A Question for My Colleagues in the Teaching Professions

I was having a discussion with some of my colleagues the other day about something we've all noticed in our current crop of students (yeah, I climbed back into the adjunct tree - helps with the bills, you know?).

It is this - as a group, they seem remarkably blind when it comes to seeing arguments in the stuff they read/view/discuss, and when it comes to thinking about their own arguments. 

They write reviews that enumerate everything that an author "discusses" - but they never seem to see what the author has to say about a given subject or source, or even why the author might be discussing that topic or source in the first place. 

I point out the ways that an author is taking a stance on an issue, and ask them to look at what he or she is trying to claim and defend, and I get blank stares.

They will happily talk at length about the implications of the subjects that form the basis of an author's examination, but not of the author's own position on the issue.

They do not like being asked to write papers that require them to state an opinion and defend it.  They want to write narrative "and then this happened" descriptions of events, not to analyze them or interpret them.  They do not seem to understand why vague generalities are not effective claims, nor effective evidence.

They are also more confused about the differences between primary and secondary sources than any other cohort I've taught.

Now, I've taught students with similar levels of preparation and skills before.  I've taught a lot of students how to recognize, critique, and produce effective arguments over the years.

I'm used to students making bad arguments, mis-reading author's arguments, seeing "bias" when it's really just a strong point of view, being lazy and wanting to avoid doing the more challenging work, and so on.

This is different.  It's a weird sort of reluctance or inability to engage with argument on any level.

So far, I have two hypotheses as to what is going on.

The first one is that the students lack the experience and skills not only to analyze arguments, but to recognize them in the first place.  They take things at face value, as straight-up versions of the truth, because they've not been taught the skills needed to look deeper, nor the practice.  They know a lot of data, a lot of facts, but they strike me as remarkably innocent and naive when it comes to understanding how facts can be used to support a larger agenda.

The second one is that this isn't a matter of experience and skills, so much as one of attitude and philosophy of life.  These students do not like strong opinions and they do not like disagreement.  They like it when people are friendly and don't stir the waters, when everyone "all gets along."  Challenging others' interpretations or being too aggressive in defense of one's own are seen as rude, unsocial behavior.  So when I ask them to do just that, or to recognize that others are doing that, they stonewall and deliberately turn a blind eye to it.  I think too, that sometimes they want to think well of an author, and thus do not want to perceive "bias" in that author's work, because that would be somehow mean or disrespectful.

I've seen enough in their behavior to date to support both hypotheses, though neither decisively.

So, my questions:

Have you seen similar things with your students (or with other 18-22 year old you might know)?

If you have, what's your explanation?

Comments

[Lorianne]

Girlfriend, you've just described EXACTLY what I'm up against when I teach writing. I definitely feel your pain!

I lean toward the second explanation. My students do NOT like to "stick their neck out" by taking & supporting a particular stance even when I literally beg them to do so. And they hate to evaluate stances since "everyone is entitled to an opinion," which they think means you can't rate Opinion A as being better than Opinion B.

I remember reading once that this is a common developmental stage for this age group. Whereas children believe in absolute Right & Wrong, teens & young adults naturally move into a more relativist place where "everyone is right." The challenge as educators, then, is to coax them to the next phase, which is "everyone is entitled to an opinion, but some opinions are better supported than others." If a student is developmentally ready to make that step, they can respond well to quality instruction...but if you're working with a student who is an "intellectual late bloomer," your lessons and exhortations will usually garner the blank stare you describe.

[JM]

Ditto above. I've seen it in every class I've taught (which is admittedly a low number...) BUT I also see it in my fellow grad students who are right out of undergrad (and thus still in the 22ish range). At my former school, I attributed it to underprepared students, and once given some tools and examples they were all about trying to stick their neck out and analyze stuff. At my current school (where there are the grad students I mentioned), there's almost a _culture_ of not challenging anything. Part of it is because they don't have the skills and part of it is not caring to do it in the first place, and I think that manifests itself as not wanting to rock the boat.

/end grand sweeping generalization

[Jill Smith]

I don't teach, but I do remember a "bwuh?" moment in college when my roommate was writing a "critical" English paper. She said something about how she had "one more paragraph, and then a paragraph about my opinion on the play, and I'm done."

I expressed puzzlement, and what she told me led me to believe two things: 1.) she didn't know the difference between academic "critical" papers and "critique" or review, and 2.) she had never been taught to write papers, despite having gone to a reputable prep school.

Actually, there were three things: 3.) She was going to get her ass handed to her in the grading process.

[John]

I would lean towards problems with preparation. Perhaps the obsession with standardized testing is leaving less time for analytical instruction at lower levels.

[Scrivener]

Complete agreement about the trend, and I think your two explanations are actually related to each other. In part, the students have the attitude that it is "rude" to analyze or assert a position because they are unprepared to recognize arguments in the first place, so they can't see the difference between people on Jerry Springer screaming at each other and a critical discussion of an issue. And in part, they are unprepared to recognize arguments because they have a fundamental worldview that encourages them to shy away from paying attention to such things as strong opinions and disagreement.

I think a lot of it has to do both with the increased focus on standardized testing and standardized teaching and on the fact that these students have been under extreme forms of surveillance their entire lives. They have never had space for themselves to work out their own positions.

[Rana]

Thanks for your insight and comments, everyone.

Among other things they confirm that this isn't just a matter of me having forgotten what teaching is like (it's been around 5 years (!) since I was last in the classroom).

I do remember having to work a lot before on explaining the difference between yelling-and-screaming arguments and scholarly arguments, and students have always had at least some difficulty translating what's in their heads into something that an audience can follow. Being unable to figure out a complicated argument is something else I expect, especially from first-years.

So what I'm seeing isn't that sort of thing - those problems I can easily recognize and have a nice little bag of tricks to draw from to address them.

But this stuff... is weird. And I'm not just getting it from the clueless strugglers or the uninterested first-years. I'm seeing it in the senior and junior history majors, who really ought to know this stuff by now. (And I know my colleagues are trying to teach them this, since I hear them on occasion expressing similar frustrations.)

It's hard to not come to the conclusion that something is going on in high school that makes these things so challenging for them - I think the standardized testing is one part of it (many people cited their experience taking various acronymed tests as evidence of prior writing experience, for example), and I think the "don't make waves, don't make people feel bad" attitude common to this generation (and I do think it's generational, not just age - I remember my peers at that age, and we were a pretty feisty bunch) plays a role.

I'm not quite sure what to do about this, though. I find myself taking rather pushy stands in class with regards to promoting argument-based history - something that I actually find somewhat annoying professionally - but it seems at times if I don't exaggerate what they should be doing, they don't get it at all.

Frustrating!

[Lorianne]

Regarding the upper-level history majors who still don't "get" what a scholarly argument is, I saw a shocking instance of this when I was a Masters student. I took an American studies seminar on literary depictions of the Civil War, and the nature of the class (and of American studies in general) meant there was a mix of English & History grad students in the class.

At the end of the semester, we each gave a short presentation on our research projects, and there was one History graduate student who gave an encyclopedia-like report on the dates & casualties from a particular Civil War battle. When the professor, who represented the "English/literature" side of American studies, asked the student what thesis he was arguing, the student stared at him blankly. He had NO IDEA that he was supposed to make an argument about the Civil War, not simply parrot back facts he'd found about it.

So JM's exactly right. A lot of young-ish grad students haven't made the developmental leap toward making & defending arguments, and preparation isn't solely to blame since the class I'm referring to is a prestigious liberal arts institution that doesn't admit just anyone.

[Miguel]

Well, at least you have students who want to write narratives! Or who let out peeps. Try Japanese students. Even if one student might perhaps have an opinion at all, they will restrict themselves from saying anything because if they did they would appear to be putting themselves above the other students. Teaching in Japan is not much different from being a clown.

[One of the Ancients]

I have encountered this exact same phenomenon. I think there's something to your theories of students lacking proper preparation and not liking disagreement. But this is not necessarily stemming from standardized tests. My work with the Educ dept. at my institution has made me realize that high school students for the last few years have been taught to express how they feel or relate to a book but are never asked what is the point of the work. During this lesson plan, high school teachers are encouraged to recognize and legitimate the students' feelings and not to have anyone challenged as to why they think a particular way or whether their response is an accurate reflection of the author's claim. We're just now encountering at the college level the effects of this style of teaching in high schools.

[Rana]

Lorianne - (!)

Miguel - I would find that a very challenging environment in which to teach; I don't know how you do it! :)

One of the Ancients (cool nym!) - What you describe does resonate with what I've experienced. It is often quite frustrating, in that these are bright, engaging students, and yet... when it comes to expressing their ideas and defending them, they are functionally illiterate. It worries me, too, that this makes them vulnerable to the kind of demagoguery and sound-bite-instead-of-analysis and he said/she said "balance" that passes for public discourse these days. They not only don't think critically (in both sense of the word) - they also frequently lack awareness of the need to do so.

[beth]

Rana, I don't teach but I've heard my teacher/professor friends complain about the same phenomenon, and I've noticed it in the young people I talk to. The trend toward conformity, group behavior, and avoidance of confrontation and strong opinion is very apparent - and really disturbing. In Canada it seems much less pronounced; everyone has opinions and isnt' afraid to express them - and they have the verbal skills to do so. I think it's a societal and cultural shift that's taken place in America since 9/11 that may have some roots in the educational system but spills over into society at large; people are very self-protective and seem to want a comfortable bubble around themselves; engaging with the world and controversy, and finding one's place in it, must feel threatening in some deep way - and no one is teaching that being able to think for oneself is actually a better way to deal with chaos and confusion.

[Rana]

Hmm. That's an interesting take on it - and a chilling one, in that I'm suddenly seeing parallels with the 1950s, when finding comfort in conformity after the chaos was the norm.

Well. Perhaps all of the stuff I've been lecturing on about the postwar period and later activism will sink in - I hope so.

[Chas S. Clifton]

I find that good old stasis">http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/everyday_writer3e/addresources/2.html">stasis theory helps with the (a) the inability to see arguments and its flip side (b) the tendency to rush immediately to try to fix a problem before we even know if it is really a problem or not.

[Rose]

I agree that this is a problem. Now I'd like to solicit some help. I'm trying to teach my grade 5 students to identify the author's opinion or stance on a subject, and to back it up with evidence. Has anyone got any thoughts on texts that might be used at that level? Ideally, paired texts that show opposing points of view...

Maybe if I teach them early, the idea will still be rattling around in there when you get to teach 'em.