20100519.1132

In something like an hour, I'll be meeting with one of my classes for the first time. I know that this is not the first time the class itself has met, but last week's meeting was preempted by my attendance at the conference. Sonya substituted for me, and she tells me that she did what needed doing (which, for the first week, was to distribute the syllabus and go through the diagnostic exercise I had prepared), which is good. Also good is that the roster has not changed from last week to this, which I put down to my not having been in class for the first meeting and thereby not scaring some of the students--this happens, as many of them tell me.

Today, then, should be a fairly interesting experience. One of the students is a repeat in my class; he has some idea what to expect. But the others, I think, are in for a surprise.

I am not the nicest man in the classroom, after all.

It is not that I go out of my way to be hostile or intimidating (anymore, but we all make mistakes). But I do not go out of my way to be "nice" to the people enrolled in my classes. I treat them with courtesy, yes, because that is the right thing to do. I also tell them that if they do not meet the standards I set for them, then they will not pass the class--and I believe that is also the right thing to do.

And I know that the standards I set (which are as arbitrary as any others, admittedly) are not necessarily easily achieved. But if they were, there would be no incentive on the part of the students to improve. And failing to give them such would be doing them a disservice.

My students are not stupid. They are completely capable of meeting the standards I establish for them--which amount to being able to extract surface and some deeper meanings from mainstream standard edited American English prose and to be able to compose the same. I do not ask for deep theory-driven explications or masterfully poetic diction, but I do require that students be able to summarize a newspaper article and compose coherent short essays. And I do not think that such is unreasonable. Having them do so is, in fact, my job. And if they do not do so, for whatever reason, then I cannot very well say that they have.

Failure in my classes is not a pronouncement that the students cannot do a thing, but is rather one that they have not done that thing. And most of those who fail my classes do so for the simple reason that they do not show up and do the work assigned.

It is an appropriate consequence.