Why You Suck
A lot of my colleagues complain about our students needing too much hand-holding; but I tend to take a different approach. I think there is a lot to be learned through failure. But that means you also need to be able to tell someone when they are not performing well. It seems to me that a lot of today’s student’s don’t always take that criticism well - and a lot of my colleagues concur. The problem though is that critiquing someone’s work doesn’t mean that they are a horrible person. It just means that they could improve is some ways. I can hardly think of any area in my life where I couldn’t do something better. (Aside from teaching - obviously I’m great at that!) I struggle though with that fine line between real encouragement and valuable critique.
In any event, this has been on my mind a lot lately, and I recently read The Modesty Manifesto - an OpEd piece by David Brooks. In it he pulls together statistics from several studies but sums it all up here:
there’s abundant evidence to suggest that we have shifted a bit from a culture that emphasized self-effacement — I’m no better than anybody else, but nobody is better than me — to a culture that emphasizes self-expansion.
...and there seems to be some evidence for that. I’m not trying to make the whole “this generation doesn’t respect…” argument, but I do think that the obsession of self that we see reflected through “social” media is rather evident and pervasive within culture today. I’d even suggest that it isn’t simply about youth: the majority of Twitter users are actually over 30.
Brooks continues to extend his point to the prevalence of the individual over the concept of the virtuous citizen. I’m not trying to continue that discourse, but the article did make for interesting reading.
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Comments:
haha - good example. I think most people would have finished that project in a couple weeks. In out defense, we did move a lot of dirt, and the fence is still standing!
I think we have shifted more than a bit, as he asserts. Did enjoy the column, though. Really like David Brooks lately. I want to read his new book, Social Animal.
My partner - the professor - is having increasing trouble with students not taking criticism well. How else do we improve?
The professor should take some solace in knowing that the issue seems wide-spread and we finally seem to have a lot of people talking about it. I think we’ve engendered a generation with too much positive reinforcement. I’m actively trying to focus on the negative now : )
Fence Building. Definitely something you (and I) can get better at