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Why do people pack their bags when the prof is still talking? You’re paying to hear what they have to say, so sit down and shut up until they’re done for christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with you? —Not like I’m trying to hear or anything…
This article appears in Jan 9-15, 2014.
14 Comments
Stop telling people what to do with the services they paid for. They don’t have to justify their reasons for leaving early to you. If they’re being loud, try asking them to be a bit quieter. Jesus.
Move to the front of the class with the rest of your types?
Totally valid bitch, but it is now time for you to vocally complain the next time it happens.
Already covered this.
Some profs are useless twats. I had this one prof that only read word for word the power points she got from the textbook manufacturer.
She told us not to bail mid class because it was rude. After one class, about 20 of us left about 20 minutes in and congregated at the bus stop and just shook our heads. The test questions came from the text book manufacturer, so I stayed in bed for the rest of the semester and got an A+ from just reading the text book and showing up to the labs to write the tests.
Sometimes, profs are horrible lecturers.
It is not about the tuition. It is about respect. To your fellow students who DO care what the prof is saying. And to the prof. I am embarrased for classmates who decide the class is over before the prof is done. Precisely because they are willing to present disrespect as trivial. The do a huge disservice to their own integrity and character.
Actually, in lots of cases, their parents are paying for them to be there. So you can probably chalk it up to some sort of vague rebellious streak.
Yesterdays class clown, tomorrows barista.
I am paying to be there, which means I have to make money to pay to be there! I do have to catch a bus to get to my job and sometimes the prof likes to ramble and ramble on!
I would say they are all in a hurry to rush to their next ass to mouth session. I would pack up and leave the prof early too.
Oceanchick: how about the profs who are lazy fucks about their lectures have some respect for those of us paying a buttload to be there and put a little effort into it.
The profs who were engaging and cared never had early packer uppers in my experience. And they always had people hang around to talk about the lecture with them.
Just because you’re teaching a large survey class, doesn’t mean you get to be a lazy fuck about teaching.
THE COMMODIFICATION OF EDUCATION & THE RISE OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL MAN
“You’re paying to hear what they have to say, so sit down and shut up until they’re done for christ’s sake.” (Not like I’m trying to hear or anything)
What is going on here? I mean, what is REALLY going on? Some have claimed that the students are disrespectful, that they lack common courtesy and that’s partly true. But what’s REALLY going on is a living example of the commodification of education.
What is the commodification of education? It is the reduction of education to just another commodity, an object or service for sale and for consumption. Education has been reduced to an economic good. The consumers (students) have paid for the commodity (education) provided by the seller (the corporate university) and they damned well want their money’s worth.
Traditionally, the university was a haven of thought and reflection on the big questions, one away from the hurly-burly of everyday commercial life. That haven has ceased to exist. The university has become vocationalized, little more than a place for consumers to train in order to maximize their future incomes. The sellers, of course, have been complicit in the commodification of education by pandering to the consumers’ expectations. Courses of doubtful quality proliferate to meet the demands of the customer with the result that those which lack a bang for the buck – the Humanities, in short – are laughingly dismissed at being irrelevant, as being airy-fairy and out-of-touch.
But the commodification of education has not stopped at the institutional level. It has come to infect the individuals involved. Their minds have become flattened. Not only do they not reflect on the Good, the True and the Beautiful, they even lack the concepts or the words to describe them. The Good has become “what works,” the True a hollow fiction and the Beautiful, where one can utter the word without embarrassment, completely sexualized.
In his “One Dimensional Man” the philosopher Herbert Marcuse spoke of the flattening of the university as a haven of thought and reflection prior to action in the world as a result of such reflection. Today in the realm of the commodification of the university, both such disinterested reflection (“theoria”) and action (“praxis”) are alien concepts. The service provider and the consumer have become paramount, examples of Marcuse’s one-dimensional man. Indeed, to even mention the name of Herbert Marcuse today is to be met with a blank stare of incomprehension. Those who are staring, of course, are themselves one-dimensional but will never understand that. That is, in large part, what makes them one-dimensional in the first place.
New Avatar Alert!
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
They just want to get the fuck out of there.
RSVP
: Wheels (01/12, 10:16AM)
Which just proves my point. They shouldn’t be there in the first place. And not just the students “who want to get the fuck out of there” but the bitcher himself. He is “trying to hear” because of the tokens of consumption he believes will accrue to him. He is a devoted customer, eagerly gobbling up the commodified education which the corporate university has packaged for his purported benefit. In spite of his protestations he is just like the rest of the class. Like them, he has become a one-dimensional man for whom nothing exists – nothing indeed has any reality – beyond the nexus of economic exchange.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!