Yes, I understand the pressure to "find ways for the non-achiever to
succeed." Understanding the pressure, and possibly having your job depend
on succumbing to that pressure doesn't make it right.
I am convinced more than ever that this behavior from administrators,
usually prompted by parents (in high school) or prompted by retention (in
college), is basically unconscionable behavior. We should fight it as hard
as we can. Our students are not really succeeding if they are achieving
their "success" without hard work. We're going to end up with ACLB (all
children left behind).
Every year we get students who got A and B grades in high school chemistry
and physics coming to Bluffton to be scientists or pre-meds, and they get C
grades or even fail our first-year chemistry course. We generally find that
their HS grades were achieved via extra credit as opposed to hard work. How
sad. How inappropriate. How wrong.
We then get pressure from our administrators to retain these students. How
sad. How inappropriate. How wrong.
We simply have to stop playing this game. It is not serving any good
purpose. It is an ongoing tragedy we must find a way out of.
Allowing students to get better grades by completing exercises that are not
difficult, or that take little time, or that can be copied, is not a
solution to the problem. The solution is for the students to work harder
and spend more time at it. Yes, I know that parents want their children to
"have a life." Spending one to three hours studying after school, and
"having a life" are apparently mutually exclusive. Indeed, doing any work
after school seems a problem for many students and their parents. Yet, we
know darn well that a student can't learn everything during class time. Why
in the world do we succumb to people who try to convince us that students
should be able to learn everything they need to know during class time?
Students literally laugh in my class (and roll their eyes, etc.) when I tell
them they need to spend two hours out of class for every hour in class.
That means my 5-hour class (which includes lab) will require 10 hours of
out-of-class work if they expect to pass it. I know why they laugh. We
have a survey "instrument" given to all entering freshmen, and one of the
questions is "How many hours per week do you expect to study for all your
coursework at Bluffton?" The average response is 5 hours per week (for all
courses together). In other words, they think they are going to survive in
college by spending one hour a day (just on weekdays) for all their courses.
When I tell them I expect 10 hours just for my course, I am asking for
double the time they plan on spending for all courses combined. In their
minds I am so far out in left field that it strikes them as hilarious.
This isn't just Bluffton. The "instrument" we use is a standardized survey
that we purchase, and many colleges use it. The people who analyze the data
tell us our students are quite typical of students attending private
colleges in the United States. I want to be sure to remind you that being
typical also means we enroll some very good students who do quite well and
go on to productive careers, and some earn PhD, MD, etc. degrees. But this
number is going down, and the number of problem students is going up... way
up.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
1 University Drive
Bluffton, OH 45817
419.358.3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu