I’d thought I was being clever with the
assignment. I had become weary of
reading atrociously written research papers, so I came up with an alternative:
Students were to choose two vocabulary terms from a list of six, define each
term, and give a brief example of how the concepts work in real life. Maximum length: One-and-a-half pages. Double-spaced. In 12-point font.
Three of these assignments make up the course
writing requirement. I thought it would
preserve a degree of academic rigor for the serious students and prove a doable
project for the rest. The change has
worked reasonably well in my classes at Snowflake College, where the
students may be snotty, entitled brats but who are nonetheless capable of
writing a coherent paper.
It’s been a different story at the school where
I moonlight a couple of nights a week.
Verdant Fields Community College is an urban campus in Hickstown, a
mid-sized city an hour’s drive from home.
Roughly three-quarters of the students are enrolled, if only nominally,
in vocational training programs. Since
the liberal arts course I teach is required for graduation, I have a captive audience.
Verdant Fields' student body is largely made up of
folks for whom the American Dream is an ever-elusive mirage.
Too many of them have been unsuccessful in their schooling up to this point, and yet somehow
expect community college to be an entirely different experience. A fair proportion of them suffer from
diagnosed learning disabilities. Many
more seem to have undiagnosed learning disabilities. I suspect a few suffer from some sort of emotional imbalance.
Each semester, I stand in front of a motley
assortment of erstwhile high school fuck-ups, heavyset, prematurely aged single
moms, inbred trailer park mutts, recovering alcoholics and assorted other species of addict, the occasional paroled
felon, and, if the gods are smiling upon me, a handful of aspiring four-year
transfer students leavened with the chance “mature” student possessing common
sense, intelligence, and life experience.
Effective teaching in such a setting is a challenge
for even the most skilled instructor, which I do not claim to be. I quickly learned that a straight-up lecture
class would not work. The natives got
restless pretty quickly.
And so, I began to employ what the hacks at
the teaching and learning center refer to as “active learning” techniques. What this actually means is that I came up
with ways to distract the children so I could teach the real students.
Group
work, case studies, and role-playing classroom games have become my survival
strategy…and it works! Not to mention
the fact that my student evaluations have improved substantially. I even got the department’s teaching award last
year. Heck, I’ve had students tell me
they chose my class because of my stellar ratings on That Website Which Shall Not Be Named. (As a matter of principle,
I steadfastly refuse to verify this.)
The downside of my new program is that my self-respect has been
diminished. I am fighting to stay afloat
in the new educational marketplace where the student customer is king. Whenever I find myself confronted with dishonest
students, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It shouldn’t be this way. It should be the other way around; the
students should be anxious. But I know
from bitter past experience that I’m going to be the one in the hot seat.
Inevitably, the cheating students, instead of
being ashamed of having plagiarized, will react with indignation. (Never mind that in each case, nearly the entire
content of the paper had been cut and pasted from the internet. As if I wouldn’t be suspicious after reading
grammatical, well-reasoned responses from two morons who can barely write their
own names.)
Next, I will be threatened with being
reported to the department chair for having dared single them out. (Once upon a time, it would have been the
professor making the threat along with a promise of certain expulsion for
academic dishonesty.)
In the end, in spite of their bristling and blustering
to escape the consequences of their actions, the students will take a failing
grade on the assignment. (And I will
have a strained discussion with the chair in which his assurances of support for
my actions will be shaded by a strong implication that I am somehow at fault.)
I can’t help but tie this phenomenon, as with so much of what I see around me, to the
moral hazard of the neoliberal age. Higher
ed is now part of the larger shell game the powerful play with the
powerless. College has become but a credentialing
vehicle. No matter how humble the
vocation, a growing number require some kind of degree or certificate. In other words, postsecondary
training has become a barrier to entry into a workforce where good jobs are
harder and harder to find.
Both instructors and students are thus locked into
a scheme which practically encourages shortcuts. We are pressured to pass students who either can’t
benefit from higher education or are unmotivated to work hard in the interest
of maintaining enrollment and guaranteeing “student success” (i.e., persistence and graduation) numbers. They, with some exceptions, mostly try to get
the highest grade while doing as little work as possible.
I reassure myself that the kind of students
who plagiarize probably won’t get very far in school or in life. And it’s true. Most simply lack the intelligence and work
ethic. For all the extravagant promises
made by its public relations flacks that attending Verdant Fields will
transform their lives, for all their hopes of being underwater brain surgeons,
their lot in life will be to drift aimlessly from low wage job to low wage job,
overwhelmed by debt, seeking solace in alcohol, drugs, and transitory
relationships, existing in a mental twilight without the least glimmer of
insight into themselves or the world that produced them.
I know I should feel some compassion for
my two miscreants, and in an abstract, impersonal way I do.
But next week, those cheating little shits are going to pay.
© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar
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