Comments

1. atlasien wrote:

   I read the “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” article and quite frankly, I’m disgusted with the elitist and igorant attitude of the instructor. I once taught English 101 classes at a barely-accredited college that probably makes his one look like Harvard. I was not even allowed to fail students because the school wanted their tuition money too much.

   I did not think for a single second that education was wasted on my students. “They’re too low-class to read a book” is what I got out of the article. A lot of the students didn’t even know how to use a period and almost all of the class was not operating at anywhere near a real college level. This made English skills even MORE necessary. These were all ambitious people who wanted to escape poverty or brutal dead-end jobs (and they were being totally exploited by the school, but that’s another story). Screw academia… it’s not easy to get ahead in the real world if you don’t know how to use a period, or can’t use critical thinking skills to see through deceptive written arguments. Pretty much all the material taught in class I could relate to non-academic skills that would be immediately useful in their desired careers.

   We used mostly non-fiction to practice reading skills, but some literature as well. And the reason literature works is that when it’s done right, it’s fun, it’s stimulating, and it keeps people’s interest longer than dryer technical reading.

   I didn’t work their long and I haven’t been in “real” academia for a long time, but I have a lot of respect for the field of adult education, and if I ever returned to teaching I would much rather teach adults than 18-year-olds.

   Posted 24 May 2008 at 7:16 am ¶

2. Yvette wrote:

   I agree with you, atlasien. That piece just made me very sad. Possibly, it reveals more about the instructor than about the students or this kind of academic system generally. What does it say about *my* skills, *my* worth, *my* quality if I end up as the teacher in the Tower’s “basement”?

   Posted 24 May 2008 at 9:05 am ¶

3. Colin A. B. wrote:

   The instructor in that article seemed…well, lazy. They didn’t want to help the students until it was too late and they themselves gave up once the students gave up too. It’s frustrating to hear lazy, unmotivated, tactless instructors bash their students as UNABLE to work at a college level. Let me put it this way, as a college student on break, if any non-tenured instructor acted like that, they’d not have a job after a while. That’s an appalling level of laziness.

   Posted 24 May 2008 at 11:43 am ¶

4. miss girl wrote:

   i didn’t really get the lazy feel from the article. i felt like the instructor was more burned out and depressed than anything. i have a friend who teaches ethnic studies 101 at a community college in a very privileged town - most of her students are white, wealthy, flippant, and doesn’t know a semicolon from a comma - she gladly fails them when necessary, and it wouldn’t be because she was lazy in her methodology. she is very passionate about her job, but when she’d get load after load of students who either a) didn’t care or believe in her subject and were merely taking it for credit or b) couldn’t even write despite all the great resources they surely had growing up, it brought her down, and made her question her purpose. my 2 cents…

   Posted 24 May 2008 at 3:18 pm ¶

5. llchavez wrote:

   To be honest, I’m glad that the “Ivory Tower” article did not reference people of color as the failing, unprepared college students. Failing nine out of fifteen students? That’s a problem, my friend, that’s mostly goes back to the professor, not the students, who sound like they shouldn’t be there in the first place after all. They definitely need some sort of remediaton. A middle aged woman with no college education and who has not been inside a classroom in DECADES is the last person you would expect to be familiar with current MLA style, by God! Anyway, fifteen weeks is more than enough time to teach people how to come up with a cogent argument and properly research and format a term paper, so the fault’s on the professor, really.

   I am frankly put off by the author’s tone, but I must say I do agree with a lot of his points. It’s not so much that “not everyone belongs in college” but rather that not everyone is prepared for college level work. The problem goes back to their high schools and elementary schools, which did not prepare these people for the next level of education. And I personally despise the weird way in which the proverbial “college education” has been fetishized by people in the US. It’s either some lofty, virtually unattainable goal, like some world record, or the magical means to advance oneself in life. I mean, notice how “Mrs. L” referred to her essay as “a college paper”. She was in college, now! And she submitted a paper! The fact that her writing was apparently terribly sub-par did not take away the feeling of achievement she felt about being enrolled in a college course and submitting some work to the professor. It’s like being financially enrolled in a class and physically within the boundaries of the campus was of enough significance to override her actual level of work and achievement there. Good lord.

   Posted 24 May 2008 at 6:16 pm ¶

6. atlasien wrote:

   I have to disagree that fifteen weeks is enough time to get someone to college level. It is, but only if they’re actually willing to do the work AND school is their top priority. A lot of my students were emotionally unready for real schoolwork. They had crying fits in class. Many were under enormous strain… just coming off welfare while taking care of relatives’ children, working two jobs, etcetera.

   I burned out pretty quickly because I realized I was also supposed to be a therapist and life coach at the same time as a teacher. Still, smaller goals are achievable. I felt like at the end of the class, the students were a little bit closer to college level. They were a little bit more emotionally prepared and could take constructive critique without turning it into a reflection on their ego. They had learned better time management skills. Some of them absolutely should not have been there, though, until they got other parts of their life straightened out… no amount of time management skills were going to help them, and they were obviously going to have to drop out within months.

   There are three main college models going on here and we shouldn’t confuse them.

   Selective entry: what people are used to thinking of when they think of college. Students are mainly traditional, qualified and have some understanding of the economic and social meaning of a college education. Failing out is a major event because the student has presumably been examined to ensure they have a high probability of being able to do the work.

   Open entry, community college: qualifications are minimal. A mix of traditional and nontraditional students. There is no thought to whether or not a student will actually be able to graduate. If they can pay the extremely low subsidized tuition and register, they’re in. If they fail out, they can try again later. The community college can attempt to make up for miserable public schools by offering some remedial courses, but this is not their main mission. Also, a few very prestigious schools have this kind of open entry subsystem. For example, Harvard has a night school, and some tracks are basically open to anyone who pays tuition. Classes are taught at a pretty high level and I’ve heard usually more than half the class fails out. It’s the responsibility of the individual student to determine whether they’re ready or not.

   Open entry, for-profit: These schools also work under the “you pay, you’re in” model. Unlike subsidized community colleges, they depend ONLY on tuition for money, and spend most of their income on marketing, not teachers and libraries. These are the places with the flashy ads that promise you a job at NASA. They target military personnel, low-income working people, people of color and immigrants who don’t have a good understanding of how the U.S. educational system works. Once in, they will attempt to pass you through even if your work is not up to college level. Teachers are encouraged never to fail students in order to keep the tuition stream (composed mainly of student loans) flowing. If students graduate, they graduate with a substandard education that many employers don’t even respect, plus crushing student loans.

   I don’t have any problem with the community college model. It’s a good, egalitarian avenue to higher education. A community college does not have the funds to ensure that every person who enters can graduate, but at least they keep up a minimal academic standard. I do have a huge problem with the exploitative for-profit model.

   Anyway, the teacher in the article, who believes he is too good for the community college, has a terrible attitude. He should realize that his students don’t have a good understanding of the economic and social value of higher education. They don’t have the preparation to receive constructive criticism and they often don’t have school as their top priority in life. So work with that, and stop trying to fit them into a selective entry, Ivory Tower model! Some of them are going to fail out because they’re really, really, not ready. And some of those will come back later in their lives when they ARE ready… there’s a limit to how much you can help people; you cannot create willpower and determination.

   There are a lot of things about the system that need to be improved and changed, but giving up on students as a class should not be an option. I would be perfectly fine if the teacher had said, “these are the problems I’m having, it’s too much work for the pay, I’m getting burned out, I wish our jobs could be structured so they weren’t so difficult and our teaching would be more effective.” Instead, he blames the students.

   Posted 25 May 2008 at 8:51 am ¶

7. MSS wrote:

   i read with compassion for both the instructor and students, having done some “night school” instruction myself. it is hard to face students who are so proud of work that does not meet educational standards, because for so many it is stepping out side the comfort zone just to show up and complete the assignment. you don’t want to turn them off learning, but at the same time you do them no service by letting them think they have mastered a skill they clearly haven’t, esp. if bosses are sending them to college to learn that skill to keep their jobs.

   i do remember, when i went to college, all admitted students were forced to submit a writing sample; those that could not write at “college” level had a remedial course, those at average level took 101 and 102, those who wrote particularly well could start at 201. there was a math exam that served a similar purpose. of course, many people took this very personally and raised all the usual comments about tiered education, but i doubt 9 out of 15 people in the remedial class failed.

   i felt for Ms. L., she was set up to fail, and i bet she’ll never take another college english course again if she can help it. i can understand why the professor did fail her, he does have an obligation to maintain educational standards, however, most colleges have a writing lab, and the professor could have steered her towards it, with the understanding she would not pass unless her skills improved. with that information, he could fail her if she did not show the initiative to seek out the assistance.

   Posted 25 May 2008 at 10:26 am ¶

8. Phrone wrote:

   To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the college piece after reading it. I think the author and the students were both in very difficult positions. The teacher is not superman; he has limited time to help the students and a limited emotional capacity to help the students. At the same time, these students are more than likely overwhelmingly underprepared, not because of any personal deficiencies in intelligence, but because of systematic failings of K12 education. The teacher can only do so much to help these students, and it sounds like he has limited control of the curriculum, the grading standards, etc. I think it’s overly simplistic to say “this teacher is lazy, he’s just not doing his job right.”

   Posted 25 May 2008 at 12:52 pm ¶

9. Persia wrote:

   Phrone, I agree. I kept wondering where the school’s writing clinic came in, too– I don’t know any school that doesn’t have one, though I suppose it’s possible.

   It’s not so much that “not everyone belongs in college” but rather that not everyone is prepared for college level work.
   The other thing is, how many of these people need to write MLA style? It seems an odd focus for what appears to be a community, profession-oriented college.

   Posted 25 May 2008 at 1:46 pm ¶

10. Torontonian wrote:

    MSS,

    The instructor strongly suggested that Ms. L. set up an appointment with the librarian *right away*, but Ms. L. ignored his advice, thinking that all she had to do was try a little harder. This is what he meant by the wall coming up. Thus, he already did what you said he should have done, and more.

    atlasien,

    From my reading of the article, the instructor wasn’t blaming the students. He just believed that they should not have been allowed to take the course in the first place. I agree. The system sets them up to fail.

    For both “Open entry, community college” and “Open entry, for-profit”, it’s clear that the potential students do not have the skills to determine whether they are ready or not. One needs to have a college education to be able to evaluate whether a person is prepared for college. Specifically, one has to be familiar with the course content in order to evaluate whether a potential student is prepared for it; one has to know the course to determine the course prerequisites.

    Obviously, fifteen weeks is not enough to prepare somebody to write a college-level research paper. ‘Regular’, full-time students have a lifetime of preparation, starting from basic literacy in grade school. However, I think that there shouldn’t be any open-entry community colleges or adult education institutions. Applicants should take an entrance exam to see if they are qualified. If they are unqualified, the community college should place them in an appropriate (remedial) class to give them the prerequisites.

    Learning is cumulative and hierarchical, and this is more obvious in certain scientific and mathematical subjects that require that you have certain prerequisites before you can be enrolled. Those students who fail adult education courses just need to go a step or two down and get a solid background first, in writing mechanics or basic computer literacy. It’s going to take longer, probably years, but it’s necessary. Having a structured and hierarchical learning system is better than having these students attempt to learn by repeated trail and error, and waste money.

    Posted 25 May 2008 at 1:52 pm ¶

11. napthia9 wrote:

    I liked the last article “When crying ‘MISOGYNY’” right up until the very end. Her point about how many Hillary supporters are being extremely selective when it comes to reporting and getting agitated about sexism and racism is spot-on. Yet she then suggests that these supporters should focus on whether or not the claims “Hillary Clinton experiences sexism” and “misogyny has a negative effect on her campaign” are true, which seems totally unrelated to her article. How does “many HRC supporters are selectively calling out sexism, thus generating sympathy for one candidate while irrationally claiming/acting/suggesting that other candidates/candidate’s spouses do not experience systemic prejudice against them” turn into “sexism that affects Hillary Clinton has no effect on her campaign?” In addition, the claims she asks the HRC supporters to reconsider seem irrelevant to the meat of her post, and oversimplify and distort actual claims made by the target of her criticism.

    Posted 25 May 2008 at 9:26 pm ¶

12. atlasien wrote:

    I have to disagree strongly that there should be no open-entry colleges. I also included the note earlier that even Harvard has an open-entry track. The flip side of people not knowing whether they are qualified enough is people who are disqualified improperly by selective entry colleges. Sometimes, absolutely NO ONE knows whether or not a person is ready for college.

    Take the example of a 22-year-old who decides she wants to go back to college. She’s a single mother with a mild learning disability from a terrible educational background. She’s scraping though, but halfway through the semester her kid gets seriously ill. First try, failure. She tries again a few years later but is going through a bad patch with depression. Second try, failure. She tries again when she’s 28 and her kid is in school and doing well. This time, she gets her degree.

    I don’t have a problem with failing 9 out of 15 people in a class. The open entry model, as long as it’s not for profit, does a great job of serving nontraditional students. It’s tough, but it’s fair.

    And again, it’s not just community colleges that do this. PhD programs in the humanities often have pass rates that are that bad or lower. I’m one of a huge crowd of “ABDs” (all but dissertation) that failed out at the very last stage due to life issues. And this was at a very selective college. Am I mad that the university should have determined that I wasn’t prepared to finish my PhD? Nope. They gave me a chance, and I got a lot of interesting years and knowledge out of it.

    The problem with saying that students should take remedial courses first is that these courses are often not available, and where they are, they’re often not covered by things like employer tuition reimbursement. I agree they should be more available. But the current system would overload community colleges if they had to take over the duties of K-12 as well. Remedial bridge work has to be separately funded and supported by government and communities.

    Posted 26 May 2008 at 8:05 am ¶

13. Torontonian wrote:

    All right, I change my mind now and I no longer think that there should be “no” open-entry colleges.

    However, your graduate studies are not a good example, as graduate schools are very selective, even more selective than undergraduate “selective entry”. You are academically qualified to finish your PhD, but other circumstances that have little or nothing to do with your educational background stopped you and others from finishing their PhD. Graduate schools cannot predict this, although they still try to select people who seem likely to finish over other applicants.

    I still find it unsettling that ‘regular’ undergraduate degree students are led by the hand with respect to background preparation, but mature students, who are more vulnerable, are expected to fend for themselves. If ‘regular’ undergraduate degree programs and courses were open-entry, it would be chaos, because the failure rate would much higher than 9 out of 15. ‘Regular’ undergraduate degree students similarly wouldn’t be able to tell if they were prepared for a course they have never taken from just looking at the course name and course description. The course description makes sense after the course is finished.

    Posted 26 May 2008 at 9:33 pm ¶

14. stickinthemud wrote:

    Yvette–
    Just because a professor winds up or chooses (!) to teach in the Ivory Tower’s “basement” does not mean that they are lacking in ability or quality as teachers.

    A couple years back I was a student at a selective liberal arts college, but I was unfocused, isolated, and just over all depressed and nearly flunked out of the school. Adminstrators recommeneded that I stay away for a while and so I took a break (my second break, actually). I sctually reached senior status in my old school, but was far from the needed number of credits to get that blessed sheepskin. Determined to still graduate, I enrolled in an open enrollement college of a largely state supported university in hopes to accrue credits at low cost, in a much less stressful environment, so that I could later transfer back to my old college.

    I had a wonderful, year-long experience at the open enrollment school despite the drastic difference between the preparation of some of the open enrollment students and the selective college students. Most (though unfortunately not all) of my professors were engaged with and supportive of students who tried their best in class and sought out help. Two of the professors I grew closest to in my year were Ph.Ds, one with a doctorate from an Ivy and the other who at least did some graduate work at one (if that matters). Their ability to pass information on to their students was no lesser because they taught at a less selective university. However, even a well trained professor can only do so much when many of the students they teach are not prepared to absorb the information they want to impart.

    Posted 26 May 2008 at 10:24 pm ¶

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