Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Another suggestion for civility 

Dear friend and reader Dick Winzer sends along this Mike Adams discussion of another place where civility is lacking on college campuses:
At the end of last semester, I decided that something had to be done about this diminishing level of respect shown by students towards their professors and their fellow classmates. This decision came shortly after I sat in on another professor�s class. While I was listening to a 75-minute lecture, the students interrupted the professor at least 58 times before I lost count.

First, a student came in class three minutes late. Then another student came in 15 minutes late. Then another student came in 25 minutes late. Then the first cell phone went off. Then the second cell phone went off. The other 53 interruptions were variations of �what was that again?� and �could you repeat that?� A raised hand accompanied none of these 53 interruptions from daydreaming students. They just shouted at the professor to get his attention. And they didn�t seem to care whether he was in the middle of a sentence. Interestingly, most of these students were in their third year of college.

His syllabus suggestions for handling this lack of civility are not to be missed.

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