rehess wrote:
Yes, and they do not think logically, at least not as we see it.
I learned that my first year of college teaching. After complaining all morning about having to come to college in a snowfall - as soon as classes were canceled, the {mostly 'off campus'} upper-class computer majors {we did not have very many} piled into a car - and drove to the computer store to buy the latest game! {then returned to campus and used a lab computer to play it}.
Thank God for the other type of student.
For 7 years I taught US and World History in the "University Preparatory Program" at a high school in East Los Angeles. The program was run by the Science, Math and Engineering departments at California State University Los Angeles (I graduated from there when it was still a "...State College". The program was aimed at the kids just below "Gifted" on the theory that the "gifted/AP" and the "at risk" had government money shoveled at them. We had visits by professors, Saturday lab classes at the university, field trips, internships at places like JPL etc. The student and their parents signed a contract with requirements and anyone who graduated with the contract completed was guaranteed admission to Cal State LA or help from the university to get them in some other school for the major they wanted. There were also scholarships and grants available. The idea was to get those kids into science, math, engineering or the teaching of same. The Gifted were not allowed into the program-they had their own program-and I had a few students who had been in GATE classes since early elementary who deliberately messed up their annual evaluations to get kicked out of GATE and get into UPP. When I retired a group of parents were trying to get the UPP to become a kind of umbrella program with the GATE and AP students merged in. It was considered that good a deal.
I had one student who did a summer internship at JPL that went so well he got hired as a part time lab assistant, JPL got him a scholarship and admission to Cal Tech. With a job on graduation.
One side effect, the average UPP student had a 98+% attendance, at a school where the average attendance was about 81%. And almost none of them ever got referred to the Dean. Many of the other teachers were so upset that we "siphoned off" all the good students (the program only had 300 of 4-5000 students on three tracks, yes a BIG school) they began to use the union and seniority to force out teachers who helped start the program and take their place. For the most part the Professors from Cal State resisted that, and they controlled the money for the UPP. We were the second HS in East LA to get the program and the Engineering Dept at Cal State (one of the biggest in the state) said 40% of their incoming majors each year were from our two schools.
I got scheduled out of the UPP academic classes when a new Vice-Principal got upset because I turned down her ideas for my using the latest "fad teaching method" in my classes. And about a year later I was talking to one of the professors and he indicated she told them that I left the UPP on my request. Since I was retiring at the end of the school year I told him not to raise a fuss over it. He was upset she had lied to him.
Later at my last department meeting before retirement the air head didn't even remember she kicked me out. In the meeting after they announced my retirement she says "Why did you leave the UPP? The students and parents keep asking about you. You were very popular with them." She didn't remember she scheduled me out over a "fad" method (she was the coordinator for that fad) that had already failed and been dropped by the district since then.
My two days after finals were over my students and a fair number of UPP students turned my room into an all day "pot luck" pig out and retirement party. The exact words of the girl who organized it were "You are retiring and won't be back to do anything about us breaking the no party rule. We are having a retirement party for you!" And they did, she even gathered a few jocks to pack all my stuff and put it in my mini-van on the last day. Then they cleaned the room better than it had been in years.