Black prof. says he wasted his time trying to educate black students. Excerpts below.
[url]http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/20/Opinion/A_dream_lay_dying. shtml/[/url]
Instead of taking pride in being exemplary students, many were devotees of hip-hop culture. They were anti-intellectual, rude and profane.
I always was amazed that so many of the women tolerated the crude way the men spoke to them. One afternoon in my English class, a male student called a young woman "a big-assed ugly bitch." I expected her to slap him, and I would not have intervened. Instead, she dismissed the whole thing with a wave of her hand and turned to chat with her roommate. After class, I asked her about the insult.
"That fool don't mean nothing to me, " she said. "He ain't nothing but a stupid brother from Anniston or somewhere."
The lesson was clear and disheartening: Personal insult, crude language and threatening behavior were a way of life for many students. I saw this kind of exchange repeated dozens of times in the classroom and on The Yard. I had no doubt that the influences of hip-hop contributed greatly to this ugly reality and other deleterious trends.
"Have you noticed that our students never have a sense of urgency?" a colleague asked one afternoon as we walked to a faculty meeting. "They don't seem to be going anywhere in particular. They just stand around or mosey along. Frivolity."
He was right. Greek organization activities such as step shows - the rhythmical, patterned dance movements favored by fraternities and sororities - and any excuse to party and play music were the most important events on campus.
When a professor brought a special lecturer to campus, the rest of us would require our students to attend the event. But more often than not only a handful would show up, a great source of embarrassment for the professors. I never invited any of my fellow journalists to campus. Besides the stinging embarrassment of low attendance, I resented the hassle of rounding up students for their own enlightenment.
.... A week before I left Stillman as a professor, I drove through the main gate en route to a final exam. As always, I saw a group of male students hanging out in front of King Hall.
The same four I had seen when I drove onto campus nearly two years earlier were milling about on the lawn. I parked my car and walked over to the group.
"Why don't you all hang out somewhere else?" I asked.
"Who you talking to, old ******?" one said.
"You give the school a bad image out here, " I said.
They laughed.
"Hang out somewhere else or at least go to the library and read a book, " I said.
They laughed and dismissed me with stylized waves of the arm.
I walked back to my old Chevy Blazer, sad but relieved that I would be leaving.
In my office, I sat at my desk staring at a stack of papers to be graded. I'm wasting my time, I thought. I've wasted two years of my professional life. I don't belong here.
I put the papers in a drawer. I did not read them. Why read them?
[url]http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/20/Opinion/A_dream_lay_dying. shtml/[/url]
Instead of taking pride in being exemplary students, many were devotees of hip-hop culture. They were anti-intellectual, rude and profane.
I always was amazed that so many of the women tolerated the crude way the men spoke to them. One afternoon in my English class, a male student called a young woman "a big-assed ugly bitch." I expected her to slap him, and I would not have intervened. Instead, she dismissed the whole thing with a wave of her hand and turned to chat with her roommate. After class, I asked her about the insult.
"That fool don't mean nothing to me, " she said. "He ain't nothing but a stupid brother from Anniston or somewhere."
The lesson was clear and disheartening: Personal insult, crude language and threatening behavior were a way of life for many students. I saw this kind of exchange repeated dozens of times in the classroom and on The Yard. I had no doubt that the influences of hip-hop contributed greatly to this ugly reality and other deleterious trends.
"Have you noticed that our students never have a sense of urgency?" a colleague asked one afternoon as we walked to a faculty meeting. "They don't seem to be going anywhere in particular. They just stand around or mosey along. Frivolity."
He was right. Greek organization activities such as step shows - the rhythmical, patterned dance movements favored by fraternities and sororities - and any excuse to party and play music were the most important events on campus.
When a professor brought a special lecturer to campus, the rest of us would require our students to attend the event. But more often than not only a handful would show up, a great source of embarrassment for the professors. I never invited any of my fellow journalists to campus. Besides the stinging embarrassment of low attendance, I resented the hassle of rounding up students for their own enlightenment.
.... A week before I left Stillman as a professor, I drove through the main gate en route to a final exam. As always, I saw a group of male students hanging out in front of King Hall.
The same four I had seen when I drove onto campus nearly two years earlier were milling about on the lawn. I parked my car and walked over to the group.
"Why don't you all hang out somewhere else?" I asked.
"Who you talking to, old ******?" one said.
"You give the school a bad image out here, " I said.
They laughed.
"Hang out somewhere else or at least go to the library and read a book, " I said.
They laughed and dismissed me with stylized waves of the arm.
I walked back to my old Chevy Blazer, sad but relieved that I would be leaving.
In my office, I sat at my desk staring at a stack of papers to be graded. I'm wasting my time, I thought. I've wasted two years of my professional life. I don't belong here.
I put the papers in a drawer. I did not read them. Why read them?
