Faculty Profile:
Tom Reck

Faculty Reflection

Opportunities for Giving

Campus Collage

Helping To Make CSU, Chico Better

RICHARD PARKER
Department of Philosophy

If there is a ubiquitous question whenever faculty gather, it is how the current generation of students compares unfavorably with its predecessors. This issue is always current, always safe to bring up, and most of us find it at least mildly interesting. Even better, everybody in the profession has an opinion on the matter, even if the teacher has only been teaching a short time. Student devolution does for us what the weather does for most people.

The conventional wisdom, if there is any wisdom on this subject, is that the general level of student performance is down from what it was (in increasing importance) (a) in the preceding crop, (b) a decade ago, (c) in the sixties and seventies, or (d) in my day.

There is a view that runs counter to the grain-as there is regarding nearly anything widely discussed by faculty. The contrarian view is that students are actually a lot better now than they used to be. It's just that they're better at different things from what most people are measuring. Such a position is rare, however, and only held by the occasional professor of computer science.

There's a curious implication that follows from the long-running nature of this topic. (I wonder if Aristotle didn't bemoan the interest and abilities of his students compared to those of Plato, his own teacher, notwithstanding the fact that Aristotle's students included Alexander the Great, who, not long after his tutoring, went out and conquered most of the known world.) It seems unlikely that deterioration of student ability could continue at a noticeable pace for many generations of students because that would require at least one of two unlikely conditions: either we started at an extremely high level-very early generations were filled with incredible geniuses, something of which history makes no note-or, if we've been going downhill from early generations of merely normal intelligence, the intellectual abilities of recent generations are scarcely those of, say, zucchini. These improbable alternatives, however, are generally ignored by the conventional wisdom. After all, if one witnesses the decline firsthand, then it must be happening, right?

The evidence for the conventional view on student devolution is not all personal and anecdotal, I should point out. Modest declines have occurred in the scores of statewide and nationwide tests administered to precollege students over the last half of this century. Most discussants point to these results as suspicions confirmed: "I could have told you that and saved you the money spent on testing."

Much of the discussion of this subject is over which aspect of the student psyche has deteriorated most and what the likely causes are for the decline. Is paucity of ability the real problem, or is it just a lack of motivation toward intellectual pursuits? Is it that students really can't do the work we want them to do, or is it that they won't do it because their interests lie in other directions-because they are perniciously distracted by other matters?

Many faculty I know, especially those who favor the motivation angle, suggest that lots of our students should postpone college for a few years. They'll be better able to pursue intellectual matters when their frontal lobes have gained the upper hand over those more primitive parts back there near the brain stem and when the hormonal tsunamis have slowed down their racing back and forth through the system. For some portion of our students, I'm inclined to agree with this recommendation. But it probably isn't workable because, I'm willing to bet, a lot of parents who have had kids at home for twelve years of school would rise up in a fury at not being allowed to send them off immediately to college. I expect this is especially true of just those students who would benefit most from the postponement.

My own generation was the last pre-television cohort. Our TV-less background gave us something on which to blame any supposed declension of intellect or motivation in succeeding generations, and we have done it ever since, with a vengeance. Television, the most promising development ever to fail to live up to its potential, became baby-sitter to the nation shortly after my unsullied classmates and I filled the schools. For most of the last fifty years, an enduring image of American kids has them lying on couches watching television and eating potato chips. (I lay on the couch reading Tarzan novels and eating potato chips.)

Now, it's surely true that one element of the student devolution debate is the simple fact that every generation, just like every individual, would like to see itself in the best light. And, doubtless, each generation of faculty likes to think of its own student days as blessed in the way many Americans think of the fifties as blessed: all Eisenhower and Ozzy and Harriet. The former are probably as much rose-colored memories as the latter.

Finally, as most of us realize, there is one overriding factor in this discussion, namely, that the portion of society that sends its kids to college has grown steadily for most of the past century. A college degree, once the mark of society's elite and certainly unnecessary for good employment and a satisfying life, is now demanded of most people who aspire to more than burger-flipping or gas-pumping. But as higher education has become more inclusive, a welcome development for both individuals and the society at large, it has also had to come to terms with students who are less well-prepared. This is both a challenge and a chore. We deal with the challenge by developing new strategies and new methods and by increased commitment, and we deal with the chore by imagining ourselves among the elite of some bygone era and lamenting that students these days are, alas, so little like they should be, that is, so little like we were.