The Role of Responsibility in the Curriculum

How do you teach common sense? Or do these results suggest our failure as teachers to model, say “striving for excellence,” in the classroom? (The other side is that most of my student’s don’t care about excellence, they just want to get an “A” on their assignments.)

I absolutely agree that we should pay attention to these categories in our pedagogy. That can be done at the lectern, in book selection, in assignments, during office hours, and in extra-curriculars. But we don’t need to spend time hitting our students over the head with “And now I’m going to teach you about Responsibility by reading Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience.’”

Humanities Grad Student, at 8:35 am EDT on April 18, 2008

Lead by example

All of us learn, perhaps most deeply, by observing the principle-level behaviors of those to whom we look for guidance. For those of us who teach, helping students develop a stronger sense of personal and civic responsibility might begin with some simple behaviors on our part: showing up to class every time and on time, managing class time well, retaining focus on the stated learning objectives, emphasizing objectivity and evidence in analyzing social problems, being respectful of those who hold opposing views, having a rational and scrutable grading system that is communicated to students at the beginning of the course, making ourselves available and showing up for appointments with students, valuing students’ time the same as we value our own.

You get the idea.

While many who teach do all of the above — and more — a significant minority of the professoriate sully the profession by acting irresponsibly toward students, even letting them know that “they” not the student are the university’s customer.

In a managed environment, this cowboy mentality would be detected and corrected. Higher education’s administrative co-management model is a meandering, rudderless ship that allows irresponsible behavior first, because it is systemically unaware and, second, because students’ judgments are not taken seriously in the planning and quality improvement processes. The cowboy was right, students are not the customer.

Senior Professor, at 10:45 am EDT on April 18, 2008

It’s obvious from the comments to this article why students would be confused about the role of their own responsibility to becoming educated. Since when has a “customer” ever been expected to work or have any responsibility for the product or services he or she consumes? The phrase “the student is our customer” implies that the student has zero responsibility for learning, so in schools whose leaders parrot such thoughtless slogans, it’s understandable that teachers who carry out their responsibility to promote learning are going to fight an uphill battle whenever they expect attendance, time-on-task, and completed assignments.

The description “Senior Professor” provides for a university seems a better fit for a spa or country club. Responsibility seems better understood in gyms, martial arts dojos, yoga academies, etc. than universities. The former have the integrity to tell their students that if they don’t dedicate time and work hard, they won’t gain anything of significance simply by paying a membership. They do a much better job of teaching responsibility with that message than do most colleges.

Prof Ed, at 2:40 pm EDT on April 18, 2008

Strike at the bottom, when Iroon is soft

Of the results of Survey, Minium emphasis of out current co-curricular education endeavours is in ‘Refining ethical and moral reasoning’ at 32.7% and Maximum in ‘Cultivating personal and academic integrity’ of 46.6% as is felt by professional. Students feel the same way, may be extents are at a disparation. The emphasis (of desired stimulation)is indeed co-curricular and incorporated, and there is a need, at this hour, to make our teaching more ‘curricular’, as an ‘extra emphasis’ is needed to arrest the steep decline in ethics and conduct in society in last few decades. We teachers too are constituents (perhaps a better part of) of same population

Dr Deming’s, Quality Guru, advocated engineering a stronger emphasis on personal Quality right from schools, and he being a strong proponent of Children’s education, through-kindergarten, he too wished the process of ‘concurrent learning’ were autogenous. It can not happen, untill, this vitality of High Role was duly embeded in children right from early years.

We only wish this happens, and our scores are further bettered- not on teaching inputs — but on actual performance. Then only our society will be redeemed from the unethical clutches.

Priyavrat Thareja

Prof Priyavrat Thareja, Pb Engineering College, Chandigarh, India, at 4:55 am EDT on April 19, 2008

Why should the discussion of personal responsibility, integrity and ethical thinking be confined to higher ed.? These traits are learned (or not) early in life; to expect college students to embrace and live these values is entirely dependent on how they’ve been nurtured since early childhood. As a high school teacher, I see every day the differences between children who have been inculcated with these ideals from the beginning and those who have been essentially neglected in this area. Can higher education help strengthen and reinforce these behaviors? Of course they can, especially on an intellectual level. But the primary responsibility for developing such members of society falls on parents, with the help of teachers, much earlier in life.

HSChemTchr, at 12:15 pm EDT on May 17, 2008