Attack of the Stupid Virus

Infants need to be cared for in basically every regard. Children also need to be protected from, from others as well as themselves (though I recall when I was in elementary school, thinking that adults in general seemed to underestimate my intelligence far too much, as if I'm going to obliviously walk into oncoming traffic.) But beyond a certain age, my sympathy for self-destructive behavior quickly runs out.

In my TA experiences at UCI I've encountered a number of students who clearly cared nothing about the classes they took--or, at least, the physics class that I was teaching them. That's fine. Physics isn't everyone's cup of tea. But if you refuse to learn it, don't expect me to care. Or, more specifically, if you have clearly shown that you don't care about the material for 9 weeks straight, don't expect me to bend over backwards for you just before finals week.

A prime example was one quarter in which the discussions I taught each week were actually mandatory. This is slightly unusual for physics classes, but it was a GE class--cosmology for non-math majors. Essentially the purpose of the discussion each week was for me to go over the homework solutions to the problems they just finished turning in. Thus, they would know if they did the various homework problems correctly, and they would have solutions to study from, since many of the midterm/final questions came directly from homework. (The professor was actually relatively kind in this regard. I'm talking the exam questions were literally ripped from the homework assignments with numbers changed, and he allowed a full 9.5x11 sheet of paper full of notes to these exams.) During 10th week, just before finals, I actually received an email from a student asking if I was planning on making "homework solutions" available in some kind of digital format for all the students. Homework solutions? What exactly did he think I had been doing each and every week during discussion, section? The mandatory discussion section, no less. No, I told him. If he didn't bother to take notes the entire quarter during discussion, he could find a fellow student with homework solutions. I refused to provide them all to him.

At the college level, I have no sympathy for students who fail classes due to lack of effort. This is college. You pay to attend here. There are people who applied to this university and were rejected admittance (if you're at a reasonably good institution). Just flunk out and make room for someone worthwhile.

Interestingly, though, I feel the same thing about students at the high school level. Even though I realize that many kids do not want to be here, and they obviously do not pay to attend a public high school. Perhaps because I worked so hard in high school to get through the various honors classes and successfully graduate with an IB (International Baccalaureate) diploma, as far as I'm concerned, if you're 16 years old and you still think having a high school education isn't worth your effort, that's fine with me too. After all, McDonalds needs workers too. Maybe in 10 years when you're an assistant manager at some fast food restaurant, you can tell me how that worked out for you.

(Just for clarification, I'm not talking about people in what I might call more extreme circumstances--kids who have more life-and-death issues in their lives than passing classes. I'm talking about middle-upper class kids who are essentially just spoiled. Why study when they can go to the mall? Why go to class when they can sneak off to their boyfriend/girlfriend's place while the parents are away? Etc. Incidentally, this may also apply to kids who are, unfortunately, sufficiently spoiled by sufficiently wealthy parents, so that whether or not they actually learn anything in school has little impact on their future. Their parents have money, or their future career will be handed to them on a silver platter, regardless of whatever effort they put forth, etc… Still, in this case, get lost already and make room for kids who actually care. Smaller classrooms make for a better learning experience, for those who actually care.)