Mark, Liz, Ken, Nessa, & All,

Yes, the lack of curiosity is sometimes astounding.  As is the problem of
governmental demands for accountabilty from educational institutions, which
results in the kind of Bush-quickie answer that causes--forces,
really--teachers to teach narrowly to mandated tests.  Such tests measure
little, qualitatively, but they provide lots of statistical support for
funding or other realms of actuarial so-called truths.  Business worlds like
them a lot.  And literacy beyond the fundamentals still provides a very
radical form of freedom via critical thought and voice, as Paulo Freire
showed (however one might also want to argue with his form or even the
conclusions and whether his results could be generically applied at all).

And those students today who are curious seem curiously very set in their
ways. although they are very young so should not yet be so fixed in their
thinking (thankfully this phenomenon has a long history of study, especially
by recent writing teachers in the field known here as rhetoric &
composition).  Here I attribute some of that fixed thinking to bible belt
crunches encountered early in life--in my view a serious impediment many
students never get over: they cannot think and voice critical views because
criticizing authority is basically not allowed.

But I find all students suffering to some degree by being overwhelmed by
constant innundation from various forms of media: suffering from barrage of
information and demands of their consciousness in terms of time and
distraction.  It is as if they are intellectually torn in too many
directions and have, like deer in headlights, simply frozen their thinking
in one (however precarious) place, incapable, then, of moving out of that
mental freeze.  It's an interesting trend to study right now: what does
being overwhelmed by information do to a person's ability to be curious?
That's one way of framing the question, anyway.  I guess as teachers we
should try looking for ways that students can use to more effectively
respond to such barrage.  But this may explain in part why they don't watch
much TV or other media--perhaps it's reactionary?  In which case there
should be some better or more continuous way to cultivate intellectual
engagement and curiosity about how to participate in media.  Another factor
may simply be that most media on not dialogic, at least,  not in the
enunciatory moment, yet here we are at college asking students to respond
after the fact, as it were.  I can see where they might think there is
little point in that.

So, as I say, I and others I know who teach have been seeing something
similar to what you say here, Nessa.  And it is different from the
commonplace late-teen attitude or affectation of disinterest.  Indeed, once
cross-cultural factors enter into it, it gets even more complicated, in
terms of trying to teach literacy at college levels.

There is today a New York times article (can't recall which section, but it
was linked up at the technorati.com site earlier this morning--it may still
be there) looking into how it was a mistake in Texas to institute the
mandatory assessment tests called TAAS a few years ago.  Those tests were
lauded nationally, and as the article points out, the trend took off from
there to affect standardized testing throughout the US.  TAAS as a way of
supposedly improving education, helped George Bush win the last election.
It made teaching to the test the only way to teach.  Teachers, who always
knew better than Easy-Answer-Bush and his narrow minded advisory bunch,
tried to point out how wrong this would be for students and educational
goals of literacy, in particular.  To no avail.  It was Texas.  At that
time, George Bush was the state's governor.

Chris Murray

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Nessa OMAHONY
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 12:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: this should brighten your day


Hi there

I've been reading this thread with interest too, because what you are
describing seems to be as real an issue in UK universities as it is in
the US. I started teaching undergraduates this year (having returned to
university to do a PhD after a 20 year gap so my fond memories of
undergrad life go back to the early 80s) and have been amazed by their
general apathy and lack of interest in the world around them. It may be
false memory, but I'm pretty sure that most of my college friends had a
reasonable interest in current affairs, politics and the world in
general. We even protested against government policy, went on marches
and occupied government departments! But now I teach a class of media
students in which only a few watch the news, read the newspapers or are
even aware of what is going on around them. They are not even curious,
and it's that lack of curiousity I find hard to understand. What has
happened to rob them of that?

Nessa O'Mahony
http://acorn.dublinwriters.org



-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Christine Murray
Sent: 04 December 2003 18:11
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: this should brighten your day

Hi, All--

This is an interesting thread because so many other issues intersect
with
it.  For instance, one other resonant element to add: U.S, students are
grade-driven almost to the point of excluding any other goal or reason
for
learning.  Especially for learning in humanities disciplines.

Often the reason students resort to plagiarizing or the use of any Notes
series, is that when they don't understand they also know their grade
will
be an F.  All that student loan money or parent funds down the drain.
The
pressure.  Everything can hinge on what looks like a simple answer sold
in a
cheap yellow book on a rack in the grocery store (Cliff Notes are sold
that
way here).  Generally, then, very little esteem for learning is
cultivated
in these students, from early on.

Best,
Chris Murray
http://www.texfiles.blogspot.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 12/4/2003 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: this should brighten your day

I would say terrifying rather than sad. The girl whose paper I quoted
was a
thoroughly middle class victim of Arizona's school system and a society
in
which any sense of difference, especially historical or cultural
difference, is suppressed.

How about this one, overheard while waiting, with a bunch of students,
outside a colleague's office before he and I headed out to lunch: "I've
heard of the civil war, but I don't remember who won." Or a class in
which
only the Mexican students had ever heard of the concept of original sin,
despite their all claiming to be christians. Or a student (also middle
class) who for a paper that was supposed to analyze a current event
merely
quoted a speech by a politician.

I don't think that students who turn to York Notes etc. are motivated by
a
desire to understand, any more than a student who plagiarizes. I think
they're motivated by a terror of being caught not understanding
something
they have no desire to understand. They've been taught that everything
should be easy. One freshman comp student explained to me that the
longest
thing she'd ever been asked to write before my class was a one paragraph
book report.

The ones who are trying to understand actually come into class and
engage--they want some kind of explication.

The problem isn't ignorance, it's passivity in the face of ignorance.
Which
goes a long way towards explaining our (US) political plight.

Meanwhile, it's probably better to laugh than to cry.

Mark

At 05:17 PM 12/4/2003 +0000, Liz Kirby wrote:
>I am not particularly an optomist - I work with students of a _very_
wide
>ability range every day.  I know very well the misunderstandings that
they
>are capable of. It is easy to be amused about how students fail to
>understand stuff and make stupid mistakes......
>
>but it is easy to make those crass comments too, esp in an exam, and
for
>some students the things that we take for granted (because of a whole
raft
>of cultural and social factors) are completely inacessible......
>
>I find the 'howlers' funny - but then they become less funny if they
are
>real.  Students turn to York Notes or the equivilent (which is I guess
>what you are talking about) are doing their best to understand.  It is
>more sad than amusing really.....
>
>Liz
>
>-----------------------------------------
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