<p>I think most of you have missed the point here. What I find really “unique” about kids nowadays compared to my generation(I am not even that old) is the fact that parents, for the most part have become these “passive enablers”. </p>
<p>I put myself through college the first time, unloading trucks at UPS from 10 pm-2 am, finding ways to get tuition reimbursement and barely surviving financially, my parents never helped with me anything related to college- I learned the value of hard work at an early age</p>
<p>I have heard kids laugh and joke about the fact that their parents are paying for everything while they are screwing around on Twitter and Facebook all day- I find this “cultural shift” so bizarre because this country has always been about hard work, people who made sacrifices and worked hard their entire lives, etc</p>
<p>It is shocking to see young kids driving Audi’s, BMW’s and expensive sports cars around campus- Back in my days, most young students drove older cars- any kid that drove an expensive car around campus were made fun of, because it was obvious that Daddy was paying for it-kinda pathetic really.</p>
<p>I can’t really blame a 18 year old for being the way they are but seriously, these kids are lacking some of the most fundamental tools needed to deal with life and I absolutely blame it on this “passive enabling” parenting which is becoming epidemic in our society today</p>
<p>so, like, our parents totally didn’t prefer shooting off cigs with their bros to listening to some curmudgeon drone on about valence? SERIOUSLY?</p>
<p>I had no idea. I’m gonna mature right this instant. And tell my mother and father that they should be ashamed of their college selves.</p>
<p>It sometimes amazes me how quickly adults forget that they were once children too.</p>
<p>Sincerest apologies. I did not mean this in a negative manner. I am confident that practically everyone here values their education. The average student comment was not meant to bash kids who fell out of the CC-stereotype, but just to give an example about the kids who were poorly prepared and have the wrong idea about college.</p>
<p>Intparent–I agree; I don’t think we’d have been different (or my own kids woulda been different), if we’d had the same technology. But we didn’t. The attitudes, actions, and minds of students now, melded into this technology, are different. I am utterly convinced that this is true.</p>
<p>I am a 51 year old mom who has gone back to school for a second bachelors. There are kids who are attending classes and paying attention to the teachers. However I have seen examples to tell my high school senior on what NOT to do in college. I have seen kids looking at their cell phone and texting while the teacher is talking,sleeping through class,coming to class drunk, trying to cheat off other peoples papers(yes the teacher did catch them),on test days coming to class without a #2 pencil or scan sheet or bring not a Calculator on test day and trying to get out of the test…</p>
<p>Did some kids do these things way back in the 80’s? Yes!! Well, except for the cell phone…back then they passed notes back and forth.</p>
<p>I guess it depends upon the school and class. I sat in on some classes and took notes for my son who had conflicts during some college class he had taken, and I thought it was an attentive group. I’ve also taken courses here and there, and nothing struck me as an unusually spoiled group of kids. Nor did I notice any such things when I peeked in on courses during college visit. It’s a pretty varied groups of colleges and courses that I’ve viewed over the last 20 years, and nothing stood out to me. They were all probably wondering what the old lady in the room was doing , however. My mannerisms might have struck them as funny.</p>
<p>At first, I was shocked to see how many college kids are absolutely addicted to these smartphones. Seriously, I did not think it was that bad but it is compulsive and obsessive. When a person becomes this addicted to something, it will be very hard for them to put it down, turn it off and be able to focus on their studies.</p>
<p>On another note, if you think you are doing your son/daughter a big favor by buying them a nice laptop, think again! Laptops are very distractive, not only when they are being used in class but also when your son/daughter is studying.</p>
<p>When I need to study, I turn everything off, computer, cell phone, etc. A lot of the kids that I see on campus study with a laptop open and headphones on- they must have some amazing attention span or maybe they are better multi-taskers than I am- but I don’t see how a person can retain a lot of information studying for a test with a laptop open and headphones on.</p>
<p>Not to be dismissive of Iowa State, but it is a school with 20,000 undergrads and average CR SAT scores of 570. Math is a little better, a little over 600. This is not a cream of the crop university. While some kids came here because it was a good financial deal and offered the majors they wanted, and were excellent students in high school, there are MANY students there who are a lot less motivated. I live in a neighboring state, and no kids in the top 75% of my kids’ high school class have attended Iowa State for the past 6 years. As I said, there are exceptions (many in a school that large), but you should not be surprised. A high degree of focus and strong academic ability are not going to be the norm. </p>
<p>Do students at top schools surf the web during lecture? Sure, but mostly after they have determined whether the lecture material is already covered in the course readings, or if they already had it in the AP class prior to attending college. </p>
<p>Garland, I actually think lecture is one of the worst ways to teach. These kids may be “different”, but I understand their impatience with the mass produced, one size fits all, sit through it whether you know it already or don’t mode of teaching. It is how I have been feeling this week when I started a new consulting gig with a client who is stuck back in the 1980s (You want a laptop to take notes on? We don’t do that here, take notes by hand and transcribe them later… You want access from home to your email, and maybe some key files? We don’t do that here, you MUST be on site to even read your work email… You want Microsoft Project software to build workplans? We just use Excel, and so will you…). When you put people (any age) in a situation where they think things are done inefficiently just because they have always been done that way, can hardly blame them for checking out.</p>
<p>what I’ve noted in 25+years of college teaching:
1)Less ability to concentrate on words
2)Less persistence in general
3)Greater sense that what is going wrong will be fixed by just acknowledging it (at least 10-15 students have used the mantra “I’m concerned about my grade” with me in the last two semesters. Followup discussion and advice is unheeded; the voicing of concern is the magic totem which should make things be better.)
4) of course, should go without saying–the explosion of plagiarism
5) Needing class to be surface level entertaining; quick changes of focus necessary
6)More overt sleeping in class, needing to get up and leave for a while, etc.
7) “If I’m honest about not having done the reading, it’s okay, right?”
8) I can’t be expected to read anything that doesn’t “catch my interest”</p>
<p>Please understand, I like my students, I like teaching them. But on average (and there are plenty of wonderful exceptions) they are like a foreign people to me (even my kids, 10ish years older, who work with college age kids, have noted this.)</p>
<p>But they’re really nice!</p>
<p>Edit: and intparent, I’m not and have never been a lecturer.</p>
<p>And finally, I don’t care what decade it is, thinking that students should do the reading and writing in an English class should not be considered old-fashioned, whatever technology they want to use.</p>
<p>as someone who has taught eng/sci students for 15 years at a university where gaining admission is not easy, I must concur with bschoolwiz.
I also had the chance to sit in on a similar class at Johns hopkins during a visit and observed the same behavior. It’s not all about how selective the school is.
Hey, I began teaching before the smart phones and internet access in classrooms. The outward behavior is much better now because the same kids who were chatting with their friends in class and displaying other disruptive behaviors now just sit there quietly surfing the net etc.
I know a prof who had a “texting/cell phone section” where amnesty was granted in that location. people caught doing it outside the “zone” were dealt with. This way serious students can sit in a location with less distractions.
Kids these days - they complain about tuition yet do everything in their power to get less and less of what they pay for- but then again, most are not. It’s us parents who pay, right?</p>
<p>I share garland’s view that I really do like most of them and enjoy being around them. But I will say it breaks my heart when the student who was almost in tears in my office last week for not doing well on the last exam is the same one I see texting and fooling around in class today. I’m not angry, just sad.</p>
<p>oh, and for everyone who thinks this is harmless or they can get it all from the notes or reading- you should know there have been studies done. Students who admit to reading or sending texts or surfing the web had significantly lower averages than the other group. I saw a presentation on this just this year.
is anyone surprised by this stat? I’m sure the professors responding aren’t</p>
<p>Seriously, a major research university isn’t good enough for our little darlings? Come on, folks, that takes snobbery to a level that should make even the members of this board ashamed. </p>
<p>So, OP, what is wrong with my child? Probably quite a bit. She’s been through a school system where grade inflation is rampant, where parents encourage kids to “talk” to the teacher when there are bad grades and where parents themselves come to message boards and let lose on Billy and Susie’s bad teachers and lousy profs, where parents move heaven and earth to make sure B and S have legal representation when they get caught plagiarizing their research papers or that they find loopholes to keep the kids on campus when they get caught with pot in their rooms. Oh, and every student not performing as well as they did in high school under mom’s and dad’s watchful eyes, should immediately be tested for ADHD and common mood disorders . . .</p>
<p>Or at least that’s the impression you’d get if you spent enough time here. But I think it would be wrong. What is the problem with our kids? They have not be made to grow up. They have not been made to be responsible for themselves. And yes, the ones here have been treated like superstars for so long that many probably do enter college thinking they’re not going to have to do much. But they’ll learn. What choice do they have? And so what if many leave engineering. </p>
<p>I have many students who behave like this, bschool. Some are in over their heads. Don’t be angry with them. Some are just rude. Be as disgusted as you like with those.</p>
<p>I don’t know how old the OP is, but I enjoy the crotchity tone. I mean, what better place to go crab about other people’s kids than a forum for parents (especially when you aren’t one).</p>
<p>I am pretty sure they will all grow up to be fine. We did.</p>
<p>Iowa State is a great buy. I am majoring in Industrial Engineering and our program is top 20, we have at least 3 or 4 other engineering disciplines that rank in the top 20- so I have no regrets going here.</p>
<p>Regarding this “snobbery”- it proves my theory that these kids are nothing but extensions of their parents, therefore the parents are absolutely responsible for who these kids have become.</p>
<p>One other thing that shocks me about a lot of these young people is that they are so materialistic and they are such conformists- 95% of girls on campus dress exactly the same- Ugg Boots, Spandex Pants and North Face Jackets- in terms of personality, there is very little there.</p>
<p>Many of these kids have been programmed to be mindless consumerist sheep who just embrace and follow the newest fad or fashion without questioning anything-and once again, I blame the parents who are financing the $200 North Face Jackets, so that their kids can be like everybody else and do free advertising for the company. Stupidity seems to be the norm, nowadays</p>
<p>I feel better now knowing that all of those crap lectures that I slept through at Northwestern… I only did it because I had determined through my immense intellectual powers that the material was redundant. I had always thought that me and 100’s of my snoozing classmates probably dank too much the previous evening.</p>
<p>I relate to the OP because I returned from the service to find out that 95% of my college classmates had either graduated or dropped out, and the state had moved my campus 20 miles away. The “new” students were immature to me but at least they wanted to learn. They probably viewed me as a dinosaur from the old Hippie Era. </p>
<p>My suggestion to you OP is to seize the opportunity to take a leadership position at your school…it doesn’t matter what it is or which organization it is. You have the intelligence and the maturity to accomplish a great deal for your school and for your fellow classmates. Good Luck!</p>
<p>“One other thing that shocks me about a lot of these young people is that they are so materialistic and they are such conformists- 95% of girls on campus dress exactly the same- Ugg Boots, Spandex Pants and North Face Jackets- in terms of personality, there is very little there.”</p>
<p>And in my day it was Izod and Polo and Sperry Topsiders. And in my mother’s day it was poodle skirts and circle pins. Nothing new under the sun.</p>
<p>True that. In my day it was peasant blouses and bell bottoms or Levis. Today in SoCal you’ll see shorts or jeans, t-shirts and flip flops. Young people don’t want to look like their parents and they tend to adopt a style of their “place.” I think generalizing about someone’s intellect or anything else based on the fact that they dress like their age cohort is a little superficial and judgmental.</p>