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posted by on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the wassup-prof? dept.

At the start of my teaching career, when I was fresh out of graduate school, I briefly considered trying to pass myself off as a cool professor. Luckily, I soon came to my senses and embraced my true identity as a young fogey.

After one too many students called me by my first name and sent me email that resembled a drunken late-night Facebook post, I took a very fogeyish step. I began attaching a page on etiquette to every syllabus: basic rules for how to address teachers and write polite, grammatically correct emails.

Over the past decade or two, college students have become far more casual in their interactions with faculty members. My colleagues around the country grumble about students' sloppy emails and blithe informality.

[...] Sociologists who surveyed undergraduate syllabuses from 2004 and 2010 found that in 2004, 14 percent addressed issues related to classroom etiquette; six years later, that number had more than doubled, to 33 percent. This phenomenon crosses socio-economic lines. My colleagues at Stanford gripe as much as the ones who teach at state schools, and students from more privileged backgrounds are often the worst offenders.

-- submitted from IRC

Source: The New York Times


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  • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday May 16 2017, @10:35PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Tuesday May 16 2017, @10:35PM (#510799)

    I don't know; the two least formal professors I had, one was GREAT and one was TERRIBLE.

    The Great One had been in it a long, long time and was very old. He'd retired technically and just did two classes a semester for fun. He was tired of all the titles and junk and stopped caring, and was so accomplished nobody would call him on it. He'd just laugh if students called him weird names, didn't care if they used his title, would attend staff meetings in denim shorts with goofy t-shirts, etc. But he really knew his stuff. He'd been teaching his subject long enough to have taught my parents when they were in college; he'd answer emails, voicemails, hand-written notes left at his office ASAP. He was also funny as hell.

    The other one, she was more like, checked out. Nobody was sure what her deal was. She didn't seem to care about titles; she also didn't seem to care about teaching or dressing appropriately at all. She'd often give her notes to students to teach the class and somehow would get away with it. She'd show up late, bring her son to class, forget he was there (so sometimes people would bring coloring books and stuff, we all felt bad for him), all kinds of stuff. We were warned by the other professors not to try to complain about her too loudly - we got the sense she'd gotten the job via politics. She struck me as someone's "manic pixie dream girl" 20 years after the shininess rubbed off.

    My experience was it's just as mixed a bag as anything.

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