Children Left Behind, part 2
The room is nearly empty tonight. Out of 18 students, I have 9. One of my students only shows up when she feels like it, or to argue about her grade. She’s a double major, so she’s very busy. She once said of a brainstorming exercise, “This is Bullshit!” loud enough that I could hear her from the back of the room over the sound of the class clattering at the keyboards. Who am I kidding? I asked them to brainstorm, to have an idea. I heard her say, “This is Bullshit!” over the sound of 18 women not typing, staring at me in utter confusion, total despair. Maybe someone types “new idea” into Google but they get 418,000,000 results—the top of which is a cookbook. No good there.
I am not surprised that the room is empty. After all, it is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but the week before, they all had a paper due, and well, none of them knew what they were doing, so I gave them an extra week. I know that it sounds harsh that I have a paper due the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but in reality this is a postponement. Doesn’t matter though, even some of the women who show up don’t have the paper ready.
The actual assignment they are supposed to be turning in, tonight, is a paper on power relations between groups of people. I’ve gone over some of the basic theoretical structures based off of ethnicity, which is where most of the best work like that has been done, and I’ve provided an overview. I convert post colonialism into charts, I break Diaspora down into four basic ideas. The paper they then are to write is to use some story from the four we read in class and to use some “moral”, “message”, or “theme” to elucidate some situation related to power relationships that they’ve seen in their own life, or which they’ve heard about, or which they’ve seen in the news. It really doesn’t matter. I say things to them like, “Have you ever had a fight with your boss?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you couldn’t outright tell him or her off, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So what did you do?”
Questions like that hang in the air. They have no idea how to answer.
In any case, the paper goes down a full grade for every day it is late. Some of these people who are missing tonight, I will not hear from them until next Tuesday. I cross my fingers that I will not hear from others ever again. The double major I could do without.
Those who remain, those who show up, are not, as I think seems most likely, my star pupils. Not at all. I would applaud their loyalty, but I really think that the main thing that happened is that they didn’t think to not show up, and so here they are, and now that they notice that people are missing, it’s too late to leave. It doesn’t really matter that tonight’s assignment is worth 10% of their grade—it isn’t due tonight. It doesn’t matter that if they don’t do the assignment now, they’ll pretty much have a whole bunch of internet related homework to do over Thanksgiving break—they aren’t going to do it anyway. It doesn’t matter that their isn’t time left in the semester to slack—they don’t really care if they flunk, though most are on scholarship, though most are from the inner city, though most will end up losing their scholarship if they get an F and will be forced to leave school. I would call this apathy if I thought for a second that they looked past the fact that I have class on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and that that’s “unfair.”
This does not put me in the mood to extend mercy, but moreover, I’m not tenured, I don’t make this class’s curriculum, and I can’t change it unless I want to lose my job and the associated paycheck that puts food in my baby’s mouth. If the entire class doesn’t want to do the annotated bibliography because it’s unfair that they should have to do research at all, then the whole class can flunk: Walmart is hiring.
I am not surprised that the room is empty. After all, it is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but the week before, they all had a paper due, and well, none of them knew what they were doing, so I gave them an extra week. I know that it sounds harsh that I have a paper due the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but in reality this is a postponement. Doesn’t matter though, even some of the women who show up don’t have the paper ready.
The actual assignment they are supposed to be turning in, tonight, is a paper on power relations between groups of people. I’ve gone over some of the basic theoretical structures based off of ethnicity, which is where most of the best work like that has been done, and I’ve provided an overview. I convert post colonialism into charts, I break Diaspora down into four basic ideas. The paper they then are to write is to use some story from the four we read in class and to use some “moral”, “message”, or “theme” to elucidate some situation related to power relationships that they’ve seen in their own life, or which they’ve heard about, or which they’ve seen in the news. It really doesn’t matter. I say things to them like, “Have you ever had a fight with your boss?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you couldn’t outright tell him or her off, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So what did you do?”
Questions like that hang in the air. They have no idea how to answer.
In any case, the paper goes down a full grade for every day it is late. Some of these people who are missing tonight, I will not hear from them until next Tuesday. I cross my fingers that I will not hear from others ever again. The double major I could do without.
Those who remain, those who show up, are not, as I think seems most likely, my star pupils. Not at all. I would applaud their loyalty, but I really think that the main thing that happened is that they didn’t think to not show up, and so here they are, and now that they notice that people are missing, it’s too late to leave. It doesn’t really matter that tonight’s assignment is worth 10% of their grade—it isn’t due tonight. It doesn’t matter that if they don’t do the assignment now, they’ll pretty much have a whole bunch of internet related homework to do over Thanksgiving break—they aren’t going to do it anyway. It doesn’t matter that their isn’t time left in the semester to slack—they don’t really care if they flunk, though most are on scholarship, though most are from the inner city, though most will end up losing their scholarship if they get an F and will be forced to leave school. I would call this apathy if I thought for a second that they looked past the fact that I have class on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and that that’s “unfair.”
This does not put me in the mood to extend mercy, but moreover, I’m not tenured, I don’t make this class’s curriculum, and I can’t change it unless I want to lose my job and the associated paycheck that puts food in my baby’s mouth. If the entire class doesn’t want to do the annotated bibliography because it’s unfair that they should have to do research at all, then the whole class can flunk: Walmart is hiring.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
11:42 AM
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