Today, during my college algebra class, I was forced to deal with a small contingent of students that were being typical college freshmen, begging me to end class early having reached the end of a single section. Apparently, they believe their brains are like sponges that absorb information only up to a point. After the “saturation point,” any new information pushes old information out, or simply won’t be absorbed at all. Even if the metaphor is even the slightest bit valid, they have simply made the case that their brains are very small sponges.
At any rate, I hear this much more often than I’d like. There have even been times that I let this get to me and I became frustrated. I tolerate much of this banter in class because it usually arises in the context of the question, “Why do I even need to know this?” I feel a great deal of responsibility to demonstrate the usefulness of the material that we cover. Usually I convince them very easily that they can make use of any of this material in just about any field, if they choose to. Again, in the past, I have reached a point that I’ve lost my cool with these students and invited them to leave the class and, while their at it, ditch their entire academic career if they feel the need to quit in the face of every challenge. I’ve actaully lost my temper in class. And it usually works. They participate better and apply themselves to the task.
Well, today, I realized that I have really become numb to these annoyances but I was feeling sorry for the students that were really there to learn, having to put up with this attitude from their fellow students. So, even though I didn’t get my feathers ruffled and didn’t truly feel any anger or frustration, I feigned indignance. I made the same demand as when I was hot under the collar and “acted” perturbed. Is that wrong? It was a means to an ends and, in the end, they responded appropriately, applying themselves to the subject and engaging in the rest of the lecture.
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