I have listened to one of my colleagues tell about his experience teaching this summer, and have noted in more than one case his frustration with the students coming to him. His frustration, however, is not with their weak intellects ... It is with the incredibly poor level of preparation they have for doing even slightly serious work. And I'm not talking about 1st year students...I'm talking about upperclassmen. One student wrote a response to A Streetcar Named Desire in which she offered a scathing (and completely incoherent) critique of US foreign policy in the 20th Century. The entire piece was a non sequitur. When asked about it, she admitted that she didn't believe or really understand a word of what she had written...she was just providing a summary of what she had been taught in a US history class--by one of our colleagues--the previous term. Bravo to that professor, who surely spoke truth to power...and taught his charges very little.
He had another student express to him her frustration that only now, at the end of her fifth class taught by a member of our department, did she understand that "English" was about so much more than grammar...and that it could be rewarding.
Mere anecdotes, right? Right?
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