Well first, pls don't retire just yet. You've got too much to offer. (Thanks for the book btw!) People like you are why I'm typing this right now and i'll never, ever forget them. Still keep in touch with them and they also tell me they think things have changed: specifically, students' ability to sustain attention for any length of time. There have been some studies noting that students' attention span and their ability to retain knowledge, has declined from 1/2 hr in the 60s to less than 15 minutes today. Dumbed down textbooks & TeeVee are largely responsible; many of them have never had to read anything except a textbook, most of them have been fed pablum. Yoshie's right, they need to know how to read first!
I can't speak about this as I might have in the last couple of years. I'm at new place w/ lots of working class students and I'm just in love with them and it appears most of 'em are in love with me. I've been asked to be their club advisor and I feel so Sally Fields! I haven't had such engaged marvelous bright inquisitive students in a long time--I generally only ever find them when teaching adult students at extension campuses. So I'm feeling really lucky right now and not nearly as pissed and demoralized as I've felt in the past.
It definitely isn't about inequity in k-12 funding. I've been teaching the well-heeled abercrombie & fitch crowd for the past two years, kids who went to some of the finer public high schools and private schools in the NE, it's the same there. What finally did me in last year: two young men decided to simply write an essay exam together. They didn't ask first; they just did it. About 1/3 of them plagiarized entire sections from the text-- and even from my lecture note handouts. One young man went right to a website and lifted somone else's summary of a text we were reading. (Thank your lucky stars that you don't give essay exams and have them write a lot, you'd be even more demoralized.)
These kids have most of the technical skills, but many of them seem to lack a sense of right and wrong, second chance society perhaps? And who can blame them? My first exp. as a TA I had the pleasure of fielding calls from parents outraged that we'd failed their children for plagiarizing--not the whole course, just a paper.
This kind of attitude is exacerbated by administrations caving in to the Total Quality Mgmt trip, increasingly demanding that we view students as 'customers' who have needs to be met and egos stroked. And students are paying attention, willing to milk the fact that they're parents paid 30k for that A and they'd better get it. I am NOT kidding or being hyperbolic in the least, nor is my experience unique.
Why hell, I had a dean tell me in so many words that I'd better allow a student back into my course (after a series of egregrious violations) He also dropped plenty of hints about what kind of grade he'd like to see the young man get. Of course, he couched it in a lot of talk about how it was all my decision, but followed that with some wonderous comments about the merits of a women's studies class, how could it be that hard, and was I punishing this young man because he was a man perhaps? Sure, sure: he skips two weeks, fails to complete ANY assignments, and never once phoned, mailed, or sent a note to say that he was ill. When I asked about the legitimacy of the illness, the dean refused to back him up on the claimed illnes. I was steamed and I had a mind to give everyone an A and just canx class for the rest of the semester--or make it optional for those who actually wanted to learn something. And get this, I became extremely ill during the last two weeks of that course and couldn't teach, though fortunately I'd largely structured the course to have plenty of wiggle room for essay writing and re-writes. I graded all the papers and yet they somehow felt it appropriate to dock me two weeks pay?!
I've spoken with these kids privately in my office. They don't want to be in college. BUT they know they have to be there 'cause that's what folks have expected of them all their lives. One young woman, an activist-type, serious about her studies and fun! too, was leading a group discussion on women in higher education one day. The question she posed to the class: "Why are we here?. Everyone says they hate school. so why?" Well you know the answers. "Haven't a clue what I'd do otherwise" "My parents would kill me if I dropped out" "Everyone *expects* me to be here" Along with a few stories about how they feel that they'd rather not end up on Wall St but they felt compelled to. What else could they do? They sure weren't going to consider--even for a mo'--the possibility of doing something they enjoyed. And they certainly couldn't imagine working at a low-wage menial job.
Now you're teaching a wholly different kind of student I gather. More like the ones I'm teaching now. I've taught at state schools in NY and I've generally found them more engaged than the other crowd, though surely lacking in some basic skills. But often not any more so than the others.
In the context of the structural features mentioned on the thread already, I've come to call what we see a form of systematically produced normative incompetence. It is a form of resistance that we need to see for what it is--a very complex phenomenon. In other words, I think we could look at students in precisely the way the Michael Burawoy has looked at how resistance operates on the 'job': students actively manufacturing their consent to their own domination and oppression.
Kelley