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College Profs Disconnected From Their Students

Perhaps it's no surprise that a college professor might not know what motivates their students, politically. The course being taught might be mathematics, but if it's political science and democracy studies then you've got yourself some folks who claim that young people are "supportive, but in a bystander kind of way." That's Laura Katz Olson's quote in a recent AP story by Martha Irvine, 'Tough political realities quiet youth 'Obamamania'.

'Quiet' is an interesting choice in the title, and it echoes some of the sentiment captured in Olson's quote. What does she expect young people to do? Protest?! Some professors have made comments to me about the lack of protesting and other forms of general hell-raising. The short answer is that each generation uses different tools to affect social change. I'm grateful to the Boomers; Millennials are able to look for careers in matters of the heart and the earth because of them. Boomers demonstrated that you need to professionalize the cause and we think that is the way of the future, too.

Thankfully, some professors realize that human-beings need to fulfill basic needs (emphasis mine):

But to be fair, says political scientist Mike Wagner says, it's tough for young people — or any American, for that matter — to know how to get involved in issues with solutions that aren't always so clear-cut.

Volunteering for a candidate? Fairly easy to do. Helping solve some of the toughest issues to face our nation, from health care reform to a deep-seated financial crisis? Not so much.

"These aren't easy issues for young people. It's not 'Should we go to war in Iraq?' or 'Should gay marriage be legalized?'" says Wagner, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska.

He sees a lot of young people getting lost in the details, or bored by them. Or like a lot of us, they're more focused on their own worries, such as getting a job or paying off mountains of student loans.

It's true that the practical issues of volunteering for a candidate are relatively low, especially considering modern campaign techniques, but it is still a rare thing for the American citizenry to do. I don't see this as a fair metric since it doesn't translate perfectly to the governing side. The real test I see is in what the White House is calling citizen participation (I prefer 'civic participation', because citizens aren't the only ones living and contributing to the nation's success). For instance, reporters and pundits have lambasted youth for not getting more involved in the healthcare reform discussions. It turns out that many youth organizations have been calling for some kind of healthcare townhall with young people (live and online) with President Obama. Helping young people to better understand the changes will help ensure that reform is successful. In non-English speaking households, parents usually receive important information about schools and other government services from their bilingual children, so this reaches yet another population. The Obama presidential campaign made involvement a two-way street with young people, but in governing President Obama would do better by hosting a healthcare townhall instead of a speech. Today's youth want to get involved with government, to interact with it, and not just fight against it.

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September 24th, 2009 12:44pm
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Submitted by Craig Berger on Thu, 2009-09-24 15:24.

This disconnect, I think, needs some fleshing out.

When we think of fear in our politics threatening our progress as society -- fear of change, fear of others, fear of ourselves -- we don't have to veer too far off the road to see that fear also paralyzes our educational system.

Parker Palmer, an activist and educator, wrote a book titled "The Courage to Teach," in which he discusses the fears on both side of the professor-student relationship.

The way of renewal, according to Erik Erikson, is called generativity. It is a lovely and exact word because it suggests two related dimensions of a healthy adult identity.

On one hand, it suggests creativity, the ongoing possibility that no matter our age, we can help co-create the world. On the other hand, it suggests the endless emergence of the generations, with its implied imperative that the elders look back toward the young and help them find a future that the elders will not see. Put these two images together, and generativity becomes ‘creativity in the service of the young’ – a way in which the elders serve not only the young but also their own well-being.

In the face of the apparent judgment of the young, teachers must turn toward students, not away from them, saying, in effect, ‘There are great gaps between us. But no matter how wide and perilous they may be, I am committed to bridging them – not only because you need me to help you on your way but also because I need your insight and energy to help renew my own life.’

Fear can surely paralyze us, in many aspects of our life. But it doesn't have to. And just as those of us with the most privileges in life -- i.e. the wealthy, the officeholders, the C.E.O.s, the decision-makers -- must take on the fears of changing the way they do things to make our society better, our professors must admit to "the gap," or the disconnect as you label it. The truth is that students are every bit as nervous, as Palmer also notes in that chapter of his book. They're afraid of being perceived as a suck up, a know-it-all, etc. They are afraid of grades, the socially-constructed letter that can make or break their ways of life. And they're afraid of the professor, whose pursuit toward complete objectivity makes them unreachable to students who simply need a mentor.

So thank you, Karlo, for bringing this up. There is much work to do not only on our professor-student relationships, but on the entirety of our educational system. Faculty and staff need to be more closely examining what students' hopes and fears are, and perhaps more importantly, confronting their own, if we want to change the way we educate.