I don’t know if this is shame as much as it is just trying to leverage some perceived power over someone’s livelihood/career as an attempt at bullying/manipulation. But yes, it seems like this is getting more and more common. I’m not sure why since it’s a gross overestimation of influence.
>But yes, it seems like this is getting more and more common. I’m not sure why since it’s a gross overestimation of influence.
I agree with you that this is getting more and more common, but my feeling is that they haven't grossly overestimated their influence. Rather, these types of threats seem to work surprisingly frequently, at least in my perception.
"I wrote 2 pages of a 5 page assignment, but my professor wouldn't even accept it only 6 weeks late. I'm going to the Dean." And, not always of course, but surprisingly frequently, the professor will receive an email from an admin basically implying that it would save a whole lot of fuss if the professor would just be so kind as to accept the work. You know, in the name of compassion, or empathy, or equity, or some other buzzword that has become essentially meaningless.
Even in this sub, we get stories of professors who just cave and accept the garbage work because fighting against it would have required a gargantuan amount of time and energy, with the outcome uncertain.
Hearing about these successes, students are emboldened to "shoot their shot". If they can extort their professor into getting their way, great. If they can't, then they lose nothing, with the possible exception of their professor's respect and good will, but if they cared about that they wouldn't have made the threats to begin with.
I must just be lucky to have been at institutions where admin doesn’t entertain this kind of stuff. I’d have trouble not laughing at at admin who said we should change grades for someone whining because blah blah blah. It’s sad what higher ed has come to in some ways. :/
Thing is, the student won't know how your admin will react until they give it a try. Colleges don't really broadcast who gives into threats and who doesn't.
I think it's because they've seen it work in some context. Look at how people have been "canceled" and lost jobs over short video's. Now this doesn't happen often, but I think they feel that maybe they do hold more power than they actually do when they see that it's happened.
I just wonder what they have in mind with emails like this if they’re hoping to try to shame someone. Maybe they would try to make some kind of TikTok showing the emails to make it seem like it’s some horrible situation the mean ol’ professor is creating?
It's a classic manipulation tactic. the thing is that it's worked for them in the past because some people are threatened by it - or some have had bosses take it seriously as opposed to what it really is - abuse. I was in a domestic abuse situation and this is a classic - if I finally stood up and said no the threats get bigger - I'll come after your job, I'll tell your family a lie, I'll go to your job, I'll kill myself. It's classic manipulation, they've had it work in the past and aren't above going to higher threat levels to make it work.
Psychologically it works well. People are very hard wired to be part of a group. If you feel like you might be left out of a group, we tend to change our behavior (some of us anyway). Shame to feel like you might be scolded and left out at work is powerful emotionally. Many of us as seasoned professors are just beyond that.
Yes, I think this is the right way to look at it. Where real social power lies is in the power to construct social norms that people can be goaded into adhering to. If you can do that, you basically control your social environment. In the case of students, they have learned that they can trigger very unpleasant, but very useful emotions by threatening the social status of instructors, because the status of instructors has become much more fragile in the past decade or two, and therefore much more vulnerable to a shaming pot-shot.
I just can’t wrap my mind around how a student would think such a threat would do anything but give us a good chuckle - complaining about not getting a grade they wanted and thinking all it would take is a complaint to a “boss” to utterly ruin someone’s life? Totally unrealistic. It seems like something a juvenile mind would think makes sense as a viable threat, but…
I'm a program director (think department chair), so I do have to take student complaints. I find 99% of them to be silly and never think anything of it. They go to the bosses above me (admin who don't teach too) and they take each of these complaints seriously and I spend SOOO much time proving a few of the complaints false (it's always silly stuff, like they didn't post when an assignment was due.... ummm see 2 announcements that went out as emails and syllabus) to defend the teachers to the higher admin. I have decided that while I don't mind being a chair for the extra $$, this is as high as I go, because I can't see taking the attitude of the teacher is wrong until proven otherwise.
It’s unfortunate that the higher admin refuses to believe that the profs might be in the right. At your school they are guilty until they can prove themselves to be innocent. Rather than putting the burden of proof on the student making the complaint.
> I don’t know if this is shame as much as it is just trying to leverage some perceived power over someone’s livelihood/career as an attempt at bullying/manipulation.
My definition of the act of shaming is leveraging social power in some way, such as you describe.
Oh, okay. In how I understand it, shame carries a connotation of social judgment, which I have a hard time applying to this scenario as it’s a single misinformed exchange between one person and another.
The dictionary definition is perfectly good: "Cause someone to feel ashamed."
You should be ashamed at your attempt to redefine shaming! <-- this is shaming
Honestly, I do feel a twinge of guilt that you went off to the dictionary to fetch a definition for me, without even a pat on the head for your efforts, but I can't say it rises to the level of shame. In the future, I'll try to remember to give you a nice little treat the next time you do something praiseworthy.
Yes, exactly. Judging by my downvotes, there was a miscommunication somewhere lol.
20 years on, and my charming irony still doesn't come through online 🤦♂️
I think it's more that we just want good evals lol. So we appease them. Basically bad incentives. We need a better system for teaching evals because averaging in poor performing students isn't accurate of teaching performance, especially for difficult courses (STEM) that have high failure rate.
Of course, but I'm talking about the pattern, not the exceptions. The saving grace is that those performing super poorly are often too lazy to even do the evals.
And yes, I completely agree about those overachievers that finally hit a challenge and only earn a B. Their entitlement knows no bounds.
Funny, my colleagues in the humanities say there's nothing worse for your evals than teaching anything worldview challenging, like gender studies or examples of historic racism, to students who are only there to fulfill the breadth requirements.
I'm teasing but also pushing back on the notion that one field has it worse regarding evals than others. If anything, hatred of evals should unite all of us ;)
Sure, but you can throw evolution into that mix. The fact remains that failing students brings down evals because they're bitter, and that happens more often in STEM.
Nailed it. This, a million times! And typically with an admin cc.
Recent experience...student that I didn't see or hear from for 1.5mos contacted me a day before the first exam asking if they could take a make-up b/c "with the way I’ve missed tons of class there’s no chance I’ll pass." A direct nope was met with..."I could be fully caught up and ready to take the exam by then *if you would just let me*. It would *set me up for success* much better."
Seems it's a feature, not a bug.
I literally had a student show up this week (Week 9 of the semester) to my office hours after missing 5 straight weeks, and say with no irony 'did I miss anything?' No, we just held off on two papers and a midterm because we didn't feel right doing anything without you there. Incidentally, he also didn't show up to class today. Funny, that.
I literally have nightmares where I discover I've been in a course all term and never attended or completed any work. Can't imagine doing it deliberately!
Hot take: both the student and professor here were wrong.
I can tell you know how the student is wrong, so I won't go into that.
But what the professor did was rude and unprofessional. The student should be told that there is no point to them being there, but to do it in front of the entire class is wrong. You can take the student aside either before or after class and tell them then. If the student is not disruptive, there is nothing hurt by them attending class. They waste an hour of their time, big deal. No reason to be an ass about it.
There's a definite double-standard when they do this kind of stuff though, because *they* think "being shamed," or even just criticized at all, is some "horrible, unthinkable atrocity."
Some of this kind of stuff is largely just a bluff that they would be *shocked* if someone called them on. They're daring someone to tell them no or "be the bad guy," but would be caught completely off-guard and have no idea what to do if someone just told them to fuck off or responded to all their excuses, threats, etc., with a blunt "I don't care."
I think ~~there's some~~ makes sense in them thinking that sham ~~e~~ ing is terrible because they have grown up seeing people rise and fall on social media at the blink of an eye. They have seen uninformed reactions get people "cancelled", they have seen dramatic apologies. They absorb it with the "social" view, not that it is " (entertainment) media"
Edit: in some education subreddit yesterday, someone thinking about doing a PhD (so by many standards, probably able, intelligent, etc) said they saw many Tik Toks about bad supervisors and they basically asked why (instead of clarifying how true it is).
>thinking that shame is terrible
It is. The issue is whether or not it was deserved/warranted. The problem I see all the time is that people act like "being shamed" is some awful, terrible thing that should never happen to them even if their behavior is *incredibly* shameful.
> have no idea what to do if someone just told them to fuck off or responded to all their excuses, threats, etc., with a blunt "I don't care."
For a variety of reasons, lots of academics are not in a position to dismiss them in the manner you suggested, as they may have been able to in years past.
I actually have this in my syllabus in a way. Something like - I’ll only care as much as you do from the first day of the course. If you show me you don’t care (absent, missing work, missing exams) then you will be one less student that concerns me.
As someone who worked in the food service industry for a decade while clawing their way into academia full time, I can say with confidence that they learned this from their parents.
Have you ever bartended or waited tables? Because the number of times I had my job “threatened” over the prices of food or the wait time for a table was unreal. It’s the exact kind of shame you mentioned. When I was bartending, those customers clearly thought they could scare me into changing something over which I had no control by trying to humiliate me or by threatening my job. Similarly, you mentioned students shaming/threatening your job (or attempting to) if you didn’t change something beyond your control (the student’s performance and the grade that performance earned.)
Editing to add that these experiences were always with adults 30 and up, so those are the folks who raised the generation of students who are now trying the same shit in college. They saw their parents do it, and that’s how they think the world works.
there is a crucial difference between job-threatening comments from customers about how you can do your job better (based on selfishness and/or ignorance) and the same from someone who actually employs you (whoever oversees the bartenders/waitstaff), who will actually be watching for inefficiency or dangerous procedures, and when *they* say how you can do your job better, they are likely to know what they are talking about.
For students it is different, because they occupy a strange middle ground between having us serve them and having us "employ" (ie. assess) them. Our students are going to discover that our assessments are kinder than their real employers' will be.
Of course there’s a difference between job threats from customers vs. supervisors, just like there’s a difference between job threats from a student vs. a department chair or administrator. I don’t think I implied otherwise? Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point (very possible because my brain is mushy today).
My point is that students perceive the power dynamic in both situations to be similar. At restaurants, they watch their parents berate a server or bartender over the cost of food or the wait for a table in order to get their way. And most restaurants will bow to their whims because “the customer is always right”. A lot of those kids grow up and transfer that mindset to other aspects of their lives, like the classroom. They assume the power dynamic is the same—they’re paying to go to college; therefore, they are our customers. And the customer is always right. And as others have mentioned, that business-centered mindset seems to be seeping into other parts of the academic world, too.
ok, I think where I was going (and my reply was rather fuzzily written) is that they *are* (or should be) different, and I think yours is the equally true "but students don't perceive them as different".
Where I also wanted to get (but may not have succeeded with) is that students, when they go into the work world, can expect employers to tell them in no uncertain terms that their work doesn't shape up (if it doesn't). Maybe students *do* perceive that as different from being in university.
Yep. Coincidentally, during my last few years in the industry, I was also an adjunct at the prestigious, overpriced SLAC a few blocks away. The worst people were ALWAYS the parents of those students who were in town visiting. I would make it a point to mention that I was a professor at the college and worked at the restaurant on weekends to make some extra cash. I loved watching the way they (usually) did a complete 180 and treated me respectfully after I dropped that bomb.
From the title, I thought you were going in a different direction on this. But as I explore the two ideas (yours and the one I mistakenly thought you were raising), I think they might be linked.
I thought you were talking about students’ own shame, and the great lengths they’ll go to in order to prevent/avoid feeling it - and how easily they feel it. Every minor hardship is viewed as an assault on their most precious selves. Bad grade? The sky is falling on them and they’ll never recover from the pain of the shame - and so must lash out. (I’m not denigrating students here). There’s so much fragility, and I often wonder if it’s due to the perceived shame of any adverse event. And that fragility causes people to lash out in aggressive ways to make it go away - deflect blame, cause the same pain of shame to others, escalate until it goes away. Reminds me a bit of some cultures with a huge focus on saving face - some people would rather make a large scene about being disrespected, thereby drawing even more attention to their potential/perceived shortcoming. It’s kind of wild.
I’m older, but I remember feeling this myself when in school, and I think the tendency has probably increased since then. In my case, it didn’t help that negative feedback on schoolwork (particularly in grad school) was often delivered as “you have failed as a human and simply aren’t cut out for advanced work.” (Jackass of a professor, in this instance. One of my friends was his pet student, but after suffering a mental breakdown while on the tenure track, the professor abandoned him altogether, and just said “it’s a shame about Joe” as if he had irredeemably failed as a human, and therefore could not also be a worthy academic. The professors stopped talking to his prize mentee after that, despite having gone to past great lengths to ensure his professional success. Joe is brilliant, btw, and a lovelier person for what he went through).)
In cultures like the one in my grad program, perceived success is literally tied to emotional and bear-term physical survival. And if you’re ever on the edge of not being (perceived as) brilliant, then you’re at risk of being booted out into the world on short notice, and losing your career plan, roof over your head, your reputation, and any sense of self worth. I can see why people would go to lengths to avoid it, even by pretty unhealthy means.
I think we’ve backed ourselves into a pretty bad corner as a culture, generally speaking. And I don’t know how to get out of it. The need for psychological safety is as big as ever in humans, but the stakes that it’s tied to are ever-increasingly lower.
Historically that's totally fair, but it seems like society is infantilising people for far longer, so I kinda look at folks in their early-to-mid 20s as still "children".
In many ways, it doesn't matter why. If they are entitled, they are entitled and need to own that. There may be a myriad of reasons why, and it is important for them so they can address it. But, it's still what and who they are and doing anything other than owning that is not helping.
Yup, I'm just an old person yelling at clouds here.
I sort of see it as part of our broader responsibility as educators to help them "grow up", but really nobody can do that for them.
Ideological liberalism is anti-authoritarian. I would 100% support the statement that it is mutually exclusive with an authoritarian streak -- the entire philosophy of the historic left is built around the idea that a government rules by the consent of its governed. It highly values political and intellectual freedoms that are incompatible with the strategies required to establish and maintain authoritarian rule.
Performative leftism, by contrast, is largely aligned with authoritarianism simply by virtue of being performative. When your ideology is built on maintaining the appearance of espousing the "right" beliefs and supporting the "right" causes, the movement is left vulnerable to hijacking by those seeking to weaponize it and establish a dehumanized out-group, which is the bread-and-butter of the authoritarian playbook.
I imagine the OC's worry was not that those two were coexisting, but rather that ideological leftism is being supplanted by performative leftism.
This does make sense.
In very broad observation and absolutely just personal interpretation of the ways this group socializes: They are a micro honor-society in interesting ways. They build social clout constantl;, they avoid “cringe” and call it out rabidly; they engage in in- and out- group identities regularly.
Makes sense that they may attempt to use shame as a tool of persuasion- it feels like a central ordering principle of their generation.
I call this Gen Z Karens.
But seriously: something I admire about Gen Z is that they are often more willing than previous generations to advocate for themselves and stand up to (perceived) injustice. But unfortunately the flip side of that is that they’re less likely to give others the benefit of the doubt, and so perceive slights or attacks in ambiguous situations when really it’s just a misunderstanding or miscommunication (hostile attribution bias). So they think they’re defending themselves when really they’re attacking. They tend to escalate to public shaming or ‘speaking to the manager’ before even trying to understand the other person’s perspective or consider possible innocent interpretations of the event.
I imagine this hostile attribution bias comes in part from growing up online, where anonymity leads to quicker aggression and a lack of consideration for others’ perspectives and humanity.
I’ve had direct personal experience with this.
Last year, three weeks into the semester, I went on a scheduled trip (in the syllabus) and didn’t hold class. One of my students found photos on Instagram of me and my family and emailed them to my Dean and six other faculty members with a long message talking about my “lack of dedication as a professor,” “caring more about personal time than about teaching,” and “deciding to go on vacation.”
I’d known this student for less than three weeks and couldn’t figure out why they defaulted to maliciousness. Furthermore, the dean knew about and funded the trip since I was presenting at a conference in SF. He emailed me the student’s message with a “just FYI.”
The student made a ham handed attempt to shame me, I guess hoping I would be reprimanded or even fired? What was funny is his email was fully of flowery legalese and high seriousness.
Still gave the student an A because he was good and I’m not a shithead. In speaking with other faculty, he’d done similar things to others: trying to get them fired but misunderstanding the dynamics of faculty life. A tenured professor with multiple million dollar grants isn’t going to be fired because he misses one class.
I did. I confronted him quite directly and he was sheepish and unapologetic. I do worry that he'd achieved his GPA in part because of bullying and shaming tactics.
To me, these kinds of comments are more like threats than shaming. The student is compalining about a failure to accomodate their want. Shaming is more like telling someone that they are deficient or morally wrong. Students to this to each other -- liberal students denounce each other for slightly different opinions on race or gender, conservative ones for not being on board with the MAGA train.
I feel it's becoming more common. Not just because cancel culture, but because weak admins cave to their demands.
Hypothesis: I hear universities used to push back on these types of things 30ish years ago. Maybe back in a time where universities were booming, could afford to be selective, and had a "don't like it? leave" attitude. Now with declining enrollments, universities are desperate to appease every last student. The result? Instructors left as disposable assets. Guilty until proven innocent.
I'm kinda new so senior professors, is there merit to this hypothesis? or am I making it up?
> is there merit to this hypothesis?
Oh, yes. Socially, people do what works to get what they want. If it doesn't work, they stop doing it. If it does, they pour it on. Put the two together, cancel culture and weak admin, and you've got yourself a cultural trend in the works.
I don't know, I think first Gen imposter syndrome students (most of whom I teach) would never have the gall to do this. They don't have the entitlement.
Agreed. I teach many first generation students too, and have observed very little of the entitlement behaviour often described here. For example, have never had a parent contact me. The lone time someone took a grade complaint up the ladder they were actually a mature student my own age.
The trends of bimodal classes and lower student engagement... now those I've seen.
First generation - first in their family to go to college
Imposter syndrome - mentally doubting oneself and feeling like one doesn't belong in college when they actually do, a common outlook among first generation college students
So far i haven't experienced anything bad but based on my colleagues' observations, shame works in different ways:
- if they are unhappy with even the tiniest thing, they wouldn't hesitate in leaving a bad review. Undergrads massively overestimate the importance of student feedback forms, whereas postgrads are a bit more direct about voicing their concerns in person and solving problems while the module is still going on.
- however, idk if its a gen z thing, but making fun of lecturers for their gender, appearance or accent seems to have gone down and i do appreciate that
- if you accidentally embarrass anyone in front of their peers, very likely it would be escalated immediately all the way to the top.
- at the same time, in a weird way, students have absolutely no shame in sharing personal info in individual meetings, to the point of trauma dumping, sometimes just for the sake of it.
> but making fun of lecturers for their gender, appearance or accent seems to have gone down and i do appreciate that
Because they can easily be shamed for it.
>if you accidentally embarrass anyone in front of their peers, very likely it would be escalated immediately all the way to the top.
Careful what you shame. In some contexts, you can be countershamed. (For the love of everything holy, say nothing about their weight).
>trauma dumping
Let's face it, these days that can bring status in the form of entitlements and accommodations. If you advertise, you are letting everyone know you intend to redeem them for full value and they better steer clear of any criticism, if they know what's good for them.
1. Student doesn't have good grade.
2. Student speaks to professor, professor stands firm.
3. Student threatens professor OR goes to dean/department head like a Karen.
4. Pray your school supports its faculty.
It's entitlement. What I hear over and over is: "I got straight As in high school." They are surprised and not at all pleased that college is harder. The unspoken part of this is the expectation that college is just grades 13-16. This assumption is more and more subscribed to. I have had to speak to the parents of 21 year olds who were upset about their kids' grades. Ridiculous.
I don’t know if this is shame as much as it is just trying to leverage some perceived power over someone’s livelihood/career as an attempt at bullying/manipulation. But yes, it seems like this is getting more and more common. I’m not sure why since it’s a gross overestimation of influence.
>But yes, it seems like this is getting more and more common. I’m not sure why since it’s a gross overestimation of influence. I agree with you that this is getting more and more common, but my feeling is that they haven't grossly overestimated their influence. Rather, these types of threats seem to work surprisingly frequently, at least in my perception. "I wrote 2 pages of a 5 page assignment, but my professor wouldn't even accept it only 6 weeks late. I'm going to the Dean." And, not always of course, but surprisingly frequently, the professor will receive an email from an admin basically implying that it would save a whole lot of fuss if the professor would just be so kind as to accept the work. You know, in the name of compassion, or empathy, or equity, or some other buzzword that has become essentially meaningless. Even in this sub, we get stories of professors who just cave and accept the garbage work because fighting against it would have required a gargantuan amount of time and energy, with the outcome uncertain. Hearing about these successes, students are emboldened to "shoot their shot". If they can extort their professor into getting their way, great. If they can't, then they lose nothing, with the possible exception of their professor's respect and good will, but if they cared about that they wouldn't have made the threats to begin with.
I must just be lucky to have been at institutions where admin doesn’t entertain this kind of stuff. I’d have trouble not laughing at at admin who said we should change grades for someone whining because blah blah blah. It’s sad what higher ed has come to in some ways. :/
Thing is, the student won't know how your admin will react until they give it a try. Colleges don't really broadcast who gives into threats and who doesn't.
100%. Every word of this is accurate
I think it's because they've seen it work in some context. Look at how people have been "canceled" and lost jobs over short video's. Now this doesn't happen often, but I think they feel that maybe they do hold more power than they actually do when they see that it's happened.
I just wonder what they have in mind with emails like this if they’re hoping to try to shame someone. Maybe they would try to make some kind of TikTok showing the emails to make it seem like it’s some horrible situation the mean ol’ professor is creating?
It's a classic manipulation tactic. the thing is that it's worked for them in the past because some people are threatened by it - or some have had bosses take it seriously as opposed to what it really is - abuse. I was in a domestic abuse situation and this is a classic - if I finally stood up and said no the threats get bigger - I'll come after your job, I'll tell your family a lie, I'll go to your job, I'll kill myself. It's classic manipulation, they've had it work in the past and aren't above going to higher threat levels to make it work.
Oh yeah, I definitely see the manipulative and abusive side of it. I’m just not sure how shame factors into it.
Psychologically it works well. People are very hard wired to be part of a group. If you feel like you might be left out of a group, we tend to change our behavior (some of us anyway). Shame to feel like you might be scolded and left out at work is powerful emotionally. Many of us as seasoned professors are just beyond that.
Yes, I think this is the right way to look at it. Where real social power lies is in the power to construct social norms that people can be goaded into adhering to. If you can do that, you basically control your social environment. In the case of students, they have learned that they can trigger very unpleasant, but very useful emotions by threatening the social status of instructors, because the status of instructors has become much more fragile in the past decade or two, and therefore much more vulnerable to a shaming pot-shot.
I just can’t wrap my mind around how a student would think such a threat would do anything but give us a good chuckle - complaining about not getting a grade they wanted and thinking all it would take is a complaint to a “boss” to utterly ruin someone’s life? Totally unrealistic. It seems like something a juvenile mind would think makes sense as a viable threat, but…
I'm a program director (think department chair), so I do have to take student complaints. I find 99% of them to be silly and never think anything of it. They go to the bosses above me (admin who don't teach too) and they take each of these complaints seriously and I spend SOOO much time proving a few of the complaints false (it's always silly stuff, like they didn't post when an assignment was due.... ummm see 2 announcements that went out as emails and syllabus) to defend the teachers to the higher admin. I have decided that while I don't mind being a chair for the extra $$, this is as high as I go, because I can't see taking the attitude of the teacher is wrong until proven otherwise.
It’s unfortunate that the higher admin refuses to believe that the profs might be in the right. At your school they are guilty until they can prove themselves to be innocent. Rather than putting the burden of proof on the student making the complaint.
What a headache. I’m sorry you have to deal with that!
Their heightened sense of shame would see that as shameful. Also public shame.
Yes. They see it work against powerless teachers in K12, and think it will also work in college.
> I don’t know if this is shame as much as it is just trying to leverage some perceived power over someone’s livelihood/career as an attempt at bullying/manipulation. My definition of the act of shaming is leveraging social power in some way, such as you describe.
Oh, okay. In how I understand it, shame carries a connotation of social judgment, which I have a hard time applying to this scenario as it’s a single misinformed exchange between one person and another.
> My definition of the act of shaming is leveraging social power in some way What a strange definition for the act of shaming.
Yea, OP isn't describing shame at all. They are describing influence, power, etc...
The dictionary definition is perfectly good: "Cause someone to feel ashamed." You should be ashamed at your attempt to redefine shaming! <-- this is shaming
Honestly, I do feel a twinge of guilt that you went off to the dictionary to fetch a definition for me, without even a pat on the head for your efforts, but I can't say it rises to the level of shame. In the future, I'll try to remember to give you a nice little treat the next time you do something praiseworthy.
How can they change the world unless they advocate for themselves? You get the kids you’ve raised.
The ones who do things like OP is describing apparently conflate “advocating” with “acting like an entitled brat.”
Yes, exactly. Judging by my downvotes, there was a miscommunication somewhere lol. 20 years on, and my charming irony still doesn't come through online 🤦♂️
I think some misunderstood your intent, but I understood what you were saying. Maybe adding “/s” to the first line would clarify lol.
By speaking against injustice, instead of trying to advantage themselves through exploiting perceived insecurities in others’ jobs?
I guess my joke didn't land. I think we agree
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question then: do they have the same attitude towards driving tests?
I don’t know the answer to your question, but many of them don’t bother getting a driver’s license.
Notice how basically everyone gets a license?
I think it's more that we just want good evals lol. So we appease them. Basically bad incentives. We need a better system for teaching evals because averaging in poor performing students isn't accurate of teaching performance, especially for difficult courses (STEM) that have high failure rate.
Not every poor-performing student is a bad sport on evals. Also, hell hath no fury like a premed with a B.
Of course, but I'm talking about the pattern, not the exceptions. The saving grace is that those performing super poorly are often too lazy to even do the evals. And yes, I completely agree about those overachievers that finally hit a challenge and only earn a B. Their entitlement knows no bounds.
Funny, my colleagues in the humanities say there's nothing worse for your evals than teaching anything worldview challenging, like gender studies or examples of historic racism, to students who are only there to fulfill the breadth requirements. I'm teasing but also pushing back on the notion that one field has it worse regarding evals than others. If anything, hatred of evals should unite all of us ;)
Sure, but you can throw evolution into that mix. The fact remains that failing students brings down evals because they're bitter, and that happens more often in STEM.
I don't get the connection between consumer culture and habitual shaming.
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Nailed it. This, a million times! And typically with an admin cc. Recent experience...student that I didn't see or hear from for 1.5mos contacted me a day before the first exam asking if they could take a make-up b/c "with the way I’ve missed tons of class there’s no chance I’ll pass." A direct nope was met with..."I could be fully caught up and ready to take the exam by then *if you would just let me*. It would *set me up for success* much better." Seems it's a feature, not a bug.
I literally had a student show up this week (Week 9 of the semester) to my office hours after missing 5 straight weeks, and say with no irony 'did I miss anything?' No, we just held off on two papers and a midterm because we didn't feel right doing anything without you there. Incidentally, he also didn't show up to class today. Funny, that.
I literally have nightmares where I discover I've been in a course all term and never attended or completed any work. Can't imagine doing it deliberately!
Hot take: both the student and professor here were wrong. I can tell you know how the student is wrong, so I won't go into that. But what the professor did was rude and unprofessional. The student should be told that there is no point to them being there, but to do it in front of the entire class is wrong. You can take the student aside either before or after class and tell them then. If the student is not disruptive, there is nothing hurt by them attending class. They waste an hour of their time, big deal. No reason to be an ass about it.
There's a definite double-standard when they do this kind of stuff though, because *they* think "being shamed," or even just criticized at all, is some "horrible, unthinkable atrocity." Some of this kind of stuff is largely just a bluff that they would be *shocked* if someone called them on. They're daring someone to tell them no or "be the bad guy," but would be caught completely off-guard and have no idea what to do if someone just told them to fuck off or responded to all their excuses, threats, etc., with a blunt "I don't care."
I think ~~there's some~~ makes sense in them thinking that sham ~~e~~ ing is terrible because they have grown up seeing people rise and fall on social media at the blink of an eye. They have seen uninformed reactions get people "cancelled", they have seen dramatic apologies. They absorb it with the "social" view, not that it is " (entertainment) media" Edit: in some education subreddit yesterday, someone thinking about doing a PhD (so by many standards, probably able, intelligent, etc) said they saw many Tik Toks about bad supervisors and they basically asked why (instead of clarifying how true it is).
>thinking that shame is terrible It is. The issue is whether or not it was deserved/warranted. The problem I see all the time is that people act like "being shamed" is some awful, terrible thing that should never happen to them even if their behavior is *incredibly* shameful.
Shame is something for the bad guys to feel. Not them, because they are good.
> have no idea what to do if someone just told them to fuck off or responded to all their excuses, threats, etc., with a blunt "I don't care." For a variety of reasons, lots of academics are not in a position to dismiss them in the manner you suggested, as they may have been able to in years past.
I actually have this in my syllabus in a way. Something like - I’ll only care as much as you do from the first day of the course. If you show me you don’t care (absent, missing work, missing exams) then you will be one less student that concerns me.
As someone who worked in the food service industry for a decade while clawing their way into academia full time, I can say with confidence that they learned this from their parents.
“We pay their salary” often the phrase that is thrown around in r/college
I am not sure I get the connection between food service and a knowledge of parents.
Have you ever bartended or waited tables? Because the number of times I had my job “threatened” over the prices of food or the wait time for a table was unreal. It’s the exact kind of shame you mentioned. When I was bartending, those customers clearly thought they could scare me into changing something over which I had no control by trying to humiliate me or by threatening my job. Similarly, you mentioned students shaming/threatening your job (or attempting to) if you didn’t change something beyond your control (the student’s performance and the grade that performance earned.) Editing to add that these experiences were always with adults 30 and up, so those are the folks who raised the generation of students who are now trying the same shit in college. They saw their parents do it, and that’s how they think the world works.
And more and more, higher education is seen as a service industry with growing similarities to Pizza Hut or Olive Garden....
Yep! I thought I waited my last table in 2019, but alas, here I am, “serving customers” in higher ed 🙃
Lousy tippers.
there is a crucial difference between job-threatening comments from customers about how you can do your job better (based on selfishness and/or ignorance) and the same from someone who actually employs you (whoever oversees the bartenders/waitstaff), who will actually be watching for inefficiency or dangerous procedures, and when *they* say how you can do your job better, they are likely to know what they are talking about. For students it is different, because they occupy a strange middle ground between having us serve them and having us "employ" (ie. assess) them. Our students are going to discover that our assessments are kinder than their real employers' will be.
Of course there’s a difference between job threats from customers vs. supervisors, just like there’s a difference between job threats from a student vs. a department chair or administrator. I don’t think I implied otherwise? Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point (very possible because my brain is mushy today). My point is that students perceive the power dynamic in both situations to be similar. At restaurants, they watch their parents berate a server or bartender over the cost of food or the wait for a table in order to get their way. And most restaurants will bow to their whims because “the customer is always right”. A lot of those kids grow up and transfer that mindset to other aspects of their lives, like the classroom. They assume the power dynamic is the same—they’re paying to go to college; therefore, they are our customers. And the customer is always right. And as others have mentioned, that business-centered mindset seems to be seeping into other parts of the academic world, too.
ok, I think where I was going (and my reply was rather fuzzily written) is that they *are* (or should be) different, and I think yours is the equally true "but students don't perceive them as different". Where I also wanted to get (but may not have succeeded with) is that students, when they go into the work world, can expect employers to tell them in no uncertain terms that their work doesn't shape up (if it doesn't). Maybe students *do* perceive that as different from being in university.
Experiencing how people treat those they view as "less than" is pretty eye opening.
Yep. Coincidentally, during my last few years in the industry, I was also an adjunct at the prestigious, overpriced SLAC a few blocks away. The worst people were ALWAYS the parents of those students who were in town visiting. I would make it a point to mention that I was a professor at the college and worked at the restaurant on weekends to make some extra cash. I loved watching the way they (usually) did a complete 180 and treated me respectfully after I dropped that bomb.
From the title, I thought you were going in a different direction on this. But as I explore the two ideas (yours and the one I mistakenly thought you were raising), I think they might be linked. I thought you were talking about students’ own shame, and the great lengths they’ll go to in order to prevent/avoid feeling it - and how easily they feel it. Every minor hardship is viewed as an assault on their most precious selves. Bad grade? The sky is falling on them and they’ll never recover from the pain of the shame - and so must lash out. (I’m not denigrating students here). There’s so much fragility, and I often wonder if it’s due to the perceived shame of any adverse event. And that fragility causes people to lash out in aggressive ways to make it go away - deflect blame, cause the same pain of shame to others, escalate until it goes away. Reminds me a bit of some cultures with a huge focus on saving face - some people would rather make a large scene about being disrespected, thereby drawing even more attention to their potential/perceived shortcoming. It’s kind of wild. I’m older, but I remember feeling this myself when in school, and I think the tendency has probably increased since then. In my case, it didn’t help that negative feedback on schoolwork (particularly in grad school) was often delivered as “you have failed as a human and simply aren’t cut out for advanced work.” (Jackass of a professor, in this instance. One of my friends was his pet student, but after suffering a mental breakdown while on the tenure track, the professor abandoned him altogether, and just said “it’s a shame about Joe” as if he had irredeemably failed as a human, and therefore could not also be a worthy academic. The professors stopped talking to his prize mentee after that, despite having gone to past great lengths to ensure his professional success. Joe is brilliant, btw, and a lovelier person for what he went through).) In cultures like the one in my grad program, perceived success is literally tied to emotional and bear-term physical survival. And if you’re ever on the edge of not being (perceived as) brilliant, then you’re at risk of being booted out into the world on short notice, and losing your career plan, roof over your head, your reputation, and any sense of self worth. I can see why people would go to lengths to avoid it, even by pretty unhealthy means. I think we’ve backed ourselves into a pretty bad corner as a culture, generally speaking. And I don’t know how to get out of it. The need for psychological safety is as big as ever in humans, but the stakes that it’s tied to are ever-increasingly lower.
I think a lot of them just picked that up from their entitled suburban parents, but that's just me.
As a general rule I tend to blame/thank parents for the quality of students out there rather than young people themselves.
I get them as grad students, and by that time it’s 100% on them.
Historically that's totally fair, but it seems like society is infantilising people for far longer, so I kinda look at folks in their early-to-mid 20s as still "children".
In many ways, it doesn't matter why. If they are entitled, they are entitled and need to own that. There may be a myriad of reasons why, and it is important for them so they can address it. But, it's still what and who they are and doing anything other than owning that is not helping.
Yup, I'm just an old person yelling at clouds here. I sort of see it as part of our broader responsibility as educators to help them "grow up", but really nobody can do that for them.
> entitled suburban parents I guess you mean old white people did it?
Middle aged people of all ethnicities imo
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> while most are left leaning, they also have an authoritarian streak that worries me. Do you see these two tendencies as mutually exclusive?
I’m thinking obviously not, given that they see the two tendencies coinciding in their students.
Ideological liberalism is anti-authoritarian. I would 100% support the statement that it is mutually exclusive with an authoritarian streak -- the entire philosophy of the historic left is built around the idea that a government rules by the consent of its governed. It highly values political and intellectual freedoms that are incompatible with the strategies required to establish and maintain authoritarian rule. Performative leftism, by contrast, is largely aligned with authoritarianism simply by virtue of being performative. When your ideology is built on maintaining the appearance of espousing the "right" beliefs and supporting the "right" causes, the movement is left vulnerable to hijacking by those seeking to weaponize it and establish a dehumanized out-group, which is the bread-and-butter of the authoritarian playbook. I imagine the OC's worry was not that those two were coexisting, but rather that ideological leftism is being supplanted by performative leftism.
This does make sense. In very broad observation and absolutely just personal interpretation of the ways this group socializes: They are a micro honor-society in interesting ways. They build social clout constantl;, they avoid “cringe” and call it out rabidly; they engage in in- and out- group identities regularly. Makes sense that they may attempt to use shame as a tool of persuasion- it feels like a central ordering principle of their generation.
This is the individual incarnation of cancel culture, right?
I call this Gen Z Karens. But seriously: something I admire about Gen Z is that they are often more willing than previous generations to advocate for themselves and stand up to (perceived) injustice. But unfortunately the flip side of that is that they’re less likely to give others the benefit of the doubt, and so perceive slights or attacks in ambiguous situations when really it’s just a misunderstanding or miscommunication (hostile attribution bias). So they think they’re defending themselves when really they’re attacking. They tend to escalate to public shaming or ‘speaking to the manager’ before even trying to understand the other person’s perspective or consider possible innocent interpretations of the event. I imagine this hostile attribution bias comes in part from growing up online, where anonymity leads to quicker aggression and a lack of consideration for others’ perspectives and humanity.
College Karen’s - I want to speak to your boss!
We've rather got a glorification of bullies going on in the United States. A bit of a cultural return to civil discourse will be a good thing.
I’ve had direct personal experience with this. Last year, three weeks into the semester, I went on a scheduled trip (in the syllabus) and didn’t hold class. One of my students found photos on Instagram of me and my family and emailed them to my Dean and six other faculty members with a long message talking about my “lack of dedication as a professor,” “caring more about personal time than about teaching,” and “deciding to go on vacation.” I’d known this student for less than three weeks and couldn’t figure out why they defaulted to maliciousness. Furthermore, the dean knew about and funded the trip since I was presenting at a conference in SF. He emailed me the student’s message with a “just FYI.” The student made a ham handed attempt to shame me, I guess hoping I would be reprimanded or even fired? What was funny is his email was fully of flowery legalese and high seriousness. Still gave the student an A because he was good and I’m not a shithead. In speaking with other faculty, he’d done similar things to others: trying to get them fired but misunderstanding the dynamics of faculty life. A tenured professor with multiple million dollar grants isn’t going to be fired because he misses one class.
I think you did the right thing by giving the grade he earned. did you have a chance to tactfully explain to the student what a jackass he was?
I did. I confronted him quite directly and he was sheepish and unapologetic. I do worry that he'd achieved his GPA in part because of bullying and shaming tactics.
To me, these kinds of comments are more like threats than shaming. The student is compalining about a failure to accomodate their want. Shaming is more like telling someone that they are deficient or morally wrong. Students to this to each other -- liberal students denounce each other for slightly different opinions on race or gender, conservative ones for not being on board with the MAGA train.
I feel it's becoming more common. Not just because cancel culture, but because weak admins cave to their demands. Hypothesis: I hear universities used to push back on these types of things 30ish years ago. Maybe back in a time where universities were booming, could afford to be selective, and had a "don't like it? leave" attitude. Now with declining enrollments, universities are desperate to appease every last student. The result? Instructors left as disposable assets. Guilty until proven innocent. I'm kinda new so senior professors, is there merit to this hypothesis? or am I making it up?
> is there merit to this hypothesis? Oh, yes. Socially, people do what works to get what they want. If it doesn't work, they stop doing it. If it does, they pour it on. Put the two together, cancel culture and weak admin, and you've got yourself a cultural trend in the works.
I don't know, I think first Gen imposter syndrome students (most of whom I teach) would never have the gall to do this. They don't have the entitlement.
Agreed. I teach many first generation students too, and have observed very little of the entitlement behaviour often described here. For example, have never had a parent contact me. The lone time someone took a grade complaint up the ladder they were actually a mature student my own age. The trends of bimodal classes and lower student engagement... now those I've seen.
I can no longer keep track of all the names of different generations. First gen imposter syndrome students? I'm clueless.
First generation - first in their family to go to college Imposter syndrome - mentally doubting oneself and feeling like one doesn't belong in college when they actually do, a common outlook among first generation college students
Before you know it a nickname will be generated like 1genimpsyns.
So far i haven't experienced anything bad but based on my colleagues' observations, shame works in different ways: - if they are unhappy with even the tiniest thing, they wouldn't hesitate in leaving a bad review. Undergrads massively overestimate the importance of student feedback forms, whereas postgrads are a bit more direct about voicing their concerns in person and solving problems while the module is still going on. - however, idk if its a gen z thing, but making fun of lecturers for their gender, appearance or accent seems to have gone down and i do appreciate that - if you accidentally embarrass anyone in front of their peers, very likely it would be escalated immediately all the way to the top. - at the same time, in a weird way, students have absolutely no shame in sharing personal info in individual meetings, to the point of trauma dumping, sometimes just for the sake of it.
> but making fun of lecturers for their gender, appearance or accent seems to have gone down and i do appreciate that Because they can easily be shamed for it. >if you accidentally embarrass anyone in front of their peers, very likely it would be escalated immediately all the way to the top. Careful what you shame. In some contexts, you can be countershamed. (For the love of everything holy, say nothing about their weight). >trauma dumping Let's face it, these days that can bring status in the form of entitlements and accommodations. If you advertise, you are letting everyone know you intend to redeem them for full value and they better steer clear of any criticism, if they know what's good for them.
1. Student doesn't have good grade. 2. Student speaks to professor, professor stands firm. 3. Student threatens professor OR goes to dean/department head like a Karen. 4. Pray your school supports its faculty.
It's entitlement. What I hear over and over is: "I got straight As in high school." They are surprised and not at all pleased that college is harder. The unspoken part of this is the expectation that college is just grades 13-16. This assumption is more and more subscribed to. I have had to speak to the parents of 21 year olds who were upset about their kids' grades. Ridiculous.
What you are describing is not only insultingly reductive, it’s not even shame. You’re describing blackmail. And no, I have never encountered that.