“You with the black shirt, yes you. Would you like to sit in the sin bin?” is not an unusual statement to be heard in a Journalism and Media Studies (JMS1) lecture of late. I do not think that anyone doubts that there is currently a problem with the relationship between students and lecturers in the JMS1 class this semester. As a JMS1 student myself I feel that the situation deserves attention and discussion.
In an attempt to discover the reason for this breakdown in the student-lecturer relationship I first compared faculties. As someone who has attended some Bcom lectures like economics I can say that when comparing economic lectures to journalism lectures the behaviour of both lecturers and students are continents apart. There are no ten minute discussions about why you were talking during class; the lecturer does not give late comers the third degree nor do students try to sneak out during lectures even if they consider them hellishly boring. It would then seem that the problem lies within the humanities faculty as a whole but as I am currently studying a BA degree with all humanities subjects I can testify to the fact that JMS1 is my only subject in which the behaviour is way below par.
Looking then specifically at the JMS1 class I struggle to understand how we ended up in a situation where students are made to sit in the ‘sin bin’ or as some people have begun to refer to it as the ‘Sim bin’. Does the fault lie with the lecturers, the course, the students or the general attitudes of both? In our previous narrative and genre course the lecturer Priscilla Boshoff also experienced the problem of trying to keep the class under control which makes me think can the problem really lie with three different lecturers or does logic not then suggest that it lies with the students?
I find that students are not behaving in a manner that is appropriate for the situation. I was particularly embarrassed after Professor Pityana’s speech on academic freedom which was compulsory for all JMS1 students as the behaviour was totally unacceptable. What has happened to respect and common decency? Not only for the lecturers, the classroom setup, our fellow students but for people in general. A student even said to one of the lecturers during a class that if the people talking are preventing others from listening than “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if you can’t hear you should sit in the front”. Although I can see the point that the student was trying to make his argument had one fatal flaw which was that if you are not attending the lecture to listen then you should not be there at all. The room is structured so that the lecturer can have the floor, face his audience and address them. From a young age I was taught that it is rude to interrupt someone when they are talking why then do students think that is ok to discuss their social lives or even work while the lecturer is talking. Do not get me wrong I do not think that students should sit like robots during lectures just taking notes too scared to say a word, but there is a healthy balance between saying a few words to your friend and having a full on discussion during the class.
The general attitude of the JMS1 students seems to be that we are all so hard done by which is seriously lacking in truth. The student that emailed Sim Kyazze for an extension gives us all a bad name as from the email you could tell straight away that the student had not even read the assignment brief for the opinion piece never mind gone to lectures or they would not have made such careless mistakes as saying that the assignment had to be 1500 words.
As the dreaded exams creep closer it would be wise for us all to take a deep breathe and get back to basics to ensure a healthier, happier and more learning friendly atmosphere in the lecture theatre.
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3 comments:
The lecture theatre relationship... what's that??
Waking up for a JMS1 lecture or even attending the lecture in what may be the next period has become a tedious task which needs some form of motivation as of late. I’m sure many of the other students in this lecture agree that at a university level there is an assumed level of respect from both the lecturers and the students. This fine line doesn’t seem to exist within the JMS1 lecture. Journalism is the reason I am here at Rhodes and I thoroughly enjoy every minute of it – but I don’t enjoy lectures anymore. Yes I do agree that there should be more structure in this lecture but then as a lecturer; do not adopt a casual, arrogant attitude when engaging with your learners. I – as do many other JMS1 students – go to lectures to learn something and to enjoy what we’re learning because Blogging is fun! But I refuse to arrive for a lecture only to be insulted through a mere generalization, and then to have the lecturer humiliate a student by reading her email to the entire lecture, correcting her grammatical errors, when his very lecture presentation contains more mistakes than her email. Surely he has no ground to stand on – and whatever happened to respect? It is completely inappropriate and unprofessional to handle such an email in this manner – shouldn’t it be assumed that confidentiality will be imposed – especially when consulting with your lecturer? If any, this is the reason that I have lost a certain degree of respect for my JMS1 lecturers. Yes I am a student in your class, I will respect you but then respect that I am your student and respect the rights that I have too.
I really enjoyed this opinion piece as it was not beating around the bush; you just came out with what you had to say. I agree that in the journalism one class there is definitely no respect from the students towards the lecturers. I do not, however, feel that this is entirely the students fault – respect has to be earned and the journalism students are giving up going to lectures or listening in them as they are all pretty pointless. I do not think that because you have gone to a few economics classes that you can say that in Bcom lectures the students do not walk out as I’m sure this is not true. It probably depends on the actual lecturer rather than the students or the subject; with some lecturers you know you just can’t walk out of class. I agree with you on the point that students do discuss their social lives in lectures and that is very irritating. On the point of hyperlinks; I felt that they were inserted just because you had have them there, they were fairly useless. But to be fair, your piece didn't really need them so it's not your fault we had to have them. In general I really enjoyed this piece as it was quite brutal and didn’t side-step any issues. It was a great topic as there seems to be a lot of opinions going around on the topic of journalism one lecturers.
Tarryn,
I felt that you were indeed on to something at the beginning of your opinion piece, but your argument slowly became hard for me to be persuaded by. I agree with you that there seems to be a serious problem in terms of lecture etiquette on the student side, but I wished you’d done a little more research into the matter. You failed to look at why the students in other lectures are better behaved. You must remember that a vast number of JMS 1 students are also enrolled in English. You being one of them, have you looked at an English lecture recently? Pretty much the same bunch of students yes? The English lectures are quiet as churches, not out of fear but rather out of respect for the lecturer. On the other hand, I have attended Sociology lectures (also in the Humanities faculty), where the lecturer had to physically leave the hall because it was so impossible to teach. Maybe one should look at the respect that a lecturer is able to command. It is not my duty to research as to why these occurrences happen, because that should’ve been your task. A task you failed to do adequately I’m sorry to say.
Crazy Dan
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