Over the years, students are less and less differentiated: few of the best are remembered, for which you try, you lay it out, and the main gray mass is not good enough - it will, at best, join the ranks of a rapidly thinning working class, at worst it will be marginalized and will inexorably slide into the very "bottom" living, where he will spend the rest of his days, if the new Zhirinovsky does not appear on the political arena, ready to lead this pack of offended and under-learned lumpen proletarians.
The problem that has long been chronic and that’s why it is immediately striking in work with first-year students is the gap between school and university requirements, more precisely, lack of preparation, non-adaptation of applicants to a new environment. Freshmen are not in a hurry to part with "nice" schoolchildren's habits, in particular, with a naive confidence that they will continue to be worn, as with a written bag, to persuade intractable teachers to put on a "three", or even a "top five" (if we are talking about potential medalists), they have to go on about literally everything.
Well I pay for the institute, or, Why should I study?
Of course, tuition fees also play a negative role. It disciplines and obliges only on the one hand and seriously corrupts the other. Here is just one characteristic case: after the first organizational lesson with freshmen, one of the students asked with a sincere surprise from the teacher: "And what else do you need to learn here?"
Of course, preparatory courses, of which where only now there is, partially compensate for the school’s lagging behind the university, but they are not able to eliminate it completely, so it takes a lot of time before yesterday’s applicants acquire student psychology. This happens mainly in high school.
In search of tenderness and love ...
Almost for the first time in my own practice I had a chance to encounter groups where young men prevailed. 17-18 years old is the age of active mastering of life in all its temptations and clearly increased interest in the opposite sex. Talk about the spiritual essence of love and the Platonic period of love and courtship here “roll” a little - something else is needed. Not once noted that Buninsky "I entered her at midnight ..." even for these hardened cynics and nihilists is sobering and at least partially awakens those "good feelings" that our other classic had once expressed.
External brutality often masks the convulsive tenderness, which the guys hesitate. Clips and hugs in the corridors, tingling and patting the famous places of fellow students signal us not at all about licentiousness or inability to behave (although where does it come from - the culture of behavior, when in the family they teach one, in the school - another, on the street - the third ?!) but about the desire for love, the desire for it, along with the deeply complex nature, with the fear of somehow posing yourself, discovering it.
Why do I need your culture at all?
Of course, we had to deal with the attitude to humanitarian subjects as an unnecessary ballast at the level of the primitive question “Why do we need this?” Some colleagues ignore this question, others embark on long, confused explanations that do not explain anything, but only confuse the essence of the question.
The need for self-education is not said now, and not by us - only this need is not realized by everyone and not immediately. Almost nothing needs to be explained to those who are focused on career, on success, on elevation above others - they absorb everything like a sponge and then it turns out that they will remain in them for a long time, which is for a few minutes. Here are just these "targeted", as already mentioned above, a clear minority, although working with them is a pleasure.
The general low culture, undoubtedly, makes itself felt at all levels of communication with students, so that there students - on a national scale! We often judge by ourselves: if we know this, we should know them too, while they still don’t owe anything to anyone; this generation is free from much, almost from everything, and certainly completely devoid of so-called. "intellectual complexes": lying is bad, stealing is not good, etc.
While infrequently, but still there are in the classrooms and indigo children, with whom you need to especially keep your ears open. In short, a personal example of a teacher means extremely much and hardly needs any special evidence. It happens that the subject is loved because of the teacher, thanks to him. There is still little that can be understood in the subject, but they are already stretching, trying and deserving of praise at least for this endeavor, even if the end result - the examination score - will be modest.
Until now, there is a mystery to me: how modern youth combines earthiness, pragmatism of thinking (“Will it be on the exam?”) With a kind of infantilism, naive confidence that they will chew everything and put it in their mouths, you just have to keep it open; that everything will be done for them by adult uncles and aunts. However, uncles and aunts are frankly afraid of both high school students and students - they never know what they have in mind, but a lot of money ...
When there is no time to learn ...
Repeatedly at the general meetings of teachers there was a question about the low attendance of students in classes and the reasons for this. Various reasons were called. It seems that one of them was an attempt to combine the incompatible - work and study. I do not know a single student who would have such a combination to be successful, inevitably you have to sacrifice something, and more often than not, it’s learning that remains. That is why in my own practice I never demand any explanatory and do not listen to excuses for not attending classes - there are plenty of reasons, and if in my eyes they are disrespectful, then for them it is the opposite, because everyone has their own truth.
About iron logic
Another scourge of our time in relation to student youth is the inability to think abstractly, figuratively. Otherwise, how to explain that the question of the sociology teacher "what is a mobile person?" should answer: "a man with a mobile phone." The logic is ironic, deadly, absolutely straightforward. Or an example from my own practice: when asked about the reasons for the name of the “golden age of Russian culture,” a part-time student quite sincerely answered that they began to hand over more gold medals in gymnasiums and universities, and just as sincerely wondered why I sent it home.
Where to look for reasons?
Does school fail, does family influence? It seems that to a much greater extent, immature minds are influenced by the media, so-called. "yellow press", where everything is given at face value and even an apology for exaggerated sensations may not follow, and if followed - in small print and not on the front page of the publication.
I note that the audience begins to listen much more carefully when you begin to update the material with stories from personal experience or about what you see, heard from others. In the western practice of teaching, all this is considered bad form: the teacher is expected to dry out the material with a minimum of "gag", because he has come to the audience to help students master the knowledge. We have the opposite. I leave aside the question - is it good or bad. For me, one thing is undoubtedly - a student can, of course, be able to read a paragraph from the textbook himself, but will he figure it out himself? The question is rhetorical. The dry theory, without which, and in a number of the humanities, is indispensable, simply obliges her to "revive", and then, you see, thanks to him, it will be better and better understood.
The influence of mass culture affects the narrow understanding of creativity by the students, more precisely, of art, for creativity is in the name of the Creator, and art from the devil, because it is intended to tempt. Unfortunately, even at the level of school head teachers for educational work, this work is reduced only to holding discos and KVNs, which have long been exhausted and outdated, as if there are no other forms.
This is the specificity of teaching humanities in a technical college. Of course, it is possible and necessary to work with everyone, so only the majority in the audience would have both skills - to listen and to hear.
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