Good classroom decorum...where do you find it?

College Search & Lists
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<p>Schools should take a hands-off approach to attendance.</p>

<p>Some kids go to class and learn the material that way. Some don’t go to class and learn the material on their own. Some don’t go to class and don’t learn the material. Good, when they fail out they’ll make room for people who actually deserve to be there.</p>

<p>Granted, this may vary from class to class (e.g. in small discussion classes in which the absence of a student would negatively impact the discussion), but honestly, this isn’t 2nd grade.</p>

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<p>Many med school students don’t even go to class anymore…the attitude being: why bother going to an 8AM lecture when you’re going to be tired and groggy when lectures are recorded and posted online and you can watch them after getting up at noon and have a rested mind? </p>

<p>Keep in mind, not all med students are like this, and some med schools do have required attendance (although I would think that schools like this are in the minority…I can’t confirm this)</p>

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<p>While the decorum of a class may be reflective of the college’s overall mission or atmosphere (hopefully you’ll find respectful students in a military school or busybody LAC), I think you can really only evaluate it on a class-by-class basis. Some professors are going to be more lenient than others; some classes are going to attract more lazy students than others. And that can change from year to year, even at the same university! Sitting in on a class can be a good way to evaluate that class (particularly its academic rigor) but you have to be very cautious when generalizing what you see in one class to all classes at the university. Sitting in on classes is useful, but can be misleading.</p>

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<p>I hear what you are saying-- many students think the same way-- but it is often disruptive, and not to mention quite rude. I would honestly be okay if someone never came to class, than came and was doing something else. </p>

<p>Students have NO IDEA how visible they are in class. I think every student should have to make a presentation at the start of their term in college to see what I mean. As someone at the front, you pick up everything. And I find it offensive that someone is surfing or texting while I am talking to them or trying to engage with them (I really do feel like I am talking or trying to have a conversation with every student). I feel it is even worse when students do that to their own classmates making a presentation!</p>

<p>To me it is no different than I would feel if I was teaching a class and the student in the front row pulled out a newspaper, laid it out on their desk, and started turning the pages in front of me while I was talking to him or her. </p>

<p>I just want to say to such students, would you be doing this in a meeting called by your boss? And why not?</p>

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<p>As someone with Attention Deficit Disorder (and severe fatigue issues, even though I sleep more than most college students do), I’m somewhat disturbed by some of your descriptions of bad behavior.</p>

<p>Yes, I try to be as discreet as possible about it. I try to make sure that no one’s disturbed by my behavior. But there are so many times during lecture where I’m unable to follow the professor (nothing helps; I just can’t follow it). As such, I still go to lecture (so that the professor won’t accuse me of asking questions already covered in class even though I fail to absorb most lecture material 90% of the time) [although i also frequently skip lecture since I really can learn better on my own] but read my notes for other classes. I still eventually learn the material, but only on my own and in isolated cases where my rate of learning is extremely fast. Otherwise it’s just time wasted, and extremely painful (as it always is when you listen to things that you can’t understand). And believe me, since I take much longer to do things than other people, I need every usable minute I have when studying. Doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, I still can’t force myself to be alert most of the time; i can only capitalize on alertness when it comes. Sometimes I take up two seats (because I’m just very tired and have to lay down) since it’s the only way that I can get the alertness/energy needed to obtain what I can obtain out of lecture. </p>

<p>Maybe part of it is that I primarily take math/science classes, where attendance/participation doesn’t count for anything (in fact, students hate it when students raise hands in class to re-clarify questions - there’s a huge facebook group about it). </p>

<p>Besides, what’s the difference between arriving late/coming early and going to the bathroom in the middle of class? (which may also be considered poor decorum since students supposedly have to come to class prepared, so they have to go to the bathroom before class)</p>

<p>At least the attitude’s more tolerant at places like Caltech (which sadly I don’t go to). There, professors care that you learn the material (through whatever means it takes), not about whether you go to class or not, or whether you behave well in class or not (although maybe not going at all is better than going and sleeping?). Truth is, that making the best use of your time (especially at intensive places at caltech) means that lectures aren’t always very useful and you sometimes must come to class late/early or do your other cousework during class.</p>

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<p>This is from an English professor’s syllabus…small, upper level class. If professors feel compelled to say these things in a syllabus, it must be a widespread problem.</p>

<p>"Certain behaviors do not constitute good classroom decorum, including rudeness, speaking when others are speaking, ad hominem remarks, lacking a textbook or something to write with or on, reading a newspaper or a text for another class during class meetings, falling asleep in class, repeated tardiness to class, and hasty packing-up before class is over. Also, I love technology, but there are appropriate times and places for its use. All cell phones and PDAs must be turned off or turned to vibrate and put away during class. Don’t leave class to answer your cell phone. I’d rather not have you staring into a laptop computer during class (unless you have special needs); I know this seems like I’ve spiraled into a list of pet-peeves, but the preceding behaviors are unacceptable for students in a college classroom, and you will be graded accordingly. </p>

<p>Rules and Regulations</p>

<p>Attendance and Tardiness: You should attend every class meeting. I will take attendance during the first five minutes of class each day. Anyone not present during roll will be marked absent. If you are late and miss roll, it is up to you to see that I correct the roll that same day; failure to do so means the absence is permanent. Each student is allowed one absence without penalty. I will take serious sanctions against repeat offenders of this policy, including a 5% reduction in your final grade for a second and each subsequent absence. "</p>

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<p>Inquisitive one, you are the reason I don’t take attendance! It obviously works for you not to come to class. I actually wasn’t able to understand why you attend in the first place, given your situation. Your argument about the professor accusing you about askign questions covered in class doesn’t make sense: since you miss 90% of it, it’s not clear how attending would overcome that issue.</p>

<p>If you have a learning disability, you should be registered with the LD on campus and talk to each of your professors about it so they understand the challenges you face.</p>

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<p>starbright, thanks for understanding my situation. My post was actually directed towards the OP (with respect to the examples he listed).</p>

<p>Well, I also attend class just to take notes (since sometimes the notes aren’t in the book), even though I’m not able to do anything other than copy the notes down. To me, it just seems like a huge amount of wasted effort since the profs have written notes of their own and it’s difficult to copy notes. Actually, taking notes, picking up homework/tests, and appeasing the professor are the only reasons why I even come to class outside of tests. </p>

<p>Thanks for the suggestion too. Yeah, I’m registered with LD - it’s just extremely difficult for me to talk to profs about this since it’s like asking for permission to skip class. The LD office has notetaking services, but I didn’t ask for that since then I’d come to class to do virtually nothing but stare (and then I’d be expected to come to class). And tape recorders don’t work for math formulas. :frowning: So it’s sort of a dilemma, which I sort of resolve through course selections (as attendance isn’t as required in math/science).</p>

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<p>If you don’t attend and/or pay attention in class, then what are you paying tuition for? Shouldn’t colleges have attendance and behavior policies? If students can get good grades without attending or paying attention in class, doesn’t it suggest that classroom instruction is unnecessary? How is that different from a correspondance school? What happened to “in loco parentis”?</p>

<p>[In</a> loco parentis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis]In”>In loco parentis - Wikipedia)</p>

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<p>Well, it’s sort of sad, but many students pay tuition primarily for the value of the degree. Classroom instruction may indeed be unnecessary for learning many subjects - since all it takes is a textbook and some help to learn most subjects (some people learn better with it; but some learn better entirely through self-study). Ideally I’d just take proctored exams and then pay some money to get help and resources, but since I don’t really have any other choice, I have to go the university route. But I also figure that the undergrad funds are what colleges need to support themselves and their research, which is one reason why universities tolerate disengaged behavior.</p>

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<p>Funny that you are very concerned about this. I guess I have different views on a lot of these “problems”:</p>

<p>arriving late- I think in general it is rude to arrive late, especially if it’s a small class and it is interrupting to be late. If the class if upwards of 200 students though, it generally isn’t all that bad. At least being a student, I don’t seem to notice when someone slips in the back door late. One rule to never break though, even if the lecture is upwards of 200 people, is don’t enter any doors unless it’s the back door, given that class is in session. Students who walk on in while the prof is going, and walk right by him, is so uncool.</p>

<p>leaving early- Early can often be relative. Too many times I have profs who will go on for 10 minutes after scheduled class time, paying no respect to the fact that many of the students have other classes that they need to get to. I leave early in such cases, because, as a paying student it is my right to be able to attend my classes, so if he wants to hold the class of 200 in longer, that’s his deal and not mine.</p>

<p>sending text messages- If the class is large, and the prof can’t notice, why not? Again, students are paying for their education. Let them do whatever, as long as it isnt distracting others. Of course, if you have your ringer on while texting, that’s a whole different story. For small classes, I think it’s kind of rude though.</p>

<p>falling asleep- Kind of have to agree. If you are going to fall asleep in class, why go?</p>

<p>getting up in the middle of class to go to a vending machine- Agreed, it’s rude.</p>

<p>checking for text messages- Isn’t this practically the same as texting? But I think for a lot of people they are just checking the time. It’s funny that people do get annoyed when people check the time on their phone but not when they check on their watch.</p>

<p>surfing the internet on laptops- If it’s school related, fine. Just lay off facebook and espn, etc.</p>

<p>reading magazines- Agreed.</p>

<p>studying other subjects- Depends</p>

<p>eating lunch or dinner- Snack= fine. Just don’t whip out a chicken dinner and I don’t see what’s wrong.</p>

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<p>starbright, I totally agree with you that it is rude. I was more responding to the OP who I perceived was a student who was frustrated by the behavior. As a student, if I see someone not paying attention, I think to myself “cool I’ll get a higher grade than them” and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. And if it disrupted me, I would politely ask them to stop and if they ignored me I would just move. So from a student’s view, I don’t see the problem. From a teacher’s view, I definitely see it as rude (my parents are teachers so I hear the stories) and if they choose to take certain actions to eliminate certain behaviors, then I understand that. It’s their classroom.</p>

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<p>People are good in technical classes. They will pay attention because they want to pass.</p>

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<p>As the OP, I was commenting partly from the perspective of an undergraduate student and partly from the perspective of an instructor since I have been a teaching assistant as a grad student. My experience as an instructor has given me a different perspective. The disengagement of some students is quite apparent (and annoying) from the front of the classroom, as starbright has said. Some students are missing a golden opportunity to learn and to reinforce/elaborate important ideas from the textbook. I think parents are clueless about their son’s/daughter’s lack of engagment in the classroom (some of them). They are wasting their hard earned money. When they send their car to a mechanic for repair, they are able to confirm that it is fixed. They are not able to confirm how well their child is being educated.</p>

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<p>I do think student behavior in general has declined since I started teaching college. I don’t usually have to worry about classroom decorum when I teach upper-level classes in the major. The general education classes are worse. I tell the students at the beginning of the semester that I consider class time as a business meeting. You don’t get up and wander out of meetings in the middle of the proceedings; it gives a bad impression. You don’t text or sleep. I do not believe that the students’ paying for class gives them the right to behave poorly to me or to other students giving presentations, etc. Attendance in class is not just about acquiring information; it’s a social process.</p>

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<p>So far the only schools named for decorum are the military academies, Rice, and Thomas Aquinas. My impression is that the behavior problems are pretty universal although it may depend to some extent on the particular class.</p>

<p>In 2003-2006, at Cornell, the use of laptops in class was beginning to proliferate but I didn’t notice any web surfing. Maybe 20% brought laptops. I didn’t notice any texting. Occasionally a student would fall asleep but it was unintentional. Just a few students.</p>

<p>The classes at the SUNY school were at night and had a very “mixed” group with about 50% regular undergrads and 50% “nontraditional”. Some students would arrive quite late. Some left during the break. Some would come back very late from the break. Some would eat dinner during class (even during an exam). I remember a student who got up in the middle of class to print out lecture notes in a computer lab (the prof provided lecture notes online).</p>

<p>At the “second tier private”, students would walk out when the prof started to show a video at the end of class. Some came late. Many did not show up at all. It seemed the class had twice as many students in it on exam days. Students would get up and walk out during class (perhaps to go to the bathroom, perhaps not) and return with something from a vending machine. One student read a magazine. One student studied another subject. Students on their laptops would sometimes break out in a big smile as though they read or saw something funny on the screen. Some would nod off or even put their heads down on the desks.</p>

<p>Students at the first-tier public…they were the students for which I was a TA. There was some nodding off, occasionally a late-comer, maybe about 5-10% absenteeism at each class. All-in-all, they were a pretty respectful group. I didn’t see any off-task behavior (but the prof addressed decorum issues at the beginning of the semester).</p>

<p>Can anybody comment on what college classes were like, say, 20-30 years ago?</p>

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<p>Who cares if people sleep your not their mom.</p>

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<p>The profs don’t go in dorm rooms to teach, so maybe students shouldn’t go in classrooms to sleep. And I disagree about food in glass…it’s distracting for other people to have to see it, smell it, and hear it. Most students are in class, what, 15 hours per week, max? Even if you are working full-time, you still have no reason to eat or sleep in the classroom.</p>

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<p>Of course, we did not have the distractions of cell phones and laptops. I don’t remember late arrivals being a huge problem but when they did, the offender usually had the good manners to look sheepish. I personally never studied for one class while attending another, although I remember several times I skipped a class to study for another. I don’t remember a single instance of someone eating during class, and drinking was limited to a rare coffee (this was before bottled water and Starbucks on every corner). College students always have been and always will be sleep-deprived, so there was a bit of nodding off in class.</p>

<p>BTW, just tonight D told me of an incident that happened in class this week: A kid pulled a jelly jar out of his backpack which had some liquid in it. He dropped the jar, the lid came off, the liquid spilled, and according to D, had a distinctly alcoholic smell. At 9 am. :eek:</p>

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<p>30 yrs ago, zero food and drink. Some profs smoked in class, if I’m not mistaken.</p>