My mom received her Master's in Library Science in 1976, a year before I was born. She worked in the Berea Library doing the things librarians do-- helping researchers, sorting books, keeping records. Her job appealed to her meticulous organizational skills, and she loved her career, although she left shortly after I was born to be a stay-at-home-mom for a few years.
When I was in elementary school, her library knowledge was invaluable, specifically when it came to the Dewey decimal system. A research paper on Ohio geological rocks? Head over to the 530's. Information on the Mormons? Check out 225.5. She seemed to be an endless source of seemingly meaningful information, and I was in awe of her education.
But things changed in the Library Science field while she was at home, away from the developments in library technology. When I was in 8th grade, I remember taking a trip to the library with my mother to do some research on the Titanic for a term paper. I sat down at the green-screen CRT and dutifully typed in s: (subject) Titanic. The computer spit out my sources, which I could print on the dot-matrix printer and take to the stacks. My mom was over at the card catalog, with their oak drawers and yellowing cards, looking up the location of whatever she was interested in at the time. Her reluctance to use technology at the library was real and unwavering. It wasn't until they hauled those card catalog drawers away that she finally took a seat at the computer, confused and defeated. She still stuggles with technology today.
Watching this sort of sad transformation of my mother's career made me vow not to get completely left behind in the technological revolution. I've stayed on top of it OK. I blog, I digg, I youtube, I get most of it. But reading the Carlson article made me realize I am definitely not a millennial, and as a teacher, I am not sure I want to encourge all of the millennial behaviors in the classroom.
I think it is sort of a travesty that students don't know how to "sit and listen" (a36). And I'm not sure I buy that it is because they are "too busy" (a37). (Although Jenn did make a good point in class today about the working nature of today's diverse student body compared to the more elite students of decades ago whose parents put them through college.)
The bottom line is that some of the behaviors described in the Carlson piece as behaviors of this new generation (i.e., multitasking during class and "paying attention without paying attention") strike me as unacceptable in both the classroom and in the "real world." I understand that students can do more than one thing at once and that someone doesn't need to look at me to understand what I am saying, but isn't classroom engagement easier if you, well, appear engaged? By providing students with a multimodal environment, how much do we exacerbate these behaviors and deem them acceptable? Is there a relationship between multimodal classrooms and discipline? Does discipline really matter in the classroom anymore so long as everyone is learning? We talked a little about it in class today, but I am interested in discussing it some more.
Although it is easy to dismiss some of the millennial's behaviors, I also want to understand them. I want to understand how today's students (although I am in the precarious position of being one again myself) think and process information, not just because I am going to teach them. I also want to understand them so I can see if I want to join them (I'm not that old), if I want to elect them (technological capability has been made an issue in the presidential campaign), and to see what I need to learn to stay on the technological learning curve, if not ahead of it.
And I want to understand them so I don't end up like my mother.
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Katie,
I also found our discussion in class on Wednesday interesting in light of the Carlson piece. I was also feeling a little torn about the idea of discipline, and I'm incredibly unsure whether they are just "too busy" to "sit and listen."
I understand and accept that there will always be a measure of underlife in a classroom and that it's not something to get overly worked up about unless it is truly a disruption to the class as a whole, in which case it should be discreetly discussed one-on-one outside of class. Given this, I was a little irritated by the idea that in the Carlson piece that it's insinuated that it's just not possible to lecture more than 15 minutes. I have difficulty with this, because I think that we do want to prepare these students for communicating and functioning in all spheres of their professional lives, regardless of their chosen fields. Of course, by just passively accepting the idea that these "millenials" are simply unable to "sit and listen" does not mesh with the experiences that I have had outside of the academy in my working life in a totally unrelated field.
When I was in banking, I was forced to go to who knows how many meetings that had virtually nothing to do with me or what I did and I would say were the dullest experiences of my life...But if I had ignored what was going on in these 2-3 hour boredom fests and text messaged my boyfriend, made oragami or some other thing, I guarantee you this much. I would've been headed for the unemployment line, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Don't get me wrong, I do not think that the most effective way to teach anyone is to "talk at" them endlessly, but I do think that there will probably be times when it's necessary to do some lecturing. So I do, however believe that it is important to be able to be attentive more than 15 minutes without consulting FaceBook, playing with your iPod or texting your friends, regardless of when you were born.
These students will be in situations in their working lives that will simply prohibit this type of behavior, and the consequences will be much graver than being pulled aside by your freshman writing teacher and asked to keep your phone turned off during class. I hate to sound like a huge downer, but having been someone who has spent some time in the working world in somewhat responsible positions, I know that regardless of the decade in which you were born, there are times when this is simply unacceptable. So it makes me wonder if maybe by considering these "millenials" to be so very different and with such different needs, we are on the one hand tailoring their experiences to what they're comfortable with and possibly promoting their learning experience in the here and now, but on the other hand, providing them with a false sense of security with regard to what awaits them in the working world. It seems that an approach that mediates between these two extremes might serve them better, now and in the future.
As far as the idea of their need for this kind of behavior being attributable to being "too busy" I also have difficulty with. Of course, I see where Jenn was coming from in her blog post where she mentions that with the advent of instant information, students tend to feel that everything is expected of them "now." Of course, I'm not sure that I can reconcile that with the experience I had quite a while ago in college. We sat through class-length lectures four times a day, and listened the whole time....like it or not. We also had jobs and social lives and school course loads that made us always feel like everything should have been done yesterday and all of the things that students have today, yet we were able to sit and listen, and were often outwardly chastized for "multi-tasking" in class. This was generally the experience that stopped it dead in its tracks when I was an undergrad...and it definitely happened to me. That's not something I would do to a student for doing other homework in my class, or something else that wasn't bothering me or the other students, but it happened. Maybe that's where the difference is? Maybe as a result of the seemingly accepted "multi-tasking" nature of the millenials, the behavior proliferates. I don't really have a conclusion on this, but I did want to take the part for a moment of the "stick in the mud" type. I think both sides of this argument should be considered and interrogated in light of what we should do or not do as teachers, whether we should or should not treat each successive generation throughout our career as though they are a totally different species. Each generation will be somewhat different, but I'm not sure they're this fundamentally different. These students look to me a lot like my friends and I did as undergrads, besides our walkmans and scribbles in our notebooks have now become iPods and text messages.
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