Earlier this semester, I was surprised to find that 2 of my students had dropped the class. Why was I surprised? Well, mostly because both students were easily passing the class; I think both students had a “C” grade, which as you should know, means average, but is passing. In other words, they were over halfway there to getting the 3 credits that they had already paid for. Instead they dropped out. Knowing both students, if I could read their minds, I think they would say “I just didn’t have the time to handle Carl’s class; his class is hard.”
Translated—Carl’s class is simply too rigorous for what I want to do.
“too rigorous”—well, let’s take a look at this issue. For each class, have over 50% of the course grade coming from work that is done either in class or at home. When I was a student at Auburn, in almost every history course I took, about 80-100% of the grade came from 2 or 3 exams. Occasionally I would get to do a book review, maybe a longer paper in my senior level classes. For my classes, I have even instituted 15% of the grade to be “graded paragraphs” in which students can use any notes they took in class to answer a question that I just taught about…in that same class.
Right—you listen to the lecture, take good notes, and then write down a paragraph about the material that I just taught. Wow—I can’t even imagine how easy I would have thought that sounded when I was a student in the 1980s.
Moreover, I have another 10% of the class connected to merely showing up prepared for the class. Each class day I have told the students what our topic is and they have to then provide me proof of some sort that they did some reading on that topic. They can bring notes they took from reading the textbook; they could print out material from various websites or even do some sort of mind-map or drawing. In other words…come to class and show me that you prepared for that day. When I was in school, it was merely expected that you would have read. There was no easy grade given for it, just if you didn’t read, you would do poorly on the exams and typically look bad in the class.
Look—I know it’s not the ’80s, and if we found students from the 1950s or maybe the 1920s, they would laugh at my classes saying those were so very easy compared to their day. And I know that not every class of mine was really hard, and I didn’t read before every class to prepare. But, the obvious change in what is considered hard, considered rigorous, is striking.
What I have told audiences for years is this—anything worth doing will be hard. Learning a new thing is supposed to be hard. Unless you are a Mozart, whatever you are trying to learn…to play the piano, serve in tennis, knitting, judo, driving a car, riding a bicycle…all have a level of challenge when you are starting out. The rigor is part of the “Sweat equity” built into the system of learning.
At the end of the day, college should be hard—not cruel of course, but challenging in a way that demands discipline and rigor. Instead, our society has drifted to so much ease that we are suffering from being incapable of learning. We can pass a class, as long as the professor spoon feeds us, but really grasping the material seems now almost unattainable.
But not for all….today, another student came by to chat. This person told me of struggling in another course (not history), having already failed the course once. This student was trying again, and was almost passing, but really needed to ace the final exam. Yet, even with a possible failure yet to come, this person bravely and boldly told me that, “if I fail again, I will simply sign up for it again and put even more effort into the work.” YES!!
That person is the kind of person most Americans were. Let’s hope that the spirit of that one will rub off on the others around.