There are times when I truly hate - with an aspirated 'H' - the general public -- even when that 'general public' is the fairly select demographic of a university student body (though 'fairly select' when, apparently, over 50% of A-level students scored in the highest grade range is dubious). I truly do believe that the university must be an institution open to all - anyone who wants to learn should be welcomed.
But that's the catch - wanting to learn. Not simply filling a chair (and the university's coffers), making use of the 10% discount at some high-street shops, and getting quicker access to a surgery. And I do - call me rather pedantic - believe that wanting to learn does not get compartmentalised - wanting to learn should be all-encompassing, not goal oriented; that lovely, sadly anachronistic, anti-utilitarian desire to learn for learning's sake. If you want to learn, you learn - you learn everything and anything that can be taught. Okay, this sounds like I expect everyone to be an expert in everything - impractical at best. Allow me to try to explain.
Learning - again, this is all from my perspective (um...obviously! it's my blog) - requires interest; I cannot teach an uninterested student. At best, they will recite back to me, with no real learning, what I have said in seminar, or what they've read from some secondary source. I don't particularly care, in the long run. But there are few people more boring to spend time with than those without interest - curiosity - critical engagement - enthusiasm. And that bleeds into all things. If I can teach one thing in any course, it is always just to be interested in something - anything but be interested and take responsibility for that interest: feed it, satisfy it, increase it.
Huh. Well this is going to sound silly. But see there's this alarm that goes off when someone tries to use their student ID more than once within a certain time period at the campus library. Okay - I know - silly. But when you are working at that station for an entire hour and that bloody alarm goes off every 10 minutes...well, by the half-hour you are ready to strangle the next reader who sets it off. And I especially love the ones that go through and turn around to let their friends through - the very reason the time delay was installed. Why unleash this particular rant here? Because it seems to me that someone at university would have the sense to see that there is a reason that EACH student has a unique ID. I also particularly enjoy the student that stands there, zombie-like, repeatedly passing his card over the sensor as it beeps merrily away...
I say nothing of those to whom the entire concept of a 'library' belongs to a brave new world. Nor of those who confuse 'customer service' with 'customer servants'...
I really am going to be the most crotchety old lady one day...
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1 comment:
Amen to that!
I study a "fashionable" subject (film studies) in my home country Denmark, and the prospect of working in media afterwards has attracted many people who should barely be able to call themselves students, considering how little they care about learning.
But somehow it seems to be a cultural phenomenon in Denmark; if you study for your ph.d., for instance, people are likely to call you the much feared and derogatory "eternity student", and any display of enthusiasm will get you nothing but sneers. From most people, at any rate, luckily not everyone.
But there seems to be an idea that learning anything beyond the absolute necessities in life, or at least the absolute minimum that will get you through your exams, is a waste of time, and that your own opinion is the only thing that counts. But how can you have an opinion about something, unless you know what it is?
Curiosity is out of fashion - but I'm glad to see a fellow learner :-)
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