Wow. This is definitely something I have contemplated many times after enrolling in this class. This generation, whether it be the "MTV Generation" or the "Cell Phone Generation," tends to not care that much. I myself am guilty of it.
Today, many students want to just slide by. Even people who are viewed as over achievers wish to receive maximum recognition with minimal work. For example, I really enjoy receiving As to boost my GPA, but I'm just as happy with a 90 as I am with a 100. At the end of the day, they are worth the same to my GPA, so why should I care?
It's the lackadaisical attitude that will make it hard to teach later on in my career. I will constantly have to challenge myself in order to keep my students interested. Just like Dr. Wesch said, each generation seems harder and harder to impress. I will not be able to rely on a new ingenious teaching device I come across to captivate my students for many many years. They will eventually outgrow every seemingly brilliant idea I will ever have. I cannot even rely on the experiences in the class to last me long in my education career. Eventually, blogging will be old news, and I will have to come up with new ways to capture my students attentions.
Maybe it is simply because school does a poor job of engaging students because we tend to focus on unimportant curriculum? I can honestly say that I am pretty ambivalent about a large number of objectives that are required for my students.
ReplyDeleteMr. C
Dr. Wesch holds out hope that the new communications media will lead to new conversations that will generate a caring society. Given the events in this EDM310 class, what do you think about the prospects which he considers possible?
ReplyDeleteI think you hit the nail on the head. Challenging oneself in order to challenge others, take a breath, is a challenge in itself, because we are the Meh generation. Nice one!
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