The Students of Today

There was an article posted in the NY Times last week that one of my friends posted on facebook (thanks J). It is about student expectations...that the students we have today have this idea that they are expected to receive grades based on what they think is work, but what educators think of as expected.

"A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading."

So there is this sense of entitlement for them, partially because I think that is the norm throughout high school. Time and time again, my students ask me for extra credit at the end of the semester because they are not satisfied with their grades. There is so much pressure on high school teachers to keep their grades up that I think students are failing to actually learn how to learn. Oh I could go on all day about this...you can read the article here (have to be a subscriber to the NYTimes-it is free).

Then two students emailed me Friday afternoon asking if they could put me down as a reference to be a peer mentor. That they were being interviewed Saturday morning, so they needed to know Friday evening. I did get both emails Friday night, but was disappointed that students don't even have the common courtesy to give you time to respond to things like this. I waited until Sunday morning to respond, telling them in the nicest way I could that I would have been happy to be a reference but that in the future they need to get not all professors ample time to respond to situations like this, that it is just common courtesy. One girl actually emailed me back and said she was sorry but that she did put me down as a reference. That blew my mind too. So I hadn't even said yes, but she put me down anyway....back to this sense of entitlement.

And lastly, EZ sent me this post on you tube about a customer arguing with Verizon...it is a scary world out there that people don't understand simple math like this: