<p>what do you mean when you say second tier private? how high is this school ranked?</p>
<p>^^^^^ most people believe “second tier” is below the top 50, but some say its below the top 25 in national universities. In LAC’s its below the top 20.</p>
<p>As for the generalization of spoiled rich kids in second tier schools, that is really silly. Spoiled rich kids appear at every tier. Whats funny is that if you drive through the parking lot of Wake Forest or Duke or UVa you see lots and lots of BMW’s and other symbols of spoiled rich kids and a LOT of them are on financial aid. </p>
<p>Bad behavior in the dorms is one thing. Bad behavior in class is another and often its from kids who came from families that don’t respect common civil rules of others…and they may or may not be wealthy…they may be trash with cash. </p>
<p>I think what the OP was talking about was just general insensitive rudeness, eating and sleeping in class, getting up in the middle of lectures…etc. </p>
<p>It has nothing to do with what tier the school is. I have heard stories about behavior problems from the Ivy League to NCState to Emory to Vanderbilt. It happens everywhere.</p>
<p>The second tier private school I am talking about is a top 20 regional masters university in the US News scheme of classification.</p>
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<p>… not to mention their future patients/clients. :eek:</p>
<p>In large lectures at EVERY college. Harvard to Nebraska to Santa Barbara CC, kids will be on facebook during the class if laptops are allowed. I stopped bringing my computer to class just so i dont waste my education</p>
<p>I don’t consider eating–whether it’s snacks or a meal–in class to be rude at all. In many cases, a student wants to take a certain class so badly that he or she schedules it between a morning and an afternoon class, knowing that there will be no time to eat lunch. Carleton even has a special area of the dining hall called the “express line” where students can grab a sack lunch to take to class.</p>
<p>Obviously, there are exceptions–obnoxious chewing/noisemaking, excessively messy food, or other kinds of distractions. But I don’t think kids who eat a quiet sandwich during their noon classes deserve to be labeled indecorous.</p>
<p>Silly. Some of the kids that look most distracted in my classes are the ones who will suddenly pick up their head and ask the most profound question and show the deepest understanding at a moments notice.</p>
<p>Different kinds of classes require different levels of decorum-- in a class of 30 or 40 that’s purely lecture style, what do you care whether the student next to you is paying attention or not? It doesn’t impact your ability to learn. In a class that was discussion-based, I’d be really ticked off that people aren’t engaged and contributing.</p>
<p>It really depends on the class. If it’s a required one, then sure, not a lot of people are going to be paying strict attention. I wouldn’t necessarily call this “wasting” the education, either. Everyone has to take a few classes they don’t care about and I’m not about to tell them they should care about everything. I agree that students should make an effort to be polite, to varying degrees. I’ve known professors that don’t deserve much politeness–the type to be very strict about homework deadlines but who don’t grade said homework on time, or the type who read off of powerpoint slides for the whole lecture and then complain about how no one pays attention. I can read them myself, thanks. As for the eating, I’ve only had one or two professors who had a problem with this. Most of them understand that we don’t have a lot of time and sometimes not allowing a student to eat during class would mean they would have to go without lunch/dinner.</p>
<p>I think it must vary by class, because I attend Cornell and I see almost all of the poor decorum actions on a regular basis. I’d say the most common ones are eating, texting, coming in late, and, surfing the internet, and I admit that I have been guilty of all of these at one time or another. I’m still in a lot of large lectures, but since I’m a sophomore, this experience will end up comprising at least half of my time in college.</p>
<p>It’s a class by class thing. I had professors that would draw unwanted (and generally embarrassing/scathing) attention to you if you were reading or texting in class. I don’t think leaving to use the restroom is a major offense if done quietly, you have to consider some of these students’ schedules. They may have 4 back to back classes across campus with no time in between (this also causes some of the tardiness). Being late is always a problem for college students, but that can depend on the campus size and if their previous class ran over too. My biggest annoyance was attire- I don’t want to see someone’s pajamas in my morning lecture. Leaving early is also a no-no, and I know professors that would either call the person out and demand an explanation if they attempted to leave early,(or arrive late), or dock points. </p>
<p>I don’t think decorum is necessarily on the decline, but there are always problems/concerns. Individual professors can have a significant influence on how their classroom environment is run, and I think if more of them were a little stricter, you’d see those issues become less frequent. (also, I think you’ll find that higher lever/more difficult classes have a lot less of that than intro level classes where students aren’t terrified of the next test)</p>
<p>I don’t know what you guys would classify Emory University as, but I have seen everything the op described in my classes.</p>
<p>Yeah, this kind of stuff directly correlates with the size of the classroom.</p>
<p>At Brown, I feel like it’s somewhat frequent, but I’ve taken mostly big classes thus far. </p>
<p>I saw a lot of kids checking their phones in Latin last semester, though, which surprised me. That would be the last class I did that in.</p>
<p>Interesting article about college classroom decorum:
<a href=“myatp.org”>myatp.org;
<p>Here is a exerpt:
Is the college classroom simply a microcosm of society and a place where nothing should come as a surprise? What behaviors are occurring there that are of concern to many faculty and are interfering with effective teaching? As educators, we read about and share experiences in the college classroom that suggest an increase in rudeness and a demise of basic civility. Is common courtesy no longer expected? Is it that classroom rudeness is associated with a generalized decline in respect for authority? Perhaps incivility is a cultural phenomenon that is being created and perpetuated by ineffective child rearing skills and poor parenting. It is possible that current difficulties with classroom etiquette and decorum involve not only the problematic students but also problematic parents. This situation might also be exacerbated by faculty and their sometimes ineffective management of the classroom.
Some educators take the position that current problems in the classroom are a relatively recent development. Others are convinced that classroom difficulties are a continuation of old ones, extending back hundreds of years. Whether new or old, dealing with issues involving classroom etiquette is present throughout the system of higher education. Faculty is more often asking for assistance in how to deal with rude and disruptive students because these occurrences interfere with teaching and learning.
In addition to issues associated with basic etiquette and courtesy there are also more frequent behaviors that include breaches in classroom rules via intrusions of technology including cell phones, text messaging, ipods, and computer browsing. Intrusions related to use of those devices exist in addition to the reading of newspapers, chatting, sleeping, or eating that all preceded the more recent electronic intrusions. Effective teaching and learning are dependent on the transmission of information and discussion requiring listening, thought, and active discussion. Those activities are very difficult to accomplish in combination with technological interruptions, ineffective classroom management, and rude or discourteous behavior by students.</p>
<p>Is texting inherently more distracting than the elaborate doodles I used to draw in the margins of my notebook back in the days when the phones were all attached to the wall and required a dime in order to be used?</p>
<p>The better the teacher, the more interactive the class…the less I doodled. Probably the same nowadays.</p>
<p>(I’m a teacher. The compulsive texters do seem to get lower grades on exams and often ask what a politically incorrect prof would call a dumb question, like “how long do you want the response essay to be” when I’ve just defined that to the class.)</p>
<p>There was an article in the local paper recently about the “Rate-My-Professor” web site, so I asked my husband if he ever checked his rating and if he thought the ratings were fair. He commented that while his evaluations for smaller lectures and seminar classes remain good, there has been a downward trend for the larger (very large) introductory lecture classes. He loves his field, and enjoys the opportunity to introduce a new audience to it, but he thinks his evaluations are suffering because the students in the large lectures see his less personable side when he chastises students who are talking, coming in late, leaving early, playing games on their computers, etc. </p>
<p>Speaking as a former college instructor, it is hard to stay upbeat and keep a smile on your face while you are being openly insulted and disrespected–and that is what is happening when a student fiddles with a phone or computer and/or carries on a conversation with neighbors.</p>
<p>While it is true that a fascinating lecturer might encounter less rudeness than a plodding or incompetent one, it is not reasonable to expect every single lecture to be the height of entertainment. Manners matter. Adults recognize that. University students should be behaving as adults.</p>
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<p>Absolutely! Surely you know this as an educator. Doodlers can be listening intently while doodling…entirely different part of the brain and current research supports the idea that it can enhance concentration and the ability to learn. In contrast, verbally interacting with others via texting, talking etc., however, can not be done while auditorially processing the lecture.</p>
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<p>I work hard to engage my class using a wide variety of pedagogical approaches- an experienced teacher can readily tell when they are ‘losing the class’ and one has to actively get them back on if they start to drift (sadly, more and more frequently now). Given my evaluations, I managed to accomplish this goal. But at the same time, my job is not to compete with laptops, email, texting. It’s a lecture, not a TV show where one flips channels for entertainment. I do not feel compelled to do headstands and unrelated activities to grab students’ attention among all the competing noise.</p>
<p>“I wouldnt send my kids to college in California if my life depended on it. Just my opinion.”</p>
<p>Yup! We’re all a bunch of pot head wackos out here!</p>
<p>Ok, this might just be because I’m young and used to this sort of behavior, but texting/internet surfing during class doesn’t strike me as such a problem. It’s that person’s choice to waste their time and be stupid. As long as it’s not disruptive, what’s the big deal? The majority of college students are adults, they’re old enough to make their own bad choices.</p>
<p>starbright: I ain’t no educator. I’m a teacher. :-P</p>
<p>“I wouldnt send my kids to college in California if my life depended on it. Just my opinion.”</p>
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<p>Interesting. I’ve heard that comment many times, but not wrt decorum, but wrt the different expectations about academic rigor. Most recently, a client of mine who attended Colgate out of Mater Dei Prep (in socal), and then Villanova Law did so. He commented that it’s a whole different world of competition on the east coast, and that it took him until second semester to come up to speed with his classmates at Colgate after getting mostly C grades first semester.</p>
<p>While I believe from speaking with others that the rigor is increased on the east coast even among similarly ranked schools, I don’t know if that is relevant to school choice. People adapt. If a person needs to up the ante by memorizing not just concepts from the text but also from the footnotes ( a comment made to me by a bio major at cornell), then so be it. That doesn’t mean the education is better, only that it is harder and the student will likely spend much less time actually interacting and exchanging ideas with other students socially as compared to the west coast.</p>
<p>Well, I still remember back in 1985 sitting in on Yale medical school lectures at the request of one of the professors, realizing as I sat taking copious notes, that most med students were reading the paper, or GQ magazine or writing something other than notes. I finally asked if I was missing something with this rather odd behavior (which I had not seen at my own university) and was told that the notes for the lecture would be passed out at the end of class. (Like that somehow explained it). I kept hoping none of them would end up as my doctor.</p>