Reality vs. Stereotype?

[woodturner]

Fall classes started at most universities in the last couple of weeks. Every year the admissions office "warns" us about the incoming freshman (I teach engineering at the university level). This year, they told us the freshman were "very rude".

In fairness, the admissions office sees students from all majors, and the engineering students do tend to be a little better behaved than some majors. However, I have not found the freshman to be rude at all. In fact, they seem brighter and more willing to work than the students who are now seniors.

I assume some folks here have college age children, and I'm wondering if your experiences with your children and their friends "fit" with the admissions office comments. What characteristics do you think define currently college age people, and which are unfounded stereotypes?

[twistsol]

My oldest daughter is a senior in High School this year, so not quite college age. In January of 2009 I chaperoned a group of kids, juniors and seniors on a trip to DC for the inauguration and they were extremely polite at all times. Granted, most of these kids are in the honors classes and may be better behaved than most. Our house is full of teenagers all the time and with few exceptions, I wouldn’t consider them the least bit rude.

I think something people don’t always think about is that kids today are very impatient. They see their school grades online within seconds of the teach posting them, they’ve never waited for a newspaper or the 10:00 news to get information. Few if any have ever sent or received snail mail correspondence. My daughters think email is too slow. The fact that kids needed to deal with another human being in admissions rather than just doing everything online probably had them irritated before the even entered the office.

[Thalermade]

Well, I will respond from two angles
1. As a parent of a college junior (and a high school senior)
2. As someone who works at a community college (18.5 years and counting)

Neither of my kids nor their friends seem to fit that stereotype. My college junior recently commented that his university has challenged him, made him work hard and opened him up to a wide range of fields and knowledge that he never even dreamt of. He is kind of a walking, talking billboard of all that is good of his institution and education. My high school senior is planning to major in engineering, and spent a week this summer at a university sponsored camp to explore the different engineering majors and came away with a very positive experience from the faculty, current students and alumni who ran the camp. She would have started the program the next day if they had offered

What I have noticed in a handful of students each year is an attitude of what I will refer to as "entitlement". They figure they are good enough to have been accepted to college, so somebody should take care of them. I wonder if these kids have some pretty serious helicopter parents.

Of course those admission folks have to deal with every student (and many parents). And with increasing enrollments due to the recession, even more folks to deal with.

Does that help?

Russ

edit - twistsol makes some very good points as well. Email drives my kids crazy, too slow, but it is the official language of most schools these days.

[LCHIEN]

i thknk the root goes deeper. THe ruder peole of the current college generation probably had the kind of parents I classify as the "My child can do no wrong" parent. Maybe that was an outgrowth of a couple of successful generations following the greatest generation (e.g. WWII) where they tried to force the success on their kids who were maybe not so deserving. Sure there were bad teachers in the 90's and 2000's but the parents of that generation were demanding and pushy and did not always give the teachers, elders, authorities the respect that they haad been accorded in the past and so their kids learned to be rude.

[Kristofor]

On a bureaucracy scale of 1-10 the folks and systems in the registrar's office tend to rate between a 12 and a 14 in my experience… From my customer’s (student) perspective they were easily the least value added group on campus, while simultaneously being the hardest to work with.

Even in the classes where I didn’t particularly like the prof (might have been a great guy, wish he spoke English), I still had an order of magnitude more respect for the position than the registrar office positions.

That said, while I have almost no respect for those positions, I would still show respect to folks working in those positions. It’s a combination of good manners, and recognizing that the folks I was interacting with are really just cogs, not the ones designing the crazy inefficient processes…

[Tom Slick]

Socrates in Plato's Republic :
"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."

Hesiod:

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for they are reckless beyond words. When I was young, we were taught to be discreet, respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient."

Aparently kids were just as bad 2700 years ago.

I attribute it to bad parents, many of them never grasp the fact that school is more than daycare for their kids.

[Pappy]

I would have to say that most kids today have an 'attitude' for several reasons. First is the lack of discipline. Sometimes it is that the parents don't want to be bothered with them but I think mostly it is a society that has taken child 'protection' to a level that parents are afraid of the consequences of discipline.

Then there is the fear of damaging a child's psyche by such things as tryouts to make a team, keeping score, or keeping the better players on the field when the game is close. Doesn't matter if we win or lose, so long as every kid gets equal playtime. I played basketball one year when I was a kid. The coach told me the best thing I could do with a basketball was pass it to someone else and go home. I did! A lot of those same kids that made that team stood in a batter's box later and watched me throw curves, sliders, and knuckle balls past them. I still can't shoot a basket, but I don't feel bad about it.

I would also agree that many young people have a 'gimme' attitude, simply because they weren't made to earn anything growing up.

[sparkeyjames]

Fall classes started at most universities in the last couple of weeks. Every year the admissions office "warns" us about the incoming freshman (I teach engineering at the university level). This year, they told us the freshman were "very rude".

In fairness, the admissions office sees students from all majors, and the engineering students do tend to be a little better behaved than some majors. However, I have not found the freshman to be rude at all. In fact, they seem brighter and more willing to work than the students who are now seniors.

I wouldn't be worried about the kids. Worry about the helicopters. They tend to swoop in from no where when things don't go well for their little snow flakes.

[woodturner]

I wouldn't be worried about the kids. Worry about the helicopters. They tend to swoop in from no where when things don't go well for their little snow flakes.

Yes, I have run into that before. Student stops attending class, turns in no work, gets an "F", then the parent tells the chair the prof was "unfair".

Privacy laws that prohibit the school from releasing grades to students without the student's approval aggravate this issue. Student lies to his parents about his grades, so parents assume the prof is the "bad guy".

[woodturner]

Aparently kids were just as bad 2700 years ago.

I attribute it to bad parents, many of them never grasp the fact that school is more than daycare for their kids.

Good points. I wonder if Socrates had to deal with students texting in his class, though

[natausch]

Technology has enabled them to be better connected socially and extremely antisocial at the same time.

Whether this makes them more rude depends on the frequency of contact, to their parents they seem like normal kids because they are; to them.

To some of us they're incabale of focusing on the real world and incapable of building non-digital social relationships.

Think of it this way, the difference in communication ability between inventing writing and sending digital writing is as wide as inventing speach and being able to telepathically communicate with people. We haven't attained the second one, and may never, but written communication has changed dramatically in the last fifteen years. That it changes social interaction isn't surprising.

[gsmittle]

Yes, I have run into that before. Student stops attending class, turns in no work, gets an "F", then the parent tells the chair the prof was "unfair".

Privacy laws that prohibit the school from releasing grades to students without the student's approval aggravate this issue. Student lies to his parents about his grades, so parents assume the prof is the "bad guy".

That happens at the high school level, too. I can't remember how many times a parent has told me some variation on "You're just too hard on my Johnny." Some parents are pretty quick to drop the "R" word, too.

I've even had one parent tell me that her job was to get her kid to school. After that, it was all on me.

g.

[phrog]

I grew up at a time when rudeness at school was answered with a wooden paddle with holes in it. The teacher reported to the parent and the parent reaffirmed the teacher's response. As a result, there was little rudeness.

A young woman who worked for me several years ago, quit her job, went back to school and got a degree in education. She went to work at a local high school. She told me that the first two years she really tried and tried hard to teach. But, because of the current law structure, she was not able to administer corporal punishment for disruptive students and, therefore, one misbehaving student could ruin the entire class. So now she just goes with the flow and the students rule.

[LCHIEN]

.... Every year the admissions office "warns" us about the incoming freshman (I teach engineering at the university level). This year, they told us the freshman were "very rude".

...

It just occurred to me that sometimes expectations have a way of coming true. If you expect your "customers to be rude" then the way you treat them initially may show that and in turn they become rude, a self-fulfilling prophecy.