<p>Indeed. My friends and I have witnessed plenty of highly entitled folks in their late-30s and beyond reveal too much about themselves on FB or rudely continue to use/text on their cell phones at live theater/movie theater performances. </p>
<p>Why can’t people either shut their damned cell phones off before the performance or if they’re on call…take it outside so they’re not disturbing the rest of us??? </p>
<p>It’s especially disturbing when I have to remind those who are old enough to be my older cousins(30s to 50s) or even parents (70s+) about this very issue and they cop attitudes as if they’re toddlers.</p>
<p>I recall recent studies have shown a significant drop in time spent studying. Academically Adrift is sobering. At the publisher’s site, I found a essay by a Harvard professor lamenting lower expectations: </p>
<p>However, the responsibility for less time studying does not lie solely with the students. Professors and universities could significantly increase student time devoted to studying, if they wished.</p>
<p>The responsibility for time spent studying lies largely with those professionally hired to set those standards. Whether the student meets the standards is out of the control of professors, except to provide consequences (grades) for less time spent, measured by projects, papers, exams not up to those standards.</p>
<p>My kids are very well grounded and humble I would say. I find it kind of annoying …
I saw Brian Williams do this story on the news last night. So our schools have spent all this time building ALL kids up, no winners, trophies for showing up, etc… then they blast them for having self esteem. Make up your mind people!!
Build them up… tear them down. yikes.
I believe kids do learn more through “losing” and tough times. We shouldnt protect them from that…</p>
<p>To expand on my point, I always have a lot of questions when people talk about “studying.” What do they mean by this, exactly? Do they mean homework? Or time studying for tests? I know some kids who are required by their parents to “study” a certain amount every night whether they have homework or not. Is that an effective use of time? And how much of the homework that is assigned is actually useful? What kind of homework (and how much) is actually the best for supporting in-class learning? And couldn’t it be that the optimum is different for different kids? Can “too much” homework impede participation in ECs?</p>
<p>I think a big problem is that we don’t really have very good ways of measuring educational outcomes.</p>
<p>Hunt, I worry when I hear and read of college courses which have one (1) required book. I’ve found published studies online which report the expected academic load at all colleges has decreased significantly over the decades. (Engineering and the hard sciences may be exceptions.) I am not a fan of busywork, but if grades are rising while time spent studying decreases, Occam’s Razor suggests less work is required of today’s students.</p>
<p>At some point, if the workload has halved–and everyone knows it–perhaps it would be a good idea to either increase the workload to historic levels, or halve the time required for a degree. Two years of a workload at historic norms would be an equitable tradeoff for half the tuition.</p>
<p>I’m more concerned about what students are learning, than about their workload. It may be that workload is a good indicator of what students are learning, but I’m not fully persuaded.</p>
<p>Let me add that my kids are at the same college that I attended, and I can’t see any difference in their workload vs. my workload 30 years ago. One of them is even taking the same English pre-req that I took, and it’s the same course, with the same reading. That’s a very small sample, of course.</p>
<p>Not a parent but I would like to contribute a bit. There are two main causes for this trend. First, the older generation seems to be one that rewards not merits but attempts however good or bad they are. What more, standards of high achievement at my school are low by my own standards. My school has an “honor” society where requirements to join are dropping yearly. Honestly, a weighted 85 average hardly qualifies to be deemed honors level.</p>
<p>Secondly, today’s students are instilled with the notion that college education will get them a good job even though that certainly isn’t true at all these days. Sure, a kid might be going to a top 50 college but if their major isn’t something highly sought after such as computer science or the various engineering degrees, demand drops. A philosophy major is going to be hard pressed to find a job relevant to their education unless they are truly exception and unique. In my opinion, students should of consider just how marketable their education actually is before sinking 4 years worth of tuition fees into college. </p>
<p>Of course, students should do something they like or they’ll just suffer to no end but the McDonalds employee who can quote Shakespeare properly is no different than an employee who doesn’t have a college education. The real world has demands and unless you meet those demands or are exceptional enough, you’ll just be crushed by it. Still love philosophy? Minor in it. That’s what minors are for. Honestly, if a person willingly majors in something that is in no ways marketable or competitive in this economy, they don’t have any justification to complain about not having a job after college. If a student slacks off during college and graduates with a low GPA with a marketable major such as computer engineering, don’t expect to find a job as easily as the student with a 3.7 GPA and the same major. </p>
<p>The real world rewards those with competency, in-demand skills and knowledge and that’s how it’ll always be so students shouldn’t feel special or superior if they are incompetent, have only little to no demand skills and education, or have low performance.</p>
<p>Note:
To philosophy majors, I mean no disrespect but I urge you to consider your future career prospects during your time in college which is not only a monetary investment but also a time and emotional investment.</p>
<p>Well, the more time you spend practicing an activity, the more skilled you tend to become at it. Therefore, I do think that since technology allows teens to easily practice the art of self-aggrandizement and the culture encourages this auto-publicity, it does mean that today’s teens are more narcissistic than previous generations. The amount of youthful selfishness is likely a human constant, but the degree of focus on one’s own image and its enhancement is a somewhat different measure.</p>
<p>Every generation laments that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. There are many things I find distasteful about the experiences of the current culture with being connected all of the time however this is the world these kids have grown up in.</p>
<p>My kids are better students than I was, study harder and the expectations seem higher from an academic viewpoint. They worry about their grades and want to make a difference in the world. The volunteerism and internships weren’t even on the radar when I went to college.</p>
<p>I’ve succeeded in my chosen career and community. I have no doubt my kids will too. I see no sense of entitlement among my kids or their friends.</p>
<p>the generation that is running the country into the abyss because they want more more and more from the government in exchange for nothing has surprisingly raised children that feel they deserve things they didn’t earn.</p>
<p>It’s a skill that typically is directly taught. (And always has been; that’s not unique to modernity.) Studying is not interchangeable with “produced” homework, necessarily, although it can include it, as a byproduct of studying. In my day (haha) we were given homework that consisted of studying (rather than producing, although again, sometimes a physical product was also assigned). To study was to read – that text, other texts in addition; to research; to take notes on one’s studying; to review discussion questions which were going to be on the agenda for the next class. Studying was also reviewing in some systematic fashion the recent lesson(s).</p>
<p>In some other countries, this is still done, routinely. A good student is considered someone who reviews learned material without prodding, who takes notes, reviews those notes, and who also reads ahead. And does quaint things like expand the learning through reference materials and antique items such as paper dictionaries. :eek:</p>
<p>iadorking: I could not agree more. I see kids more disciplined and working harder than my generation ever did. The young people I know are ambitious, yet grounded and deliberate in reaching their goals. I find them to be caring and wanting to do something for others. For the most part, I find them quite amazing.</p>
<p>Although I agree that students are likely to increase studying and thus learn more if a school adopts tough standards, and perhaps gives Bs and Cs to students who were just average, the problem is that in today world of grade inflation such approach would kill the academic career of many students, in particular if those grades are given in college classes. I will explain.</p>
<p>Suppose all other schools out there give good grades (the current average GPA in US private schools is 3.3). If a student has a bad semester and gets a couple of Cs and a couple of Ds, there is no way the student can possibly recover his GPA. One semester kills the academic career of the student in terms of applying to jobs and grad school. Grade inflation makes no room for error.</p>
<p>In the old times one could get a few grades, wake up because of the bad experience, dedicate himself/herself and still raise his/her GPA to above average. Not today.</p>
<p>Because of that, IMHO, teachers and professors need to be very careful when dispensing grades. Trying to teach a lesson by issuing a D today is much different than it was 30 years ago. Teaching a lesson by issuing a D is equivalent to cutting one’s hand off so as to teach them not to rob. In particular if the school has a policy of “no retakes”.</p>
<p>As a millenial who has had a particularly tough upbringing, I find this sense of entitlement insufferable. An enlistment in the military will break you of any such trait.</p>
<p>idad, I think there is a larger gap now than before between the top students and the average and below-average ones. The top students today really are extraordinary! Back in our day, my sense was the top of the class just had a slighter higher GPA and slightly better EC’s. They weren’t doing research with college professors or starting non-profits to save Darfur, which today are almost commonplace activities. However, the middle and bottom is lower now too. Kids are graduating high school without basic literacy and have no idea they are practically illiterate. And to top it off, they think they are bound for success as they sit on the couch texting about the last Jersey Shore episode.</p>
<p>^ Considering these are my peers you are talking about, I have to laugh at those who are super deluded into thinking they’ll make it somewhere by sittin on their mom’s couch or working 40+ hours/week at Publix.</p>