I can agree with the shrinking attention span thing, i can often notice it with my peers even when small talking, though many people who are not interested at all in the subjects and are not going to invest any effort in it, usually drop out within the first year.
> All this might sound like an angry rant. I’m not sure. I’m not angry, though, not at all. I’m just sad. One thing all faculty have to learn is that the students are not us. We can’t expect them all to burn with the sacred fire we have for our disciplines, to see philosophy, psychology, math, physics, sociology or economics as the divine light of reason in a world of shadow. Our job is to kindle that flame, and we’re trying to get that spark to catch, but it is getting harder and harder and we don’t know what to do.
That said this is a slight romanticization of the position you are in, because in my experience a minority of teachers are usually invested in making sure their subject is appreciated and understood.
Many professors are first and foremost researchers that do teaching as a part time job, I've had teachers that clearly didn't even bother to make sure that students could clearly read what's on the blackboard, i had to skip some classes solely for that reason, i often felt guilt for it.
I've had a teacher that explicitly said that we should read a book covering the lesson before going to the class at all, in my eyes this was all a lazy excuse for a course that was rushed because the time didn't allow for a proper presentation of the subject, all the while there were almost useless classes to fill the gaps, i think my university has serious time allocation problems, i struggled a lot with those kind of subjects because i had the expectation of at least have a somewhat rough idea of the topics when going back home from class, those classes didn't satisfy this and this left me quite anxious(i was, and still am also coping with loneliness), because i had to do more work on-top of household chores and keeping myself fed, i think most professors don't realize this and I think it's because most of them didn't have to move across different cities for hundreds of kilometers to attend university, and they also had less financial pressure (we have very few state-owned campuses in my European country).
Did i mention that many of them also refuse to record/stream the classes even though all the cameras and software are already set up?
> All this might sound like an angry rant. I’m not sure. I’m not angry, though, not at all. I’m just sad. One thing all faculty have to learn is that the students are not us. We can’t expect them all to burn with the sacred fire we have for our disciplines, to see philosophy, psychology, math, physics, sociology or economics as the divine light of reason in a world of shadow. Our job is to kindle that flame, and we’re trying to get that spark to catch, but it is getting harder and harder and we don’t know what to do.
That said this is a slight romanticization of the position you are in, because in my experience a minority of teachers are usually invested in making sure their subject is appreciated and understood.
Many professors are first and foremost researchers that do teaching as a part time job, I've had teachers that clearly didn't even bother to make sure that students could clearly read what's on the blackboard, i had to skip some classes solely for that reason, i often felt guilt for it. I've had a teacher that explicitly said that we should read a book covering the lesson before going to the class at all, in my eyes this was all a lazy excuse for a course that was rushed because the time didn't allow for a proper presentation of the subject, all the while there were almost useless classes to fill the gaps, i think my university has serious time allocation problems, i struggled a lot with those kind of subjects because i had the expectation of at least have a somewhat rough idea of the topics when going back home from class, those classes didn't satisfy this and this left me quite anxious(i was, and still am also coping with loneliness), because i had to do more work on-top of household chores and keeping myself fed, i think most professors don't realize this and I think it's because most of them didn't have to move across different cities for hundreds of kilometers to attend university, and they also had less financial pressure (we have very few state-owned campuses in my European country).
Did i mention that many of them also refuse to record/stream the classes even though all the cameras and software are already set up?