WHERE HAVE ALL THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN GONE? Today’s university students are working harder, challenging authority less

Press, 15 August 1978, Page 17

WHERE HAVE ALL THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN GONE? Today’s university students are working harder, challenging authority less

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KEN COATES

University students are working harder than ever before — but are stirring and challenging less. And while the quality of graduates is higher, in terms of knowledge and expertise, a danger exists of a university becoming little more than an examination centre churning out meal tickets. Gone, it seems, are the student protests, marches, and political muck-raking of the 19605, and the challenges to authority. Even student clubs and drinking evenings on the campus have declining support. There was even provision on this year’s student presidency voting paper for a no-confidence vote — and 830 students registered no-confidence in the five candidates. Interviews with a cross section of students and staff confirm that many students, particularly in their first and second years, are passive in their attitude to learning, raising the question of the university’s role in encouraging intellectual toughness and curiosity. It is being argued by some that the university in this country might become merely a centre producing the required quota of accountants, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals, adding just more conformists to a society that already has

too many. These are not final conclusions because they have insufficient facts to back them, but there is enough interesting evidence to note considerable change in university life.

First, there is the students’ workload. A wider range of subjects offered, changes in course structure, and internal or continuous assessment, have brought a preoccupation with marks, all through the year.

Gone are the days when students enjoyed “the good life” of the univera sity, swotted intensively near the end of the year, and passed an examination in each subject.

Student pressure led to the adoption of continuous assessment — and now students are stuck with it. It was argued that an evaluation of work during the year was a fairer way of deciding cm failure or success than a three-hour examination.

“Internal assessment is a killer,” says Michael Lee, a law student, and president of the Canterbury University Students’ Association. “It does prevent students from taking a full part in cultural and sporting interests.” He reports a fall-off in student activities, even in Friday night stein evenings. And the support for capping high jinks was “abysmally low.” The mid-term winter break was once seen as a break from studies, but this year the library was packed. Library staff rep- that students seem to be working harder. So keen is the demand for desk space that if a student leaves his place for tea long, the staff clear away his books. Professor John Garrett, head of the English department at Canterbury

for nearly 30 years, sees drawbacks in the assessment system. If a student is t_king four subjects, he has assignments due continuously, and he is sweating it out the whole time for marks, he says. Under the old system, there was a record kept of all written work, and if a student did not do so well in the end-of-year examination, then his marks were bumped up. But in the years of “the troubles,” distrust erf the staff was born, Professor Garrett adds. “Now every assessment counts, and this tends to regiment stu®

dents’ lives; they are then thrown out on" the world and have to organise their own lives. If we don’t help them do that, we are failing in our duty.” Other staff see definite advantages in assessment during the year, provided it is equitably applied. Th j contend that students learn from a variety of assignments and that these should be taken into account. Where are the angry young men and women at university? Dr Len Richardson, an historian, says that student radicalism is a myth. Only in the 1960 s were many students involved, and that was largely through the Vietnam war protest movement. But Vietnam, he adds, was abnormal. It exaggerated the true situation which is being experienced

now. Issues have changed, and questions such as care of the environment are not seen as radical, or dangerous to society. Most students are at university to get degrees and qualify for a job, rather than to become involved in movements or politics. Students were always pretty conservative, says a political scientist, Mr Nigel Roberts. And the Rev Peter Williams, university chaplain, puts down students’ lack of involvement to their feeling of powerlessness. In the sixties, he says, students had ideals, and

felt they could do something to bring about better things. “Now, the powers-that-be appear immovable, particularly as we have a Government that i' heavyhanded.” Some argue that passive students working hard make life a lot easier. The university’s liaison officer, Mr T. H. McLis* key, suggests it is a reaction to what he calls “the silly sixties,” and observes that “there is not the place for eccentrics in the university there once was.” He takes the view that the university should enjoy the period of quiet while it lasts, and adds: “Perhaps we are demanding in students the skill of listening.” There is wide agreement that students generally are passive. “The type of teaching in some British

universities probably encourages logical and intensive argument,” says one M.A. student. “Here, there is little interplay, and you are not generally called upon to defend your own position." According to a science graduate now teaching in a secondary school: “University is just like school. There is no hardness of intellectual edge developed there. You have to interpret how the lecturer thinks and then prepare for regurgitation. “I have seen students busy writing down the lecturer’s jokes, so

slavishly do they follow what is said.” Lisa Sacksen, a president of the New Zealand University Students’ Association, attributes passivity of students to the similarity of secondary school and university. Mostly at school it is “a preaching situation” with the teacher seldom admitting he is wrong. Students going on to university just sit there under a discipline they impose on themselves. For the most part they come from secondary schools in which they have succeeded in the system. An English lecturer, Dr K. Kuiper, says that many students do not value small-group tutorials and do not attend, regarding them as frills which do not carry marks, and with awkward questions they would rather avoid.

Dr Howard Reed, senioi lecturer in business administration, says: “My biggest disappointment as a teacher is the traditional barrier between students and teachers. Students don’t view teachers as friends. There must be a long tradition whereby you just don’t talk to your teachers.”

Students, he adds, learn by doing, by becoming involved. Dr Reed cites an interesting list of projects for a course on market management — surveys of shop trading hours, advertising and children, users of Christchurch sports facilities, the motel industry, labour unions and their public image, a cost analysis of domicilliary care facilities, and the Labour Departments labour exchange.

“The students have really talked to people, have learned how guarded people are; and that everything is political.” They knocked on doors in contrast to sitting at lectures being spoon-fed. Their concept of themselves changed, and they were no longer afraid to talk to their teacher. New Zealand students are much less inclined voluntarily to participate in class discussion, or to raise questions, than their counterparts in the United States or the United Kingdom, according to Professor William Markell, head of accounting at the University of Delaware, who is visiting Canterbury. The school system also seemed to be more authoritarian with less inter-ac-tion.