20151107.0653

I wrote a short poem at about this time last year, a little snippet of a thing meant as much to fulfill a felt (and not well discharged) obligation to try to post something to this webspace every day as to express my confusion at the state of the world. As students in the current term have passed the date at which they may drop classes without penalty to their grade point averages--and several students of mine have availed themselves of that option, although I have to think more ought to have done so--I find myself reflecting on the scrap of verse I wrote a year ago, wondering what new ironies and what continuations of ironies already identified I will encounter in their work. And I stumble into thoughts that irony--the juxtaposition of disjunct expectations and presentations--may not be what applies anymore; expectations shift, and much of what would be thought surreal becomes quotidian.

Some examples:

• A media and strategic communications student who cannot stay on message
• A graphic design student who misses alignment and placement of textual elements time and time again, doing so inconsistently
• A fashion design student who shows up to class wearing nondescript sweatpants
• An English major who protests being so far right that Reagan seemed a lefty
• A student complaining about the lack of faith-based campus organizations while walking across sidewalks bestrewn with chalked ads for fifteen
• A student who complains about being assessed too harshly in an email that is barely intelligible
• A student who demands evidence after being rebuked for not providing any

The temptation to decry "kids these days" is present. Not all of the examples, however, are from my teaching work; some derive from my years as a student. I know better than to think that things are wholly different now, although more students attend college than in the past, and a broader cross-section attends than once did. People who would have gone into trades before now attend college--and that is a good thing for those who will treat it seriously and seek to learn above seeking a credential. (The latter gives rise in large part to the for-profit college, I think; supply will always emerge in response to demand, even if it does not necessarily meet it.) But the proportion of people who do seek learning seems to be the same; so does the proportion of those who do not.

I have never understood the undesire to learn. I have never understood not wanting to know more. That there are many people who do not, who are content to know what they know and seek no further, I know, but I do not fathom the acceptance of limited knowledge and understanding. I do not fathom the lack of drive I see as concomitant with that acceptance, although, again, I know that it is as it is. I do not fathom acceptance of mediocrity in what is avowedly (and demonstrably, by time and resource expenditure) a primary occupation.

It seems that the last line of the earlier poem remains true.