Relationships between professors and their students are changing. Some say that young people these days have no respect for their elders. No sense of deference.
The days are gone that a professor automatically commanded the respect of his or her students. In most of my classes, tardiness is barely objectionable.
It's not because of an across-the-board decline in values, as our elders would guilt us into thinking. It's because students today have a sense of perspective.
Students today feel they have the right to walk in late to class and not be called on it. Some professors still do, and I would call anybody an ass that acts entitled to crashing in and interrupting the professor's point. But I hesitate to say they're in the wrong. Like The Dude says in "The Big Lebowski," "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an ass****."
A student that works full-time to pay for college shouldn't have to worry about showing up five minutes late to a gen-ed Spanish class and being called on it by a graduate student teacher barely older than her students. "Est?Ae?s tarde," she chimes. The student has every right to think, "I'll 'est?Ae?s tarde' your face. Shut up."
Or more aptly, "I pay your salary. Who are you to lecture me on any subject but Spanish?"
A tenuous power struggle takes place between students and professors, and some professors seem to be missing the bigger picture. We, as students, as paying clients, deserve to send the message to an instructor if we don't believe they're giving us an adequate return on our investment. And mocking students for punctuality is poor customer service.
Yet, professors seem to wondering why there isn't a line of apples across their podium when they arrive in class. It's the same reason children don't address their parents as "Sir" and "Ma'am." The power structure between elders and their youths is being leveled for a number of reasons. At the university, you get, and deserve, what you pay for.
Tuesday, The New York Times ran a story awkwardly titled: "To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me."
In the article, professors are given a soapbox from which to complain that e-mail has made students feel they can be too informal with professors. One professor says that the students' tone can be "pretty astounding," adding that they imply it is the professor's obligation to answer their questions immediately.
What are we paying thousands of dollars a year for, if not the ardent work of educators to inform us? I'm not so jaded as to say the answer is, "a degree."
Another professor actually complained that too many students sent in their papers prior to the due date, seeking suggestions. "Sorry, kids, I'm not here to help. My job is simply to assign and grade your work, not work with you to improve it."
These professors said they felt as if they were on call, as a result of the constant influx of inquiring e-mails. Everybody needs to draw lines between their private lives and their professional ones. Welcome to the harsh reality the rest of us find when we step out of the ivory tower. Don't check your e-mail while away from the office. Problem solved.
The story was easily the worst thing I've read in the Times. 11 professors interviewed, versus a single student. Not exactly touching all the bases, there guys.
Normally, the same teachers and professors that make a point to yap at late entrees are the same ones that will leave the patronizing "Class cancelled" note on the door. Great. We don't have class, but the gas I spent to get here has been wasted, as has some portion of the money I spent on this course.
Accountability is a two-way street, but professors tend to admonish themselves of their own with the lever of a grade to make kids bend to their whim. Students are left with evaluation sheets. Timber shims to the steel-I-beam threat of a bruised GPA.
The relationship is not unlike the one arranged between a politician and a taxpayer. A politician is in a position of influence and power so that he may serve those who pay him, not so he can be a moral monitor, or worse, an aloof pedant who resents the feedback of his subjects.
Students and teachers ought to come into the classroom situation giving respect and expecting it in return. However, professors that violate that expectation and prove themselves undeserving will not maintain the respect of their customers.
