The student newspaper here carried a story on a national poll in which some liked 65 percent or so of college students said classes were too easy. When I was in college I thought my classes were almost absurdly easy — the scary thing was wondering how the kid behind me failed and hoping to God I never had to rely on him for something crucial.
My epiphanies about the nature of classes and my fellow students came during the Fall semester of my sophomore year. I had a basic introduction to political science class taught by the chair of the department. About two weeks into the course somebody stole my book (along with a briefcase it was in), and I was too cheap to buy another one. I also had a habit of sleeping in instead of going to class. I was convinced I was going to fail the first test.
So I go in to take the test and I couldn’t believe how easy and pointless it was. These, for example, were the first three questions on the “test” (which were all multiple choice or matching).
1. The President is which part of the government:
a. The Executive Branch
b. The Judicial Branch
c. The Legislative Branch2. The Supreme Court is which part of the government:
a. The Executive Branch
b. The Judicial Branch
c. The Legislative Branch3. The Congress is which part of the government:
a. The Executive Branch
b. The Judicial Branch
c. The Legislative BranchAfter that I never went to class again except on scheduled test days and got a BA. The bizarre thing is it turns out that class had one of the highest attrition rates — something like 40 percent of the morons I was in class with got a letter grade lower than a C.
The only classes I really enjoyed in college were taught by 80 year old men who hadn’t quite got around to realizing they were supposed to cater to the whim of students rather than educate them. Typically they’d have you reading a 250 page book a week and expect you to write long essays in class for tests (the words “matching” and “multiple choice” never escaped their lips). I happened by accident to run into a man who had been a history professor who only gave me a B but who I certainly learned a lot more from than all of the A’s I got in brain dead classes and got the opportunity to thank him for taking his job seriously.
My wife, Lisa, is sort of like that even though she’s not a man and not 80 years old. She’s been teaching a class the past couple years while working on her Master’s degree and is already annoyed at the students who don’t show up for class and then beg her for extra credit work.
Some of the other graduate students who teach the same class have the same view. One circulated a hilarious paper the other day retelling some of the answers given to test questions, the most hilarious being a multiple choice question on a quiz in which a large minority of students checked the box indicating that the setting for Beowulf was the Bronx.