. They are less impressed with an A than they used to be.”
The problem, however, comes when the corrective process of redefinition lags behind this trend of lowering standards.
A lot of students are still perfectly happy with that A, which requires less and less effort.
This manifests in the classroom as a systemic lowering of expectations.
Here, I step out of the rigorous social science and dive into my limited experience as a UCLA student.
I have had many classes that come off too much like a feel-good support group whose main function is to protect the fragile egos of the students.
Every remark, however inane, is greeted with a “that’s interesting” or “I never looked at it that way, but good point.”
I am a transfer student. Community college had its positives, but it never sunk so low for me as when I had to endure this flaccid kind of sycophantic teaching.
We hear too little of “that’s wrong” in the classroom.
Looking back, my favorite classes were contraptions of structure and rigor ““ the professors expected quite a lot, and students fed off the challenge.
In these classes, I remember several times when I piped up with an incorrect response, and the professor did me the honor of telling me I was wrong.
Conversely, the classes I hated most were hour-long marathons in patronizing applause, with gold stars handed out to everyone.
All those minute condescensions, those insulting pats on the back ““ they amount to a pretty shoddy academic experience.
We don’t need our hands held. I am sure positive reinforcement works wonders in third grade. But I am afraid we are college students and are probably just being held back by these false compliments.
Of course, there is this other mode of teaching, where the professor doesn’t pretend to be your friend but instead is an intimidating rock of knowledge and rigor.
I’m not saying we go back full-swing to that pre-’60s distance between student and professor. That gap was closed, and the illusions of absolute superiority dispelled, for a reason.
But we need some of that old-time sternness.
Provocation should be the default mode of higher education. There is no higher respect that a teacher can give a student than to pitch above his reach.
To all the teachers of UCLA, don’t be afraid to tell us we sound like idiots. We often do. I promise it won’t hurt our feelings.
Do you feel coddled in the classroom? Email Dolom at rdolom@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to opinion@media.ucla.edu.