20101116.1554

I have a little bit of time in which I am done with the grading I needed to do, class doesn't start for a while and is already prepped, and my dissertation stuff is elsewhere so that I need not feel guilty for not working on it. Hence, I make little notes.

I gave my students last week time in class to work on the next papers they have due for me. Some complained about this, which I fully expected; there is not one damned thing that a teacher can do that SOME students will not complain about. But I did not anticipate one of the complaints at all.

I forget the exact words the student used, but they amounted to a protest that the student had nothing at all to say without being able to go and look up information.

I found the complaint particularly disturbing.

There are a number of problems with the information-saturated environment in which a great many of the students now in college (and in my classes) grew up. Among them, perhaps most notably among them, are the shifts in the notions of what intellectual property and academic honesty are. I worry, though, that there is the additional detriment to students coming to have some kind of pride and investment in their own work.

A great many of the students at the school where I teach already have issues with academia. Many of them have been told that they have or have had no place in any kind of schooling. While it must be admitted that there are quite a few who used to or still do conduct themselves in ways that indicate they do not belong in the academic environment (and there are such students), there are many more who have moved past that point or who were wrongly told it to begin with. They already are unsure of themselves and whether or not they actually have anything worth contributing to the ongoing discussion that is academic writing; that lack of surety serves as a prod to plagiarism and all kinds of other things that those of us who teach decry.

I think my worry understandable. And I am moved to pity.