Pressed for time and energy this particular Sunday, I’ll be bloggerly brief.
The new semester has begun at the good old University of Illinois. An item that appeared lately in Science Daily is haunting me. Since 2000, empathy has fallen off among college students. I know this in my bones and it’s driving me to drink.
Perhaps the problem is that students have been widgetized. Could it be that we in the ‘education business’ have been infected by thinking of our students as customers, and that we have a lack empathy for them? Could it be that our lack of empathy is reflected back at us and is now really beginning to bite us in the ass?
Kritik has published a first person piece by a student enduring the first week of school in the sciences. (This link can be found in my own list of blogs.) I can certainly empathize with this writer, because I also find equations difficult. I can’t fully empathize, though, because I’m not in the sciences and I’m not trying to raise kids at the same time.
As I sit at the piano, trying to get my technique back after a summer off, I do my best to energize the dancers. In the past, though, I seem to recall the students letting the playfulness of the music bring a response. Maybe Lady Gaga has raised the bar of shock and entertainment to the point where this piano music doesn’t do what it used to all by itself. The cultural references have all been superseded over the course of a summer. Or maybe the young dancers are just struck dumb by their worry and terror. So much rides on an education now, and we’re hyper aware that it costs so much money.
The other place where the students presented a valid, flat-out challenge was in the first meeting of the media class. I didn’t really get very far in my transmission of the syllabus before I was compelled to change it. The students do not want to make portfolio DVDs for standard def TVs. They want their portfolios on the web. And they want their web sites free. And they recommend Word Press.
Do I want to move this blog to Word Press?
I have to admit that I find the interface here at blogspot a bit dodgy.
This is now a ‘blog’ in the sense of a ‘log on the web.’ I do want to get back to writing, writing fiction, and writing experiments. I’ve started in on a series (which starts with that first one) where I write about dances I see on the web and embed them into the blog. Here at home, my connection is not up to it. And then there’s politics. Del’s out going door to door for the Dems. Don’t I have plenty of opinions?
Poetry…
What of that?
It must wait.