(2016-02-15) Warner Students Arent Coddled Theyre Defeated

John Warner: Students Aren't Coddled. They're Defeated. In my general education, first-year writing course, a few periods in I offer students a hypothetical. I tell them they can have an “A” in exchange for never doing anything. No classes, no assignments, no reading, no feedback, nothing. They just have to make sure not to tell anyone because we’d all get in a lot of trouble. This past semester 80-85% of my students said they would take that deal.

We have divorced schooling from learning, and this is the result.

I do not take their desire to opt out of my course personally, but I take it seriously

*Other than its credentialing function, much of school is viewed as unrelated to their futures. (The exception is courses in their major that they think may be directly relevant to a career.)

Why should they believe otherwise about a first-year writing course? Much of the writing they’ve been asked to do is divorced from any areas of interest or relevance

I happen to think the course I teach is the most important one they’ll take in four years and tell them so. They think I’m being funny.

The vast majority of my students do not want my course, but they need it.

I make it clear that our writing course is not about preparing them to do well in school, but to help them develop a flexible, adaptable writing process that will allow them to first understand, and then meet any writing challenge that they will encounter.

I talk to them... I ask them how they feel about school. I ask them what they enjoy, and why they enjoy it... The saddest part of this is some students will tell me “nothing.” There is school and there are things like drinking, social media, video games, Netflix, that are distractions from school, but those things are not viewed as enjoyment. They are an anesthetic at best... What I find is that students hold plenty of internal passion and drive, but very little of that intrinsic motivation extends to school.