This morning I posted the following blog post, by Dr. Scott McLeod (Twitter) at Dangerously Irrelevant, on my FB wall:

Our students want better work, not less work

Chris Guillebeau says:

Many people believe that the key to an improved lifestyle is less work. I think it’s better work. I believe that most of us want to work hard, but we want to do the kind of work that energizes us and makes a positive impact on others. That kind of work is worth working for, and the other kind of work is worth letting go of, finished or not. (The Art of Non-Conformity, p. 10)

I think that pretty much sums it up for our students, doesn’t it? It’s not that they don’t want to work hard. It’s that they don’t want to expend too much energy on work that isn’t meaningful. When we see reports of rampant plagiarism or tales of students who want to do as little as possible in order to get a grade, isn’t that an indication that they’re doing work that’s not meaningful to them? When students are working on something that they’re passionate about, rather than apathetic, don’t most of these so-called generational ‘values’ or ‘character’ issues disappear?

Contrary to what many believe, our students don’t want to just get by. They just want better work.

This afternoon, I received a comment to that wall posting from a former student. Bethany was part of a nationwide online learning program that I helped develop and pioneer back in 1997 (she was in middle school then). She stepped into a technology rich (for the time) environment that was unlike any she had ever been part of during her schooling. I remember her tenaciousness and desire to master the technology and the learning. She is now in college studying Administrative Office Systems, so her commentary is extremely apropos. She knows what she's talking about because, she switched majors after making the discovery she mentions in her comment.

"I completely agree with this. I think that the lack of real world experience in the class room is why a lot of college students find it so hard to find what they want to do because you are required to do all of the classwork (i.e. generals) that has little real world application to what your major is and by the time you get to the class where you shadow or work as a n intern you've already invested years towards a major that you're no longer sure you want to do. There is all of this pressure in high school to know what we want to do as a career. How are we suppose to know, when all we know is the seemingly irrelevant classwork? And what annoyed me the most were that adults who would tell me, "Wait until you get into the 'real' world. Well, why shouldn't the classroom be the 'real' world?"

Had Bethany been considered part of the equation when she entered college things might have turned out differently. The prepackaged idea that everyone needs exactly "this amount" of exactly "these courses" seems a bit disingenuous today. How many of you remember your World Civilizations course from freshman year? How about General Science? What was your commitment to those courses and what did you take away from them that has served you, even marginally, in the years since (answers questions while watching Cash Cab doesn't count)?

What if Bethany had been able to design her degree? What if she had been able to work as an intern during her first year? Would she have made her change of lanes before she even started? Very possibly. That would have allowed her to spend her years (and the resulting dollars) in college doing what would best lead her to achieve her goal. Instead, the reality of the career path she chose upon entering college, was kept secret from her until she had invested significant time and money in her college experience.

Bethany's question is pointed and deserves an answer, "Why shouldn't the classroom be the 'real' world?" Can anyone answer it?

Cross posted at Constructing Meaning