Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303190028
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
IF STUDENTS GO TO WORK ONLY 25% OF TIME . . .
I would like to respond to the article about "Students blame profs in class cutting at Virginia Tech."Both sides of the issue should be covered, and I believe both students and professors have very valid points.
First, concerning Kate McDonald, the student who states, "I feel like I'm sitting in there wasting my time." She has a very valid point, since she is taking general education classes not closely related to her major. Why should she have to take classes for producing a well-rounded person when the last 12 years of school should have produced that?
Secondly, faculty should take an active role vs. lecture format in stimulating the interest of students. They must remember that these are the "kids" of the media generation.
James Marchman, associate dean of engineering, says students have the attitude that going to class is an option. I must ask Mr. Marchman: Who is running the classes at Virginia Tech - the students or the professors? Virginia Tech faculty wouldn't "rumble" about class attendance if they set and held students to attendance standards.
Henry H. Bauer, professor of chemistry, says students lack responsibility. Isn't it partly his duty to teach attendance responsibility, since these students are to represent Virginia Tech in the future? Are his students only going to attend work "25 percent of the time on sunny days and 70 percent on normal days?" Attending classes is something that has to be done no matter what the weather; it's part of life's discipline!
Mr. Bauer and Mr. Marchman should ask their students to identify jobs for which you don't have to be physically present. If those jobs exist, they then should advise those students to [take] those academic majors.
Part of success in life is being at the right place at the right time. You can't be at the right place if you don't get there in the first place.
Students must learn and faculty must teach that school is their job now. Why is it that in education the more we pay and the less we receive, the better we feel and the more we think w learned?
It makes me wonder as a college teacher and taxpayer if we really did have to pass the recent educational bond referendum for an additional 65,000 college students in Virginia colleges and universities. Perhaps what we should do is purge our colleges and universities of non-attending students who really don't want to go to class and learn.\ Martin S. Turnauer\ Professor of health services\ Radford University