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Time：第98次例會，2010年03月13日（週六）下午14:30~17:30
Place：
http://www.happyforum.org/happy/viewtopic.php?t=15
Agenda
14:30~15:40 Free Talk Session
15:40~16:10 Speaker Session
16:10~16:15 Change Group + Break
16:15~17:20 Topic Discussion
17:20~17:30 Happy Time
Host: Benjamin Yeh
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Topic Discussion: Mind Your Manners
Source: p40~p41, Advanced Studio classroom, March, 2010
Lee Shumow doesn’t want to text her students, or be their friend on Facebook. To their chagrin, she prefers an old-fashioned way to communicate: e-mail.
The educational psychology professor appreciates when students take the time to reply. It’s an extra treat when they don’t being their message with, “Hey, Lee.”
She and many of her colleagues believe such informality has seeped into the college classroom environment, citing student behavior that’s best described as rude or oblivious. Instructors blame technology for creating a disengaged generation whose attention is constantly diverted by laptops, phones and iPods.
“I literally cannot imagine having addressed any teacher I had in my career as ‘Hey’ and then their first name,” said Shumow, who has a doctoral degree and has taught 15 years at Northern Illinois University. “I love them. I won an award for undergraduate teaching in 2005. but man, the world has really changed from when I was a student.”
To their credit, most students are respectful and more inquisitive than ever, faculty members say.
Yet professors also find they must devote space in the syllabus to ask students to refrain from surfing the web, texting or answering cell phones during a lecture.
For their part, students are irked by others who slurp and chew food, doze off or dominate discussion.
Some blame high schools for lowering the bar on classroom conduct, while others say the problems begin at home, when families fail to instill in children basic skills such as how to say “please” or “thank you.”
In some cases, parents are more obnoxious than their offspring. One professor reported hearing from an irate father whose child had failed a class. The father insisted he had paid enough tuition for “at least a D.”
Professor or service provider?
Experts believe there is more to collegiate rudeness than perhaps a feeling of entitlement.
“The attitude often is: I don’t need you, I have the Net,” said P.M. Forni, director of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkings University. “These are students for whom the computers are the training wheels of their knowledge since early childhood. Many of them will think nothing of staring to text as you convey a commentary on Dante’s Divine Comedy.”
There is a sense, Forni said, that the relationship between student and teacher is now likened to one between a client and service provider. “The prestige of the teacher and the professors as providers of knowledge and wisdom has decreased as the importance of the information technology has increased,” he said.
Setting clear boundaries
Professors should set a tone of relaxed formality and define boundaries from day one, Forni said. For instance, he begins his classes by explaining that he grew up in Italy during a different generation, where wearing caps in a classroom was considered rude. He considers it a distraction.
“I say, ‘Listen, I cannot enforce this. I am just asking you as a favor not to wear a cap in class for this reason,’” Forni said. “Nobody from that moment on wears his cap in class.”
Students usually respond well, teachers say, when they understand what is expected of tkhem and what they can expect from the professor—including respect. The very nature of some class subjects can provoke discussion—or arguments that offend.
“I think it’s all in the way the instructor approaches the particular situation and addresses students,” said Kerry Lane, a professor who assigns reading on topics such as race and faith that can be delicate. “When we are 18, we may not be aware of how different our views are from others.’”
Questions for Discussion:
1. Do you think Taiwanese students are polite enough?
2. For Taiwanese students, what are the most imperative things which need to be improved?
3. What kind of social situations are caused by the educational problem?
4. How can we improve our education?
5. Compared to other countries, what advantages do Taiwanese students have?
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