legacy: the student-eye view
another one from my 2006 academic blog...
the student-eye view
I've recently finished reading My Freshman Year by "Rebekah Nathan", an ethnography of American university student culture written by a 50-something-year-old anthropology professor who went undercover, becoming a freshman in her own university. She was subjected to the induction, took courses, lived in the dorms and ate in the dining commons. While on the one hand I really enjoyed reading it, on the other hand it ended up being something of a disappointment. I can't say that it told me a lot that I don't know (students have pragmatic, career-oriented outlooks toward university, many cheat, they glorify belonging while thinking of themselves as individualists), but it would've been more interesting and given more insight, I think, if there had been more of the students' voice in it.
In an epilogue, Nathan talks about the restrictions she put on herself in writing about the people she lived and studied with. Basically, she didn't quote anyone unless she had informed consent from them, and she asked herself when writing the book whether she'd be willing to say to the person's face what she was writing about them. For this reason, the one stand-out chapter in the book is the one on how international students see American students/university. She identified herself as a professor to those students and so had informed consent. Other discussions, like those on cheating and drinking culture, are rather flat by comparison. Still engaging to read, but flat.
The most frustrating thing about the book was how it offers no hope. I mean, I was already disgusted with the lack of curiosity shown by many students for anything other than "Is this going to be on the exam?" I spent the first days of my sabbatical writing up five plagiarism cases, so I know about the cheating, the lack of understanding about what education (or even an essay) is supposed to be, the shortcuts taken. I suppose that I had a bit of hope that Nathan would say that things really aren't that bad--but she didn't. And she also (though clearly this is not within the remit of an ethnography) gives no indication of how things can be made better. While she does point out that students study less these days because they spend more time working for money, "make education cheaper" is not the solution, because it's not the cost of education alone that makes students work--it's their consumerist lifestyles. They have cars, they go out to eat and drink and see shows, they have dorm rooms full of electronics... People work more these days because they want more, not because life is all that more expensive. (God knows I was as guilty of this as anyone else as a student. It was trying to live on a faculty income in a country with a weak currency while paying off student loans that I learned what it should have been like to live within my means as a student.)
The book does not translate completely for the UK situation. Our students are far less ignorant about the world outside their own neighbourhood than the ones in Nathan's book. On the other hand, US students who come here almost always shine because unlike UK students they spent the first year of their degree learning how to write an essay--and end up being able to do so. (Of course the US students we see here are the ones who are geeky enough to go for a junior year abroad.) In the UK, though some of us are trying to change this, academic skills are much more a 'have them or you don't'/'sink or swim' proposition. With the introduction of tuition ("top up") fees, there will be more students working more jobs, and unfortunately here there's less support for that (no work-study programmes). The career-mindedness is already here, along with the motivation to do volunteer work or clubs in order to put them on one's c.v.
One can always see how much better the situation could be, but there's so little opportunity to change it in any meaningful way. This post has been very stream of consciousness...
In an epilogue, Nathan talks about the restrictions she put on herself in writing about the people she lived and studied with. Basically, she didn't quote anyone unless she had informed consent from them, and she asked herself when writing the book whether she'd be willing to say to the person's face what she was writing about them. For this reason, the one stand-out chapter in the book is the one on how international students see American students/university. She identified herself as a professor to those students and so had informed consent. Other discussions, like those on cheating and drinking culture, are rather flat by comparison. Still engaging to read, but flat.
The most frustrating thing about the book was how it offers no hope. I mean, I was already disgusted with the lack of curiosity shown by many students for anything other than "Is this going to be on the exam?" I spent the first days of my sabbatical writing up five plagiarism cases, so I know about the cheating, the lack of understanding about what education (or even an essay) is supposed to be, the shortcuts taken. I suppose that I had a bit of hope that Nathan would say that things really aren't that bad--but she didn't. And she also (though clearly this is not within the remit of an ethnography) gives no indication of how things can be made better. While she does point out that students study less these days because they spend more time working for money, "make education cheaper" is not the solution, because it's not the cost of education alone that makes students work--it's their consumerist lifestyles. They have cars, they go out to eat and drink and see shows, they have dorm rooms full of electronics... People work more these days because they want more, not because life is all that more expensive. (God knows I was as guilty of this as anyone else as a student. It was trying to live on a faculty income in a country with a weak currency while paying off student loans that I learned what it should have been like to live within my means as a student.)
The book does not translate completely for the UK situation. Our students are far less ignorant about the world outside their own neighbourhood than the ones in Nathan's book. On the other hand, US students who come here almost always shine because unlike UK students they spent the first year of their degree learning how to write an essay--and end up being able to do so. (Of course the US students we see here are the ones who are geeky enough to go for a junior year abroad.) In the UK, though some of us are trying to change this, academic skills are much more a 'have them or you don't'/'sink or swim' proposition. With the introduction of tuition ("top up") fees, there will be more students working more jobs, and unfortunately here there's less support for that (no work-study programmes). The career-mindedness is already here, along with the motivation to do volunteer work or clubs in order to put them on one's c.v.
One can always see how much better the situation could be, but there's so little opportunity to change it in any meaningful way. This post has been very stream of consciousness...