Professor Barlow’s Time of Coronavirus Journal, Part VII: Who Coddles Whom?

By Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909, artist - Library of CongressCatalog: https://lccn.loc.gov/2011647293Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/26200/26257v.jpgOriginal url: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011647293/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67854960
By Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909, artist - Library of CongressCatalog: https://lccn.loc.gov/2011647293Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/26200/26257v.jpgOriginal url: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011647293/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67854960
By Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909, artist – Library of CongressCatalog: https://lccn.loc.gov/2011647293Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/26200/26257v.jpgOriginal url: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011647293/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67854960

As he is not a teacher, not really, New York Times pundit David Brooks is able to accuse the higher GPA of English classes as opposed to Premed classes of “coddling.” If the grades are higher, students must be getting less out of the class. It’s too easy.

Brooks writes from the perspective of privilege and from a belief that all who matter are from the American upper-middle class and above. Students from other backgrounds are invisible to him. Most people are invisible to him.

My classes are certainly not difficult but I do not believe my students can be accused of being coddled. Mostly, I teach First Year Composition and my students are trying to learn how to be college students. They don’t come from backgrounds that prepared them for the American college experience the way of the students at Yale, where Brooks sometimes teaches a course, do. Most of them work. Many of them are more comfortable speaking a language other than English—some, in fact speak as many as five languages. None of them has been coddled but all of them need support as they negotiate an environment more alien to them than anything Brooks has ever experienced.

Because it is critical for them to learn to work on their own and with fellow students, and to take command of their own learning instead of simply reacting to the demands of a teacher, I give my students a lot of freedom to either do the work or fail. Most of them manage, though they don’t always like it. It is easier to simply follow orders instead of trying to figure things out on one’s own. When they manage that, I reward them.

I do not, however, grade ‘on a curve,’ keeping the class GPA down and priding myself on being tough—the way Brooks implies is best. When all of my students do well, they all get high grades. That’s only fair. And grading, I know, isn’t a sign of how students are treated, of how they are coddled or not. In the aggregate, over time, it does show the effort a student has put into the work, but it does not show that the work has been too easy if the grades are high.

If anyone is coddled in this country it is not the vast majority of college students, few of whom have the privileges that Brooks grew up with (or that I did, for that matter—both of our fathers were college professors). It’s the people who have been protesting against stay-at-home orders across the country. They have been told that they are independent individualists who ‘make it’ on their own—even while their success has been universally assured by cultural and governmental forces that give them advantage over almost anyone else in the world:

Protesters at state capitols across the country this week expressed their deep frustration with the stay-at-home orders that are meant to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus, pushing a message that is rapidly coalescing among the nation’s conservatives: Reopen the country.

Groups rallied in at least six states this week, and protests are planned in four more in coming days.

These are people who have been lied to up to the point where they believe they take ‘nuttin from nobody’ and, therefore, owe nothing to anyone else. Why should they care that the vast majority of Americans, working as a community, have ‘flattened the curve,’ at least for now, reducing COVID-19 death by, possibly, tens of thousands. They believe that:

edicts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Kristi L. Noem [of South Dakota] said disparagingly, reflected a “herd mentality.” It was up to individuals — not government — to decide whether “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.”

Anyone who believes that any individual, in this modern, interconnected world, can act with that kind of freedom has been coddled to an extreme that has never before been possible—not before the last century in America, at least.

Rather than worry about student GPAs, Brooks might better spend his time teaching where he can have real impact. That is, he could start helping his fellow conservatives understand that their fake individualism is as toxic as the novel coronavirus and that they should stop looking only to their own wants and recognize that all they have comes from the largesse of a society and a government biased in their favor. If he is worried about coddling, he should worry about theirs.

11 thoughts on “Professor Barlow’s Time of Coronavirus Journal, Part VII: Who Coddles Whom?”

  1. I am always ashamed of my poor English skills. Although English is the first language in the world and English has become one of the compulsory courses in China, many of my friends in China still fail the English class. After coming to the United States to go to university, I was often annoyed about why I didn’t study English skills well. I often ridicule that my English is not as good as my cousin’s daughter. Her daughter was born in the United States and is now in kindergarten. But she is fluent in English, which makes me envious. Because my English foundation is not good, I often cannot understand what the teacher said in class. This often makes me confused because I do n’t know what to do in class. More and more college students are born locally, so even if they are not good at the project, they can understand what to do. I always send text messages after class to ask my classmates what to do, because if there are words I do n’t understand, I can translate them into Chinese to make me understand. In my major, many teachers do not write notes on the blackboard but dictate them. I ca n’t understand what the teacher said, which makes me very anxious. Not all students have a good background, but students without a good background can also be excellent. I think GPA’s judgment is not only about how well a student completes his work, but also whether a student has learned in this class and whether he has improved from the beginning to the end of each semester. Language can be learned slowly, but with the ability, the light of gold will always be discovered.

  2. so that is the real problem, that because these people have been coddled for so long, and because they live in a “free” country then you can’t really do anything to them, my brother finds this privilage of being born in america to be the most frustrating part of the society. Almost everyone believes that they have “the right” to do whatever they want. Which is why dictatorship countries like china, and Russia have a much easier time telling their citizens to stay at home, unlike in South Dakota where the citizens won’t really listen to them even if the law is set out… take for example in Florida, where I am currently staying… there is a “lockdown” but you can still see a lot of people driving around all day. When you go into Wallmart people are abiding to social distancing… but there are still people who are there just to look around at what T.V. or gaming device that they can buy. My point is, just because a law is in place, doesn’t mean the cops will enforce them to the tee. In contrast places with dictatorships can tell the people to go home, and the people will listen because they fear/respect the government.

    The moral of the story is in my opinion… is that no one knows whats needs to be done, or what is going to happen, and just guess… or make an educated guess… but that’s all it is, a guess… i hope everything will be fine… but we won’t know until its over who made the right guesses and who is making the wrong guesses…

      1. right, i fully understand why that question is relevant since we always prefer that the most intelligent person in the room should speak in order for anyone to gain more knowledge. My question to that, is where is the line drawn? when do we stop listening to intelligent people, and listen to peoples beliefs. In science that answer is never, from my understanding. The sad scenario is that people in the science community are wishing that all those people who “want to go work” should just die, that way we have less potential virus carriers. If those people don’t plan on listening to the scientists and doctors.

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