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Well, it's not exactly AWAD in Schools, but it definitely provides a fascinating perspective on the plight of nerds in US schools & the social forces at work: http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
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Dear Fiberbabe: I just don't remember peer pressure being even noticeable when I was in highschool. It was in the worst part of the depression, and the thing most kids were
worrying about was the chance of their getting job when they got out of school. All I was worrying about was getting into college. I didn't give a badword for what the
other kids thought of me. I knew I'd never see any of them
again after I left highschool, and I didn't. Popularity
is good for politicians, but not much else.
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Thanks, Junior Wheatgerm. That was a very interesting essay.
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I experienced this phenomon in several different ways. In the earliest years it was the really dumb, vicious kids who attacked me. About half-way through middle school it changed radically. The dumb guys and the normal guys were great buddies. We just sort of accepted each other even though we didn't hang out in the same crowds. I know it sounds conceited, but I when I talked with these guys, they would sometimes act like they held me some kind of awe. This was particularly true in high school when I was an upperclassman talking to lowerclassmen. The real pressure at that time came not from people who were dumb or average, but from people who were "almost smart," most of whom were extremely popular football types. But it wasn't a really clear thing. Some of the cheerleaders and football players were extremely decent people. But the pool of almost smart antagonists was drawn exclusively from their number.
I, too, went through puberty about this time - I was the only person on both the speech team and the wrestling team. I was also president of the post chess club and member of the math and latin teams. I wasn't a great wrestler. I was good, but did not have the instinct to really hurt anyone - except by accident. I broke two different people's collar bones at two different schools - in damn near the same place - by using an illegal throw. I really felt terrible about it in both cases - all I can say it's difficult to keep all the stuff in mind at the same time. There's a lot more thinking in wrestling than most people suppose. Anyway, when I switched high schools from fairbanks, ak to ft knox, ky I hadn't joined the new wrestling team yet - and I immediately became friends with the one of the weakest guys in school. He was a real target and an absolute victim. Two bullies started picking on us and I threatened to rip the top off a desk and bash their fucking brains out when a teacher intervened. They kept crowing, but they never screwed with me again - and they didn't screw with him when I was around. Chickenshits. Bullies really are chickenshits. I'm not even going to get started on the "teachers are liars" thing or the "pseudo-intellectual morons have taken over the school systems" thing. Suffice it to say I was shocked to find out my redneck step-father was right and the lying teachers were wrong - ignoring bullies is a seriously bad idea, and going to a teacher is a SERIOUSLY STUPID THING TO DO in some circumstances.
The real thing is this: there are alphas, betas, and gammas. Most, but not all, really smart people are gammas - they're just interested in other things besides making other people happy. Unfortunately the cost of marching to one's own drum is more than just unpopularity. If there is a way, the idiot contingent could very easily start screwing with you - physically.
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What bothers me even more about the incident with my new-found friend and myself getting bullied by these two pissants:
1. One of these guys grew out of his stupidity. By the time we were all seniors, this guy had joined JROTC, was a leader there, and had actually learned to be a human being.
2. The other fellow died in a freak accident. He moved off post but was visiting a (non-bullying) friend on post when a storm struck. There was a flash flood while they were playing frisbee or ball or something and he fell in the water and was drowned. Seemed like everyone was extremely mornful of this weasel. This in itself didn't bother me, but all the talk about what a great human being he was made me want to puke. I can't count the number of times I've regretted not charging down to the office, commandeering the microphone, and giving the school an earful of well-deserved venom. This was not "a nice guy." He was a popular guy who was gutless, unscrupulous, and slimey.
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Or how about, "My mother always told me, if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all. Let's all have a moment of silence for our deceased classmate."
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FF, thanks for your story. I found it fascinating. But I've got two questions (and if I as a fellow Amurican don't understand, then maybe some of our furriner friends won't, either):
What is JROTC? And what is "post chess club", "on-post", etc? (Army post?)
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"Let's all have a moment of silence for our deceased classmate."
Good idea. But I don't think it would give me much relief.
I don't mind being bullied by this cretin. I was not at any time afraid of him - hell, I can't even remember his name any more. I can almost remember the other guy's name, the one who turned out okay. I can't remember my friend's last name, but I remember his first name, "Chuck." I spent the remainder of my first year at the new high school afraid that this goon was going to waylay Chuck. You know that guy on SNL - one of the guys of that goofy dancing duo - the one's who act like sissies and during an audition where they bring their boombox. The chubby guy looks a lot like Chuck. Chuck was 14 and looked 11, a little chubby and he looked a little bit Gaussian, which is to say a bit like a ten pin with legs. It's hard to get across exactly how innocuous this guy was and how much of a lowlife life a person would have to be to attack the kid.
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JROTC = Junior Reserve Officer Training Core. It used to be a big thing at Ft. Knox. I'm not sure any more. Last time I went to Knox - just a coupla years ago - it seemed like a ghost town.
I was in it for two years myself. You learn military history, first aid, cpr, marksmanship (there was a shooting range in the basement of the elementary school next to the high school). You also learn a little about leadership - in fact, the main reason I signed up was because I saw how idiot number 1 had done a 180 with his life. (I'm something of a persona non grata at my alma mater, particularly with the JROTC people, but even in general. Not sure, but I may be the only person from Ft. Knox to get to USMA and then leave on purpose.)
They also have a drill team and those guys are pretty impressive. I saw a number of poorer (intellectually, not financially) students actually blossom in the program. I think I was the only nerd. It was also interesting, because there were people younger than me who outranked me. It was very funny at times to see them exert some kind of respectful control over me. I've seen people abuse authority before - particularly at the USMA - but not too many in the JROTC. Not saying it doesn't happen, just that I either never witnessed it or didn't notice it.
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Interesting, but I can state that large chunks of that thesis do not apply here in Zild. Unifroms make a big difference, and at least in my own case, I only had one teacher who would have taken the "Cliff Notes" approach, most of the others were actually interested in tecahing their kids to think, shockingly enough.
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OK. And the post business refers to Army posts? And do they have JROTC in "regular" USn schools? And if there is a JROTC, is there also an ROTC, without the J?
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ROTC = Reserve Officer Training Corps. I suppose a highschool preparation for college ROTC could be "Junior ROTC". How grateful I am that my son had Air Force ROTC at Cornell.
It led to his present job as airline pilot, making more
than his mother and I did together. He loves his job,
and is happier than I have ever been.
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And yes, the post chess club means "the chess club that resides at ft knox."
Wrestling practice was every day. Chess club was Tuesdays and sometimes Saturdays. Later we switched to Fridays. After wrestling on chess days, I would walk to the on-post recreation center, which was several miles from the high school. I'd play till about midnight or sometimes a little later and then walk home - about four miles. Sometimes I didn't get home till about 1 or 2 am.
Kinduva strange thing: If one of my brothers was five minutes late for dinner, they were in deep feces, but I could come home at 2 am and my dad was just ask, "Another late night at the library?" or something like that. OTOH, I never got arrested, either, so Dad was a little bit lenient with me.
I remember one day I gave blood - my first time. I had asked my dad for permission, but he doesn't believe in it for himself and refused. Then I did something I knew was wrong and that I hadn't done previously since I was a child - I went to my mother, who signed it. I gave blood, THEN went to wrestling practice. As I was late, I had to wrestle everyone (go through the mills). There were a number of us in the same boat. Then I walked home ... as soon as I walked through the door, my dad knew what I'd done. He didn't even yell at me. It was cold and my lips were numb. I was very dizzy. A few days later is when I broke the second guy's collarbone. I quit after that and just focussed on the intellectual things. I don't remember if I quit of my own accord or if my dad made me quit. Either way, I went back to playing chess a lot - not so much as I did in middle school when I'd play 12 or 14 hours a day, but maybe 1 or 2 hours every day, plus the club time. It was a lot of fun. I started out so shy and uncertain. But the guys (one officer rated an expert and an enlisted fellow rated C) who started the club disappeared and I was left holding the bag. I was never elected, but the rec center people came up and sort of assigned me to be in charge and put me down as the president. Thereafter I always showed up. It was also a lot of fun because the post Hawaiian club met downstairs and was playing their drums and doin the hula downstairs. I *loved* watching the girls do the hula. One day a girl came up to play with me - she was wearing actual coconuts. Dazzlingly beautiful and I couldn't take my eyes off her. I didn't let her win - I just honestly couldn't concentrate. Unfortunately I was too shy to strike up a real conversation and answered her questions with yes, no, duh, uh. Jesus did I blow that one.
Anyway, the chess thing was a big part of my life growing up.
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AnnaS:
We have a JROTC program at my school, and it is highly successful in creating achievable goals for its members. The kids who can't make it are booted out. Of course, it is open to male and female students. The teachers are military officers, and I have found them to be very reasonable to work with. For instance, I hold a Friday afternoon recovery school session for students who have difficulty grasping newly introduced writing concepts during the week. The JROTC teachers have allowed their kids to attend my workshops when there has been a conflct with their own drill time.
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(J)ROTC is about as foreign a concept to us (Zilders) as you can get. Oh, we had "cadets" - a week or so of paramilitary training - every year, but the ongoing thing would never go down. As a para-military brat (my uncle was a WO1 in the NZ Army and I spent lotsa holidays at army bases) I can tell you now that my view of the army pretty much came out to it being one step above prison ... Oh, and BTW, that's Junior Wheatgerm©, Connie! 
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the army pretty much came out to it being one step above prison ...
Dear Capfka: and a lot of good men go to your "prison"
to keep you free.
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Oh, and BTW, that's Junior Wheatgerm©, Connie!Duly noted, sir. The check's in the mail.
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I can tell you now that my view of the army pretty much came out to it being one step above prison
I can sympathize. My dad was a DI and was adamant that none of his kids go into the service as "he and his father and grandfather" had done sufficient service for the entire family.
I was surprised at how pleasant my JROTC experience was - nothing at all like going to West Point (from whence I evacuated soon into the regular school year).
That was *REALLY* like being in a prison for me. (Great school, though, for persons of a certain bent.)
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highly successful in creating achievable goals for its members.
That's one thing the entire military is good at, imo. Also, teachers with extensive military experience tend to be good, if stern, teachers. First they tell you what they they're going to tell ya, then they tell ya, then they tell ya what they told ya. This can be tedious at times, but generally I think most students really appreciate it.
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First they tell you what they they're going to tell ya, then they tell ya, then they tell ya what they told ya.
I know some people who preach like that. It tends to make for treble-length sermons.
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It tends to make for treble-length sermons.
This is the sort of customer "service" which drives the customer away, Father Steve.
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Different religious cultures produce different expectations about sermon length. My sense is that the average Episcopalian begins to squirm in the pew after about fifteen minutes. I was once invited to preach at an African Methodist Episcopal Church. The pastor told me that their tradition was to preach longer sermons than we Anglicans preach. I worked hard and produced a sermon of 45-minutes duration. After the service, many of the members of the congregation shook my hand and were very gracious, but several asked "Why did you stop preaching when you were just getting warmed up?"
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"Why did you stop preaching when you were just getting warmed up?"
One culture's sermon is another culture's sermonizing, Father Steve.
In either case, it's always better to leave them praying for more.
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Absolutely Fabulous!
I have pondered and pondered these same issues. A young girl, of half asian descent, half Italian/Irish...I felt I didn't fit. I wondered about the magic popularity formula for most of school age years. I was kind, smart and my friends thought I was funny...
Ahh, now as an adult I watch the youth of today. One thing is apparent; this is a lack of understanding and depth on the part of those adolescent popu-lar-ites. They may suffer the same evils but the difference lies in the analysis of the evil as well as the ability to contemplate your place in the resolution of the problems that plague you. I used to just call it shallow but that's derogatory. I think it is more a cerebral ability to pick apart the "fake" the "phony" and question why?
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re:A young girl, of half asian descent, half Italian/Irish...I felt I didn't fit.
she rah, welcome home! we like to say, there are no rules around here, but fact is, the people who fit best here are those that often didn't (or still don't) fit well in most places.
the most interesting discussions are provoked by someone with an 'outsider's' view looking at and questioning something (a word, an idiom, an expression), that, we all take for granted (or if you prefer, that we take for granite!-some of us are pretty hard headed!) as insiders, in someway.
most of us are pretty adept at looking at things from the outsider's point of view, because we have all been (and in someways continue to be) outsiders in some way, shape or form ourselves.
look forward to hearing more from you!
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I used to just call it shallow but that's derogatory. I think it is more a cerebral ability to pick apart the "fake" the "phony" and question why?
And these are not hallmarks of shallowness? 'Derogatory' and 'factual' are not mutually exclusive.
My daughter is half asian on her mother's side (chinese) and half european miscegenation on my side (french, german, irish). She's experiencing this turmoil in high school as I type. I don't know that she's particularly intellectual at this point, but she loves math, works hard in every subject, and has achieved a measure of success in each of them (straight As first quarter).
In her only class with upperclassmen, the other students in her group weren't doing any work. Example, they're sent to the computer lab to do 'research' and all the other kids surf the net for music while she does all the research. Then they have the gall to shower her with phrases like "fucking bitch," "you're just a nerd" and "you'll never have any friends" and many other helpful comments because she won't write the opening speech for the group's cheerleader. My daughter's response: "If I write it, I deliver it."
(One of the biggest crocks of nonsense in high school and college is the need for group projects - and particularly the utterly stupid way it's implemented in most cases.)
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Ok, your daughter received straight A's, is in classes with upperclassmen and refuses to be the silenced brain of this particular bully (assumed) popular group...now what is the question? I feel for her and seriously can say I've been there. She knows she is a hard worker and they want to exploit her talent and her work. She holds true to her beliefs in herself by refusing to be "their" brain, while knowing she will suffer their belittling cries.
I say Hooray!!!!!!! You've got a winner. Bravo! She is strong, smart and I adore the spirit!
I am an instructional specialist for the eleventh largest school district in the United States. I know there is value in the cooperation and collaboration between groups of people that are different. This is the trend the business world has asked the public school system to address. Educators need to give students opportunities to work together.
Why? because that is the real world of today.
I understand the objection to the "Group" project...but who is learning the valuable life lessons here? Your daughter is the one. Painful as they may be she is learning the most difficult lessons and she is getting straight A's in standing up for her self, her abilities, her talents and acceptance of who she is!
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She made straight As by the skin of her teeth, and no thanks to the slackers. She didn't learn anything about working in groups that she didn't already know. Somehow I don't think this "put them all together and let them sort it out" paradigm is that the business community had in mind. I want her to learn the subject material and be graded - FAIRLY - on whether or not she learnt it.
If I had wanted her to learn that life is unfair, I might simply have payed someone to break her legs. If I had wanted her to learn that people will steal her work from her, I could have emptied her room of all origami and other little things she's made for herself. If I had wanted her to learn that people will take credit for her work, I could have made some appropriate arrangement. What *IS* the lesson? And how does it relate to the subject being taught? As it turned out the cheerleader was eventually persuaded to do her work. Had that not transpired, my daughter would have been faced with a choice: do the work for her OR chance getting a lesser grade (giving her a B for the semester). She got lucky. Sure she stood up to the bullying - but it was pure luck that it worked out. It seems to me there are clear messages being sent here:
1) If you're smart, you'll learn your place as the workhorse of the group.
2) If you're lazy, you'll learn that you can coerce others to do your work (thereby guarranteeing yourself a place in the management track?)
I will say that the biology teacher has figured out a workable pardigm. They work in small groups during class, but everybody gets graded on their own work. This is a rare teacher among those who use the group paradigm who has figured this out.
But we have digressed from the issue of nerdliness. Sometimes this is might be used as a term of endearment, but usually it's intended to be a nasty comment. I'm reminded of that idiotic movie 'Revenge of the Nerds.' You see John Goodman and these others sneering the word 'nerd' or spitting it out and you think that it's an exaggeration of the current state of affairs. But it's not.
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I'm sad that your daughter has become the target of bullies, FF. Nobody needs or deserves that. I'm assuming that you can't do anything about it except be supportive.
But just because her school or teacher doesn't know how to run group projects doesn't mean to say that they are useless or that they can't be run properly. I used to run group projects when I was a lecturer, and the way I had them set up no one could avoid doing his or her own work - or if he or she did, it would show. Each member of the group always had to do a vive voce presentation of his or her part of the project, and as part of that he or she had to show how that work had enabled the overall group objective to be met. You can't bullshit that - you have to know what you're talking about.
I weighted the individual marks around content, presentation and the vive. Each part had to be passed at the 70% level for the student to pass. The group mark was actually only 25% over the overall outcome. Believe me, after the first project, the process was taken very seriously, and the students found out the hard way that I wasn't an easy touch. The first semester I did this, I had a 25% failure rate. Nearly all of the fails came from the viva voce, because it only took a few questions to demonstrate that the student hadn't actually done the work himself. The second and subsequent semesters had a very low failure rate because the students were on to the process and did the hard yards ...
I'm sure there are other ways of doing it as well.
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I'm not saying that group projects are always a bad thing. In her particular class - debate - it's a necessary thing. Your method addresses something that is a deep concern of my kids' - people taking credit for their work. I didn't ever care about that myself. I always thought - 'Hey, you can give everyone in the class an A for all I care, but I wanna have learnt something at the end of it.'
My daughter can handle the feeble attempts at bullying - in fact, she's not at all upset by it. She's kinduva a big girl - and by her attitude and size the other kids assumed she was a senior. They were a bit surprised to find out she was only a freshman. I'm more indignant at the thought that these are the popular kids and they might easily get more nasty. OTOH, things seemed to have calmed down considerably.
In the past when I have worked on group projects, it always seems there are only a few people who do all the work. In my last college course, there were two group projects. In the first I did all the work - which I didn't mind. Everyone got As - which I didn't mind. However, I had to go down twice a week to meet with the 'team' and these guys screwed around the whole time - and never one time did anything they said they would do. I was intensely irritated. Two of the group already knew java - I had to teach myself (course requirement which I ignored). It would have made much more sense for one of them to help design the project. This was a huge chunk of time outta the week and it nearly kilt me. For second class, I told prof, "Look, you can fail me if you want, but I'm doing the next project by myself." "But it's way to too much work for one person," he said. I'm doing all the work anyway, I said. Harder project and less work, because I didn't waste hours of every week explaining stuff to people who were perfectly capable and perfectly unwilling to do anything. It wasn't all THAT bad - one girl was very smart, worked hard, but couldn't program (no idea why they made her take a graduate course in operating systems). But the other two had no excuse.
If there are N people, I never expect everyone to do 1/N amount of work. But I do expect everyone to work hard to make some contribution. In this project, I did the design, I did the implementation, I set up the test cases, I did the analyses, I wrote the final report. Ironically, the girl who didn't know very much was the biggest help. I could actually talk things through with her. She'd come up with some vague idea I'd shoot down. This was most helpful with the homework problems. God were they hard. Every week - ten problems. On average, each problem would take about 30 minutes just to understand it - and some of them twice that. When I'd call her on Mondays, she'd have put considerable effort into nearly every problem. On several problems I think her approach was better or more thorough than my own. Considering her lack of background, this feat impressed me. Contrast this with the goof-offs who had very good experience going into the course. First, they knew java (for the programming part). Second, they were still in graduate school, so a lot of things were still fresh in their minds and they had all the basic stuff outta the way. When I called them, they had generally not even attempted the problems. It was a one-way braindump. Again, I don't mind this if it didn't take time. As I don't care about anyone else's grades, I would have been happy to fax my homework to them, but the requirement was to discuss the stuff which would take a coupla hours a week (in addition to the projects).
I learned more in the course than any other I've ever taken. It was also the hardest course I've ever taken. But it didn't have to be so painful. And it wouldn't have been had I not been stuck with goof offs. Now I could have settled for just doing a fair portion of the work and turning in a non-working a project - or not doing the research part or no paper. But I was determined to get an A no matter what. Whether anyone else got an A or F, whether they got what they deserved or anything like that is not my concern.
This was not my first experience with group work. It was my last, though, and it was also the absolute worst.
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Hmmm. Mostly I taught IT subjects - data modelling and database design. But since I was doing a thesis in business ethics, I also got to teach ethics, a required course. Lucky me. A natural target for a group project for final overall marks. Ethics are as ethics do. Students typically have a rather laissez-faire approach to ethics in most situations. Except for when the proposition, whatever it is, directly affects them. So I made that part of the group project, too. I got them to tell me (rather than me telling them) that not to pull your weight in a project and then to claim that you had earned the group mark was rather unethical. Fine, I said. If it's unethical to claim marks for something you hadn't done, what about the ethicality of protecting a lazy student within a project group? Ethics, they told me, is a two way street. Great, I said. Then what about whistleblowing? Should you tell me, the lecturer, if one of your group is not pulling his or her weight? Oooooh, I don't really know about that, they said, almost to a person. Whistleblowing is ... well, it's like telling tales. Uh, huh, I encouraged them. Is telling tales then ethical or unethical? Much squirming, both real and metaphorical. Well, that depends, they rather thought. Maybe it depends on how serious the "crime" is? So, I pushed, there are degrees of ethicality, then? Well, no, they allowed. It's either ethical or unethical. Okay, I said. Then we have something of a dichotomy, don't we? You're telling me that it's unethical not to expose a non-performing colleague, but that it's also unethical to tell anyone. Write a 1500-word essay for credit on how this dilemma should be resolved for next week. Did I say that although I was usually respected, I wasn't really liked very much?
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
In this case, I did blab on the other students, primarily to make my case for going it alone on the next project. I suppose I agree with your students' original view about other people cheating - I don't care so long as it doesn't affect me. I was there to learn. What anyone else wants to get is up to them. When I went back to school after a hiatus, I was there to learn and get an A (Grades really didn't matter to me first time around). I consider it nearly insulting to have to report on other students. My view is it's their problem and not mine. (My daughter holds a different view here. She's already reported blatant cheating by 4 other students in one class.)
I came to school to learn a particular thing. (In fact it was a realtime internet course specifically so I could focus on learning the material and not on the other crap.) It's my only concern. If I feel a need to babysit kids, I'll take that up as a profession. Just give me what I came for and leave me be. I'd be happy enough if there were no grades at all to worry about. I'd like a brutally honest assessment at the end of the course. (I also don't think degrees should be used as proxies for licensing.)
Of course I know that the cheating of others does have an indirect affect on me. What good is a diploma with all As when everyone gets straight As? Part of the problem is the way we use college diplomas as proxies for other things.
I also disagree with the class about degrees of ethicality - or perhaps not. One might agree that ethics is binary (which I don't) and yet believe that the consequences of transgression are not equally disagreeable.
At this point we have digressed so far from the original thread that I don't recall how it started. Something about nerdliness I infer from the subject line. What I have always told my girls is this: "Nerd is what intellectually lazy people call people who study or enjoy learning. When people call you a nerd what they are really saying is 'I'm afraid of you because I think you're smarter than me.' What you have to do is not assume that you are, despite their best efforts to convince you of it."
Not that nerd can't be a term of endearment, but I'll assume that when it's spoken with a poisonous tone that it's not meant to be endearing. It seems obvious to me that these sorts of names are meant to exclude people from whatever group is making the accusation. "You can't hang out with us. You're different than we are." This at a time when children are just beginning to ask questions about who they are. "Well, I don't know who I am, but I guess I'm not one of them." Of course I've also taught them that you can't force someone to be your friend - nor can you expect everyone to like you. But you can get people to respect you if you stick to your guns - even if they don't like you.
k
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I just reviewed the thread - wow, this is an older thread!
"(One of the biggest crocks of nonsense in high school and college is the need for group projects - and particularly the utterly stupid way it's implemented in most cases.)"
I just looked back and realized this is what I wrote previously. So that's probably what started this side thread - my irritable bit of hyperbole. I do think it's implemented badly in most cases, but I don't think that group projects are necessarily a "crock of nonsense."
k
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
FF, point taken about nerds. But what about people who would like to be nerds but are more-or-less average? Not everybody who wants to learn is actually mentally equipped to be a wiggin-wonder.
Typically my students were adults on a "second-chance" educational jag. Most of them fell into the unqualified labourer/housewife-since-school category. Also, typically, the educational system had failed them in some important way during their first time around the block and they came into our courses with little or low self-esteem and belief in their ability to succeed. Many of them started out only marginally literate and numerate. We had some extremely well-taught summer holiday courses for these people which taught them enough for them to get by during the first semester. Often enough, the reason they were there was that they were forced by the social welfare system to "retrain" if they wanted to keep their welfare payments. IT appealed to a lot of them simply because working in IT was moderately well-paid and (this was important) carried a reasonable amount of status.
"Bring me your redundant ditch diggers and I will transform them into computer techies!" was the Poly's (very much paraphrased and extrapolated) slogan.
And I loved it.
But on the other side of the coin, we also had a leavening of people who had taken "useless" qualifications at some point in the past. Undergraduate degrees in the phenomenology of religion and its ilk are not exactly career-enhancing major choices. One woman of about fifty, who is now a friend, had a PhD in music. The degree and 50p were getting her a can of Coke. Another student who comes to mind was an RN psychiatric nurse. A disillusioned social worker. We had several retired policemen. One priest. We also had "kids" who had come straight from an academic degree in business or nursing or physiotherapy or whatever, who also wanted a qualification in IT. Most of these people were well-educated and articulate and were "nerds" in the gentle sense of the word. They wanted to learn, could learn and enjoyed the process, especially the give and take in the classroom.
By the third year of the degree programme, they had all, to some extent, learned to get along with each other. The first year was dynamite. The bright people raced ahead; the second-timers floundered. The first year of our degree was, like most degrees, full of received wisdom, with little room for individuality. Rote learning, memorisation. Given that our academic year ran for 32 weeks as opposed to the university's 26 weeks, they effectively got a year and a quarter's tuition, and the course was intensive. No wandering along to lectures once or twice a day if you felt like it; miss a class on our course and you might well miss the whole point of that module. I once arrived in a lecture theatre towards the end of the academic year to find that the lights were dimmed and a copy of that Hodgson cartoon "Please may I leave the room, my brain's full" on the overhead projector.
As lecturers with consciences, we had to find ways of bootstrapping the second-timers who were, of course, failing miserably, despite extra tuition from us and lots and lots and lots of formal tutorials. We tried all sorts of devices with varying degrees of success. But then we hit on the idea of study groups. Put two of the second-timers with two of the others and let's see what happens. These weren't project groups, you understand. They weren't forced to join them and no one could make them stay. Initially everyone was reluctant. The better-educated students felt that working with the second-timers would hold them back. The second-timers felt that it was all a bit demeaning, because we made no bones about why we thought the groups were a good idea. But they tried them and I still remember the thrill I got when I saw the results. One of the second-timer students who had arrived at the poly fairly evenly-balanced (with a chip on each shoulder) suddenly turned himself right around. From failing everything abjectly as a matter of course, he began to get comfortable passes. No cheating, no prompting, these were straight tests. Improvements by other students were perhaps less dramatic, but were both very substantial. From a 33% failure rate at the end of the second year the previous year, we went to a 10% failure rate. Instead of many of the second-timers dropping out or being booted out, we suddenly found that we had to increase the resourcing for the third years courses, because we had nearly twice the projected number of Year 3 students.
The next year, they organised their own study groups. Which study group they were in actually began to matter to them. They began to "bribe" the bright sparks to join their groups. Obviously, some groups did better than others. Just because you know the material doesn't mean you can pass it on. But nearly all of the second-timers improved. It worked, and that's all that really mattered.
Incidentally, the guy I mentioned above who did really well because of the study group is now a highly-paid IT manager ...
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