University Instruction as Toilet-cleaning

University Instruction as Toilet-cleaning: “

From a student column in the Oregon Daily Emerald:

Students pay teachers to educate us, yet they are then allowed to tell us how much we’re learning. The whole situation seems akin to a boss paying her employee to clean toilets and the employee turning around and telling the employer how much she is or isn’t happy with the cleaning job. If I’m paying someone to do my housekeeping, I’ll be the one to tell the receiver of my hard-earned money exactly how well they did. Shouldn’t it be the same with education?

We are currently paying a large amount of money to attend this University and receive an education. If I have paid to be taught something, shouldn’t there be a repercussion for the teacher rather than, or at least as well as, the student when knowledge has not been taught?

(Via Kairosnews – A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy.)

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yet one more example of how students don’t know what university is about. of course, it doesn’t help that most parents don’t, and more teachers don’t, and for that matter most everyone doesn’t including universities. there is a great loss of anything other than the symbolic identity and certificatory identity of universities. the norms and traditions and expectations that were implied are slowly withering away.

for me universities are locations where people are supposed to learn, they are libraries and people who foster that learning, and they do not have any specific duty to any specific student for any given amount of money. they have a duty to ensure that students learn material and that learning is guaranteed, but not that they learn, people can fail.