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Something I wrote on my own journal, all of the following is true and of my own account:

The structure of our university system shocks me. There are some grand exceptions to what I am about to lay out, but I believe I am witnessing the breakdown of learning.

Someone in class the other day said (I am paraphrasing), “There are two kinds of teachers: With good teachers the work is both challenging and fun. When you do well, you feel like you’ve accomplished something and that you really know the subject matter. The bad teachers don’t teach. You earn a good grade without feeling like you understand the concepts and get an overall dirty feeling of the course because you feel like you haven’t earned that ‘A’ that you received.”

I’m focusing on the latter part of that statement. I can name the few teachers that have met the standard of a good teacher, but almost every other teacher I have had in college falls in the latter section, with the few remaining slipping into the average de jour. I mean average de jour because those teachers falling into that category should be classified as bad teachers in a utopian system, but they exceed the “bad teachers” in ability. The bad teachers that I have and have had I honestly think should not be teaching. Tenure and politics however, hold a stronger opinion than I, and I fear speaking openly about such things, as they could have a damaging impact while I am still a student.

What started this downward trend? I can’t be sure, but I think it has something to with what I will call reckless compassion. One of my professors actually told us the following story, again paraphrasing: “One day, my son had a terrible fever, and was complaining of being cold. I looked at him and just couldn’t stand the sight of him shivering. He was running a fever over a hundred degrees. I just wanted him to be warm again, so I wrapped him up in blankets. His temperature reached 106…”

This story left me smitten. It collected so many thoughts that I have been dealing with since I started college. The boy in the story didn’t die, and I do not know if the professor actually did this to his child, he was telling it to teach a lesson that I do not think he followed himself.

The class he teaches is known for its difficulty because of its lack of visible effects. In my opinion, he does not teach the class. He mainly spent the entire lectures working insipid homework problems. He hardly averaged working one problem a period. The difficult concepts in the class were never explained in any detail resembling teaching. Thus, students didn’t learn the concepts (they are used to this lack of teaching by now) and didn’t bother learning it on their own without his “help.” The students therefore didn’t perform well on his tests. Already, only a grade of 85% was necessary for an A in the class. The teacher got wind of students doing badly in his class and began wrapping us up in blankets. Now, only an 80% was required for an A. You can imagine how low you could get on this new scale and still get the C necessary to qualify as an engineering class.

Let me ask this to people encouraging this behavior: What kind of message does this send to the student? From my observation, this message is that we really don’t need to know this material, it isn’t important, and it is just horrible that the college requires you to take this class. Not only that, but if your class is too hard and you’re too lazy to own up to your own responsibility and teach yourself, don’t worry, we’ll lower standards.

This class, however, is none of the above. It is a basic class, when not understood, leads to perpetual motion machines and other failings of engineering logic that can cause problems later on.

This class is not the only course I have taken that suffers in the same way. In other colleges that don’t take themselves as seriously as engineering, it’s even worse. In my international relations class, the multiple choice questions for the final were given out a week ahead of time. The test was ridiculously easy, most questions only had 3 not 4 or 5 answers, and some wrong answers were even jokes (no, not a joke as in too easy for the test, a joke as in you read it when you see it and know the answer, without having to think once). For an example:

The “Star Wars” program was:
A. A defense program under president Reagan
B. Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away
C. The last frontier

If there is one thing that I notice that is also peculiar about these classes is that the teachers don’t allow you to keep the tests. These are printed pieces of paper that you do not write answers on. You simply bubble in your nice little scantron and that’s it. But, they won’t let you get away without giving the test back. It’s almost like they feel shameful for even giving such a stupid test that anyone could take and pass without even having took the course. They do not want a record of what they have been “teaching” their classes.

Now, if it were up to me, I would not have taken this class. The most enlightening things I learned in this class were from two documentaries that we watched, one on Waco the other on Rwanda. I had to take this class because I need an “I” for “international” credit. I still need another “I” credit, and the thought of taking something silly and unacademic like “Survivor: Tribal Experiences and Cultural Relativity” a class based on the TV show Survivor. All of these classes aren’t horrible, but the good ones are hard to find, especially when you’re interested in a subject and you already know more than what they’re teaching.

To deliver another blow to the education system, let me tell whoever is reading this about another class that is required for “education” minors and most likely majors as well, that my girlfriend took and was constantly complaining about how bad the class was. First of all, assignments included: dressing up and having a fashion show with newspaper clothing, walking around with a box on your head to see what it’s like to be a blind person, and removing your shoes as a class and passing them around to strangers. Going through the disaster that ensues when the period ends and you only have one of your shoes and someone else’s whom you don’t know must be horrible if you actually participated. Oh yeah, and this is in a class in the largest auditorium on campus, completely filled.

When you take a test and you finish, you cannot leave. The doors are locked. The TAs block the exits. When a group of people try to get up and leave because they’re tired of waiting (and time for the exam is already up), the teacher shouts at them to sit down and be quiet or she won’t let them leave. This is a college course. What does this have to do with education? If this is a product and also a future example of our education system and who will be leading it in the future, I fear for humanity because these situations exist right now at my school and I know that they are not the worst.

What will be my goal then? I certainly don’t want to succumb to social pressure and skate by with A’s and pretend that I am an expert at the subject matter I am supposed to be learning. Such illusions, I imagine, will strike a person with depression once they realize the scam they have just naively wasted years of their life on. Let’s not forget the notion that college is the time when you’re “supposed to” party your brains out, sleep around with a sorority, experiment with whatever drugs you can come across, and be “cool” in the eyes of your friends only to emerge as a “normal” adult.

I wonder what the consequences are for such a recklessly compassionate society such as ourselves. As long as we can blame others, or substances, on driving around drunk and killing innocents, or nearly commit suicide through alcohol poisoning, we will continue to digress. We must look back and see where the problems begin and end, at ourselves.

I’m not going to let the system beat me. I am not going to let myself settle for what someone else considers “ ‘A’ work” when I realize that it’s only “aiming for the middle.” This is my only chance at this life. If everyone else around me is going to settle for what they know is only average, when they know it will be labeled as “excellent,” they are asking for it. It’s the ignorant ones that I worry about, and that is anyone that doesn’t see the faults in the way things are going.

I refuse to live an average life and live in an average country. I have been told my entire life that this is the best place on earth and that we are a role model to the rest of the world. That better not change under my watch.