May 15, 1998

Generation X goes to College

Generation X goes to College. In a book by the same name, subtitled "An Eye-Opening Account of Teaching in Postmodern America," Peter Sacks outlines what he sees as the gradual leave-taking of the modernist era in which "trust in reason, objective reality, and scientific method," are left behind.

In their place, Sacks sees a growing "tendency toward relativism and subjectivism." This plays itself out in an explosion in belief in angels, paranormal experience and UFOs. Sacks even adopts the slogan from TV's X Files for this post-modern cultural shift: "Trust no one."

In the classroom, Sacks says this translates into an increased sense of consumerism, a desire for entertainment and a sense of entitlement typified in a student response to his criticism of a paper, "That's just your opinion."

Truth, as we're used to thinking of it, is in danger, he says. The question is no longer, 'Is it true?' but 'Whose truth?' or 'What use is it?'

Dr. Margaret Van de Pitte, philosophy, says students certainly aren't any less curious or intelligent these days -- and she's been teaching since the '60s. But as products of our media culture, they do have short attention spans; they want to be entertained and are very visual learners. "I think they are waiting for you to give them something all the time.They want information bites." But Van de Pitte says it's not their fault. "Our culture made them more passive and vulnerable in making choices."

Our culture has also left them with some serious gaps in knowledge according to Dr. Douglas Hube, president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and a U of A professor of physics for more than 29 years. He says pseudo-scientific thinking is less evident in his classes than a scientific illiteracy that leaves enough gaps in knowledge to fill in with bizarre supposition.

Hube used to test students for basic knowledge of the laws of nature at the beginning of the term. "I had a fair number each year who believed the earth's gravitational attraction is due to the fact that the earth rotates." Results of the quiz were "so disturbing, I haven't done it since," he says. "The background knowledge of students is not what it should be."

The result, he says, is the type of public discourse you hear on global warming where non-scientists feel confident calling evidence of a threat to the ozone layer "junk science." The debate has become about majority opinion, "about my side out votes your side," says Hube.

"The majority of opinion 2,000 years ago was that the earth was flat," he says. "It didn't make it flat."

Van de Pitte says it's especially true for first-year students that "They won't take anybody's word for it who hasn't done the research, and they want to see the report." Not that they'd read it, she says. "If it's second hand in the slightest, no matter how believable, chances are they find it easier to dismiss." Why? Because then they "have ways to excuse themselves from making concrete changes in things that are inconvenient."

We've imposed pressures on this generation that didn't exist for us, she says. We've told them that every time they get themselves established, the rug will be pulled out from under their feet. "They can expect to have a plurality of jobs. They won't grow in a direction that will give them a sense of pride and accomplishment.a sense of self.At least that's what we tell them."

The supposed post-modern belief in a relative truth is an intellectual fad on its way out again, says Van de Pitte. "History has cycles just as [the types of] students in our classes have cycles. The relative truth idea is "just the latest incarnation of a very old debate." The belief in an unstoppable tide of cultural change that we have to adapt to is sad, says Van de Pitte. "'Postmodern' is simply a word for the way we excuse ourselves for living such fragmented lives.It's as if we don't have choices." We do have choices and a role to play in seeing students can make them, says Hube. "We have so many new sources of information.but we have equivalent growth in misinformation sources." The best we can do is give people tools. Unfortunately, he says, students increasingly take a narrow range of subjects. "Arts students need more science and technology and science students need more arts." But with enrolment increasingly tied to dollars that's not likely to happen.

"We just count bodies and every body is worth X dollars. Everything is quantified in dollars instead of in quality of education."

Students are encouraged to think of themselves as consumers, says Van de Pitte, and "this notion of entitlement very much comes into the classroom." It's all part of the KPI mentality, she says. ".Expecting to get so-called value for their money when at least at the beginning of their careers, they don't know what value is." Students feel short-changed when they haven't mastered something like philosophy in a 13-week course. "You aren't coming here to get something like learning to inline skate," she says. "You're getting a set of skills that you have to develop over a great deal of time."

Neither professor sees this generation as any better or worse than any other -- just different. Part of Sacks problem may have been his inexperience, says Van de Pitte. She says it's fun to watch the new professors from Harvard and Cambridge encounter their first, first-year classes. "And they do weep." She says she did too, at first. Professors have a tendency to forget how long it took them to get where they are -- several hundred books away from where students are starting.

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