We’ve been known to joke about it in faculty meetings: how many grandparents some students can lose in a single year. (And yes, we do name names.) Here’s one professor’s concerns about responding to those situations: Thomas H. Benton (William Pannapacker) in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In my classes, the work has to be done at some point, no matter what obstacles must be overcome. There’s no authentic incentive to lie–and I hope I’m teaching them that a clear conscience matters–and yet it happens. I can empathize, but empathy doesn’t include passing an unprepared student on to certain failure. How could the deceased ancestor approve?
Ironically, students struggling with attendance and punctuality are often those inspired by dead grandmothers. “My grandma said it was time to stop being a baby and get my degree.” It sounds like a noble ambition to honor a parent’s or grandparent’s advice, but it’s never enough. They have to want it for more selfish, more immediate reasons.
Whenever a student returns from a funeral saying, “It’s hard. I’m grieving. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate. But I know she [or he] wants me to finish,” I know they’re going to succeed, against this and all other difficulties. And those dead grandmothers are going to be proud.
___________________________________
Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.
Writers' Resort LLC 