I think students today are being spoonfed and sheltered

steddyeddy

I was reading this piece by Diarmaid Ferriter, professor of modern history at UCD and most of the points resonated with me. I used to be a PhD student in UCD and although I wasn’t a lecturer I had to tutor students individually as project students and as a group in tutorials. I encountered a disturbing trend where students go through extended adolescences. It’s becoming more common that parents will contact lectures or even tutors like me to try and get an extension for their son or daughter and worst of all some parents will even argue about the grade their child received. Some also try to meet lecturers or tutors on a one to one basis. I never responded positively to such a request and my supervisor responded less positively.
I think this mollycoddling has a negative effect on student’s independence. They’re relying on lecturers to spoon feed them ever piece of information and not learning to think for themselves. I asked a question to a group once and most of the time the response was “so what’s the answer?”. Many seem averse to working during their course as well because their parents pay for everything for them. This type of sheltering isn’t good and there’s a vast difference between spoon-fed students and those who learned to be independent.Very brave of Diarmaid to write about this.

I am sure my parents did not look forward to parent-teacher meetings when I was at school, as I was far from a model pupil. But whatever about having to endure those tense encounters, at least by the time I was 17, when I started as a student in UCD, they could rest assured there would be no parent-lecturer meetings. What I did or did not do in college was my business and responsibility. If there were financial implications they would rest with me. That is precisely how it should be
One of the first things I tell first-year students at UCD is that they are adults and responsible for their own progress or lack of it. The transition from second to third- level education is far from painless. For some it can be exceptionally difficult, but that is not helped by spoon-feeding, either from lecturers or parents.
In my experience, most parents do not want to hover excessively over their college student offspring. However, it has been noticeable for many years that many are too intrusive.
It starts before students commence undergraduate studies. During college open days, parents are much more present and voluble. A few years ago a mother asked me “How much is an arts degree worth?”



Replying, I stressed the broad, valuable educational foundation it would provide and how it could open the mind and make it independent. But that was not what the parent had meant: “No,” she said, “I mean, what is the starting salary for someone with an arts degree?”
I have also had the experience of unpleasant phone conversations and, occasionally, conversations in person with parents who will simply not accept their son or daughter’s results. Having watched them come out of secondary schools with several A grades, the parent cannot understand how the student is now floundering, sometimes because they have failed to embrace the idea of independent learning and thinking and cannot repeat their strategy for the Leaving Cert where they learned too much by rote or formula or were too often told there is only one answer.
It is lazy and inaccurate to brandish the current generation of students as inferior to previous generations, but I agree entirely with the recent assertion of Dr Greg Foley of DCU that there is far too much reliance on notes made available to download, which undermines independent research and browsing in the old- fashioned sense of hunting for information in the library. This is an issue academics also need to address by resisting the demands that course materials be centralised and digitised.
Of course parents want to protect their children, but it is important to distinguish between those parents who have had to fight for the rights of students with special needs at every level of education and those who just lose sight of the need to back off.
In some cases, parents will contact tutors or lecturers (so much easier now with email) with requests for extensions or pleas of mitigating circumstances. That is beyond embarrassing: if a student cannot manage to navigate such territory themselves, they are failing the basic third-level test of independence, never mind any academic test, and intrusive parents are compounding the problem by not knowing the difference between support and interference.
In my experience, there are also fewer students working than when I was younger. This is not straightforward; the ability to hold down a job depends on the course being pursued and various other factors and financial needs, but it is relevant to independence. Students who are working in part-time jobs can be more focused and better time managers because they have to learn how to strike a balance. I am aware of parents who will not countenance their student children working, the erroneous insistence being that it can only be to the student’s detriment.
My parents do not know the half of what I got up to during my college years, and that is how it should be. Concerns about hyperactive parents stymieing independence are not just born of anecdote or shaky impressions.
There is a reason why social scientists have been looking at the concept of “extended adolescence” in recent years, as pointed out in this newspaper by Sheila Wayman in 2013. Cruel as it sounds, there are parents who just need to engage with a life beyond their children.

Boom_Bap

Moved from After Hours to Third Level Education.
If you are following the re-direct from AH, please look at the Third Level Education Charter before posting.

smash

Is this anything to do with that Maths Genius guy from UCD who likes to put his feet on the seats on the bus?

Squall Leonhart

When I started college in 2004 it was commonplace for students to share a bedroom with another student. I shared a room for 4 years myself. If there were 5 students in a house, there might be 2 cars. In our house there was 1 car between 5 of us. We walked and/or used public transport. I worked 15-20 hours at the weekends and studied during the week.

That wasn't that long ago.... but things appear to have changed quite a bit, and probably a lot more 'spoiled' kids now. There were of course students a decade and more ago that were handed everything by their parents, but it definitely appears that today there is a delayed independence more than there ever has been before.

Squall Leonhart

<snip>

As a parent, I feel that the firsts of any School/College are the toughest, be it Primary, Second or Third level. Squall Leonhart put it very well about how things have changed in less than 15 years! When my lads went to College, we took them there and settled them in and left them. A number of other Parents continued to visit about once a Month to clean up after their child and cook some meals!
The education students get in College isn't confined to lectures. They have the added extra of cooking for themselves and learn how to survive without Mammy.

DreamByDay

I'm baffled to hear parents calling up the university to complain about deadlines, grades etc. :-0

My parents don't really hear about my grades/classes unless I just got my exam results and am excited to tell them, or when I want to share something interesting I learned in class.

Then again, they live in another country and don't speak English :P But still, university students are supposed to be adults??

One thing I disagree with, though, is that students should be holding down a job to become adults and that not not doing so reflects immaturity and a lack of self-reliance. I am lucky enough that my parents provide me with rent and food money, and although we have discussed me taking up retail jobs instead of unpaid internships in my field, ultimately they want me to succeed and a few hundreds a month aren't that big of a dent for them, whereas for me it means I can focus on doing extra-curricular projects in my field and help kick-start my career.