DRAIN THOSE RETENTION PONDS. Money might be tight at Northern Illinois University, but our Office of Faculty Development has resources to send a newsletter around to everybody as well as to post it for those who would rather print it themselves. This month's topic: students behaving badly.

Classroom Civility

Today there is a seemingly growing problem of lack of civility in university classrooms across the nation. Disruptive classroom behaviors include students arriving late and leaving early, reading newspapers, coming unprepared, being argumentative, refusing to participate, students not respecting the views and rights of classmates and faculty, private conversations, cell phone and beeper use.

I wait for the statement from headquarters that says "You do not have to put up with such things. Here are the sanctions we will support."

Instead, we read,

Media provide visual images of the current state of unrest and terrorism that today’s culture has come to expect; these images can readily translate to the classroom (Lepper, 2000). Easily filed lawsuits may keep faculty and administrators from acting on incidents of classroom incivility. In many cases, faculty may not retaliate for fear of retribution.

I repeat. Where is the statement from headquarters that says, unambiguously, "You do not have to put up with such things?"

I go to Professor Lepper's suggestions, and what do I see?

In many ways, the overall trends in educational institutions are mirror images of the trends that we experience in society. Therefore, if there is evidence of unrest in the social landscape, then we can expect to experience student unrest in the college classroom. The media attention given to the recent outbreaks of student violence in our nation's elementary and secondary educational institutions (Columbine being the most recent), have represented the extreme of classroom incivility. These outbreaks have also reemphasized the vulnerability of the classroom professor in regards to physical and mental abuse or even death. According to [Alison] Schneider [Chronicle of Higher Education OnDeadTree], college professors across the country are complaining that their courses have been hijacked by 'classroom terrorists'.

Here would be an opportunity for Professor Lepper to observe, "Columbine happened because the school authorities adopted a nonjudgemental stance toward the behavior of state-class athletes and burnouts alike, treating the emergent social order as applied constructivist theory, no matter how cruel it became. Choices have consequences."

Instead, he places classroom disruption in a historical context.

Every college professor has experienced instances where students were rude or confrontational in the classroom. The student activism in the 1960's and 1970's is an example of students confronting professors about the nature of the knowledge being presented, and on a more personal note, the nature of the research in which the professors were engaged. This same type of questioning was commonplace in the colonial colleges. During that era, students were embracing the ideas of the enlightenment in contrast to the religious dogma that laid the foundation for the curriculum, and represented the base of knowledge that their professors were drawing from. This blatant student disrespect of the knowledge of their professors eventually fueled the intellectual and emancipatory revolutions that founded this nation.

We were talking about people reading the newspapers, text-messaging, and conducting private conversations with neighbors or cell-buddies? Somebody with a smattering of knowledge of Marx or Leibniz or Philip Johnson (the evolution skeptic, not the architect) or William Brewster or worked up about a thread on NoIndoctrination or Democratic Underground is a Good Problem. This claim, although historically accurate, is a non-sequitur to the problem at hand.

Professor Lepper buried the lead.

Many faculty feel that it is not necessarily the fault of students or faculty members that has allowed for the rise of incivility in the classroom. Instead, they feel that it is the result of an overall lack of support by university administration that has left the individual professor powerless against rude and hostile students. Today's universities are more concerned with increasing revenues than they are about increasing students' intellect. This new emphasis on revenue has shifted the university's perspective on the student/teacher relationship, and this has caused a shift in power that has left university professors powerless to defend themselves against blatant attacks by students. Students are now seen as clients who are being provided an educational service by professors, and just like at McDonalds or Wal-Mart, the customer/student is always right. The reliance of university administrators on this business model of education has deligitimated the institution of higher education while simultaneously undercutting the authority of the professor in the classroom.

The good news for beleaguered faculty is that the business model is wrong. The demand for a university education is a derived demand, derived from the willingness of employers and graduate schools to accept a university's graduates. And the motivated students grasp this. What Professor Lepper appears to be calling for is a university administration worthy of its motivated students. Alas, it is likely to take a more stringent market test to effect such a change. I continue to anticipate the Fortune 500 company, disgusted with spending large amounts of cash training junior executives in things the universities failed to provide, to announce that hereafter it will be recruiting in selected high schools.