At the college level, what is our responsibility as faculty to discipline our students' adolescent behavior? I've written before about my own approach, arguably a cop-out, that students are in college and old enough to make their own choices, even if they are bad. I have written that this perspective comes from my having lived and been educated in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the struggle by students to shed "in loco parentis" from college regulations. The argument then held that 18-year-olds who were old enough to die in war (then in southeast Asia) should be treated as independent adults. Certainly not like errant school children who did not understand the implications of their behavior.
But the media are hot and addictive. The idea of responsibilty at a given age is a matter of social attribution, not a biological condition. As an adult in the 1990s, I could barely contain my own eagerness to see what response there was to my emails or posting on chat sites. How can we expect rising adults to respond any differently with a laptop computer or a computing pocket telephone? The fundamental premise of social networking is encouragement of that addictive response.
This is hardly the first addictive social technology. Some have come and gone, like citizens band (CB) radio of the 1970s and 80s. Earlier ham radio had some cachet, but it required specialized skills, knowledge and equipment.
And the telephone. A highly controlled utility for a century, it blasted open with new technologies and social uses. Teenagers notoriously have been intensive telephone communicators at least since the 1940s, but housewives (an old 20th century occupation) also were ridiculed for their intensive use. Eventually, mobility was the key for telephones, and then it morphed into a comprehensive communication technology. We now have merged it all - telephone, telegraph, CB radio, repeater mobile radio and walkie-talkie. We also are merging it with power computing and data transfer. We're thinking now about all data and communication existing in "the cloud," everywhere and nowhere. We seem to be approaching a kind of communication Singularity.
Every one of these developments have had compelling utilitarian value, AND addictive appeal. Every age group is susceptible to the addiction, but it is most problematic for people who have not mastered their impulses - something that is counter-intuitive in our commercialized culture. Free enterprise thrives by engendering addictions.
But what does this mean in the classroom? What is the limit of our responsibility to enforce (not just encourage) student focus?
As I've written, I formed my approach to education when it was a meal to be offered, not force-feeding of young adults. Throughout my career I've seen that my job as a teacher is to present and structure the learning experience, to encourage and facilitate but not to force or enforce behaviors that make it work. With that approach one simply reports the degree of learning that one believes has taken place, as measured by examinations and quality of student work. One tries to employ pedagogical techniques that help students organize their learning - emphasizing the structure of the knowledge, connecting the dots, assigning work that involves integrating the knowledge and skills, encouraging creative thinking within a frame, applauding original thinking and evidence of integration, and creating assignments that require application.
The motivational piece is a bit more difficult. I admire faculty who make it work well. The yawns that greet my enthusiasm and excitement for the field and the material are pretty discouraging, but I often find I can't really interpret the responses of students with any accuracy. Students I thought were only vaguely present sometimes tell me later how much they got out of it. Others I thought were getting it, later show little evidence of having done so.
Student use of technology in the classroom makes me try harder, and I try to make sure that what happens in class is important for learning. I do have students with laptops open, and I tell them if they are going to watch a movie or surf the web, they need to sit in the back of the room. In the end, the classroom experience is what it is, and I put the responsibility on the student. Everything they need is there, and I am a resource for help if they need it. The exams are structured to tell the story. It's up to them. For better or worse, they're adults now.
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