Educational Hypocrisy

This letter came from Dear Abby.

I teach and advise first-year students at a college, and one of the most critical problems students have is sleeping through class because they haven't learned to get themselves up in the morning.

Last week, a sophomore student missed a math class at 8 a.m. because her father failed to call her that morning and get her out of bed.

PLEASE advise parents to buy an alarm clock for their children, starting in sixth grade, and make them learn to get themselves out of bed, even if it means suffering the consequences once or twice for being late. Daddy's not going to make that wake-up call forever, and Mom shouldn't have to serve as the alarm clock for kids over 12 years of age. We'd appreciate students who can at least do that much for themselves -- and I'm sure their future employers would too. -- FRUSTRATED ADVISER IN THE U.S.A.

Frustrated,

I can’t believe you bought that crap. College students miss classes at 8 AM all the time for no other reason than they would rather be sleeping. What do they tell their fretful advisors who won’t let them make their own mistakes? You can’t expect them to say “uh, our test isn’t for 3 weeks so I would rather sleep”. That would be rude. You can’t expect them to say “I screwed up”. You are giving them a somewhat subjective grade; the student doesn’t want the teacher to think they are a screw up. The only thing left is to blame someone else.

Instead of letting them miss a few classes and figure out exactly how much they need to go to class to get the grade that they want, you follow them around bitching, just like their parents would. Then you blame the parents for not making their kids independent enough. You are actually perpetuating the cycle by following students around fretting. Leave the students alone, get a cat or something.