Guest lecturer perspective: modern students are absolutely atrocious
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Anonymous
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Gave a guest lecture today. It really hasn't changed much over the years except with updated information. I had a hiatus a bit from doing the lecture, so this was the first time I restarted it since COVID, but holy Toledo modern students are horrible. They have attention spans of ants. And it is absolutely noticeable beyond belief when I think about teaching students and giving a lecture back in 2010 vs 2024. I guess this is the end result of raising entire generations on toxic social media like TikTok since they were out of the womb. We are absolutely doomed. Modern generations' brains have been fried by spastic social media clips that last only 3-4 seconds. Heaven forbid they have to sit through a 75 minute lecture on extremely complex topics that have been distilled down to them in a digestible manner.
Just horrible. Thank God I do not teach for a profession. I'd lose my mind dealing with modern students who are incapable of having focused thought for more than 5 minutes. One student even came into the class wearing headphones and wore them the whole time while I was giving lecture. WTH? If you don't want to listen, simply don't come then. This country is going to be an unmitigated disaster in 30 years when these people take over. I honestly don't know if gen alpha is going to be able to digest baby food for course material at the rate mental capacity and attention spans are rapidly degrading. It is scary how fast the quality of students has declined in only a fraction of my lifetime. |
Anonymous
| Sadly, this doesn't surprise me. Do you have kids, OP? If so, what did/didn't you do WRT raising them with/out modern media? |
Anonymous
Nope, no kids. |
Anonymous
| What grade? I teach kindergarten and so many kids are brain damaged from too much technology. Their eyes can barely focus on a picture in a book or on words. They haven't been able to watch a short animated movie for many years. |
Anonymous
It was a college course. |
Anonymous
| Sounds like you really needed to vent. That’s interesting and sad about the difference in students. My 8 yo gets really frustrated that entitled classmates won’t listen to the teachers and then their parents blame the teachers for yelling. Certainly they will not win teacher of the year, but my DC and I do feel sorry for those scapegoated teachers. |
Anonymous
| It sounds like your lecture sucks honestly. |
Anonymous
| That matches what teachers are saying on the teacher sub-reddits. It’s concerning. |
Anonymous
Nope, it's the same but with updated info. I actually got feedback directly from the students - overwhelmingly positive every single time. The material is fine. Why could students in 2010 pay attention and listen while kids in 2024 have the attention spans of ants? |
Anonymous
| Was just talking to another professor today about how the students barely have enough attention span to read a paragraph. Excerpted readings are getting shorter and shorter. They claim they don't understand all the words and don't bother to look them up in the dictionary. It's bad. |
Anonymous
| It is sad. The majority of students admit that they don’t read the textbook. It’s death by PowerPoint. |
Anonymous
Tech and social media is dumbing every generation down at an exponential rate. I seriously wonder if student 10 years from now will even be capable of reading anymore. |
Anonymous
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I was at a nightclub last weekend, my first time in years. The DJ wouldn't play full songs. He'd play 30-60 seconds of a song, then move to another, then revisit another part of that song later that evening. All I can guess is this is for the Tiktok generation that has a short attention span.
Also notice most songs these days start into the lyrics in the first 10 seconds, again I think due to attention spans. A song like U2's With or Without You would never be a hit today. |
Anonymous
| Another reason why being a teacher is a bad choice bc bully admin will punish and threaten a teachers career for having "bad management". |
Anonymous
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Just to offer a different perspective - I come in as a guest at a local college class every semester. I've been deeply impressed by the students I've met there. We do a discussion instead of me giving a talk so maybe that's a difference - but I always come away thinking how smart and thoughtful these kids are.
Not disputing your experience. Just saying, I guess, #notallstudents. |