We interrupt our regularly scheduled art posts, for a rant on Introductory Level Classes in College & Advanced Classes in High Schools
***Disclaimer – this is largely based on my personal experience and the experience of those around me. I know this probably isn’t the case everywhere, but its still worth being shared***
1. For any high schoolers out there, here’s a tip from your friendly college senior who was an overachiever “gifted kid”TM in high school and is about to enter the field of education: All of your teachers who every told you that your grades are the most important thing for getting into college and insanely overworked you in advanced courses because “that’s what college is like” is so incredibly full of shit. I spent years of my life having so much sleep deprivation that I did not dream for like two years because I was struggling to balance all advanced classes, travel sports and school sports, a stupid number of clubs, two honor societies, later a job, and let’s not forget whatever family drama wants to join in on the parade. I graduated high school 4th in my class with a fucking 4.54 GPA and you know what has done literally nothing for me in college? Any of that crap. I applied and got rejected from Princeton and ultimately chose my university for the price and that I could graduate with a Bachelors in History and a Masters in Education since I was going into a shitty paying career path (teaching high school). You know how all that hell I went through with overloading my schedule in high school? My first semester at college I was actually BORED. I was confused at the concept of having free time and the ability to get enough sleep that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had time for art, I had so many things that I could do for fun that I never had time to do in high school because I spent it “being prepared for college.” WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK.
2. Now, I wish I could say that was my entire college experience, however, there are still college professors out there who are definitely the ones that set the stereotype your high school teachers believe all college professors are like. And I hate them. The further and further I get through the education major (and mind you, I’m in graduate courses now), the more you notice how full of shit some of your professors are. The biggest pet peeve I have are how some college professors approach Introductory level classes.
A little PSA for Professors and Teachers: INTRO LEVEL COURSES SHOULD NOT BE A FILTER THROUGH WHICH TO WEED OUT THE WEAK, ESPECIALLY IF IT IS PART OF GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS. NEWS FLASH: THAT’S NOT TEACHING, THAT’S GATEKEEPING.
I am not saying I want students to be able to breeze through the course and get an easy A. But what I am saying is that if you are going into a class like French 101, the first level of learning French, they should not be expecting you to hold a conversation in French by the end of the semester. You should not walk in on day one and be terrified that you walked into a refresher class for French 202. You should also not be terrified out of your wits to take an introductory Chemistry class required for your major in GEOLOGY because everyone has told you the professor makes the class awful to prepare you for the rest of the major. We go to school to LEARN. I went to a goddamn liberal arts college so I could do the gen ed program and take some classes that interested me outside of my major to LEARN and push myself. I didn’t come to relive the hell that was cramming for a Biology SOL and taking it on test day and learning that your teacher had skipped the unit on evolution because “oh yeah, we didn’t get to that.” I didn’t take a science class to get the whole question wrong and no partial credit, not because I got the soil layers wrong, but because I perfectly listed the soil layers for Virginia which we were TAUGHT and not North Carolina – which we were NOT taught. History and other Bachelors of Arts classes are no better. We constantly put students through intense 100 and 200-level courses that are required to get them to their major classes, and again the courses are made artificially difficult and work and reading intensive. My high school history teacher told me when he was in college, he had to read 8 books a week for ONE of his history classes. That is asinine.
I hate this stupid idea that a 4 year university intro level course – you know, the university you already had to apply to get into and get weeded out from thousands of other applicants, needs to be hard so that it weeds “the weak” students out from aggressive fields like the sciences. Why do we hurt our students who just want to push themselves into a different field for a General Education requirement and explore Chemistry because they liked their high school chemistry class? Why do we treat our honors students like shit and decide they don’t need study guides or help because “well its an honors class”? We go to college to learn and explore! We should not be punished for wanting to explore, and we sure as hell should not be scared out of a major just because some professor thinks we need to handle a 40% on a midterm to prove we deserve to help people. Are you telling me I don’t deserve to be a pediatric nurse because I couldn’t remember the exact chemical equation of a compound? I can’t be a history teacher because I can’t remember the exact year the radio was invented. I have been pushed away from exploring topics I find interesting and wanted to learn more about from Human Anatomy to Costume Design because of the horror stories of the experiences that people have had. And at the same time, I hear professors and teachers complaining that students don’t want to do the work anymore and that so many of them are failing classes because they don’t put enough time and energy into the class.
The vast majority of students, want to learn. Even amidst the hellscape pandemic and virtual classes that have affected the bulk of my undergraduate learning, I have always wanted to learn. Its not fair to students or to the later professors that would have loved to have those students in their classrooms to discuss a shared love of genetics, or Medieval History, etc. to gatekeep your field or make your test obscenely difficult just because you want to “prepare students for reality.” ESPECIALLY when we are getting quite the unhealthy dose of reality with the major historical events and crises we’ve been dealing with thank you very much. I didn’t put myself in thousands of dollars of debt in student loans to be in tears at 3 AM trying to cram for an exam that I know I’ll still feel unprepared for, but my anxiety won’t let me sleep and I got off work at 10 to be told by a professor that I didn’t study hard enough.
fuck this toxic mentality, and I will do everything in my power as a teacher to dismantle this bullshit
