Guy, Lacey: Beloit List

As the Beloit List points out, older faculty and today’s students differ in so many ways. Being on campus, both have to learn how to communicate with each other effectively. For example, teaching students in a way that is completely foreign to them would most likely be less effective than a more modern technique. The students also have to learn how to communicate with their professors without seeming uneducated. This process goes on every day because students and faculty are always trying to keep up with each other. Most of the differences between them come from the different lifestyles they have led.

             

The biggest dissimilarity between the two would most definitely be technology. Students are now doing almost all their work on computers. This pushes professors to have to “get with the program” and update all their teaching materials and techniques to involve computers. Even though there still are teachers who only use books, those teachers most likely will retire soon. These kinds of teachers are still trying to figure out the difference between blackboards and the Blackboard website. While many older professors see technological communication as unreliable and unnecessary, they still have to adapt to the new technologies to keep up with their students.

             

Most professors have the upper hand over students when it comes to knowledge of history and world events. Students may know more about celebrities and gossip, but the older faculty members have greater knowledge about basic facts.  For example, when asked who Arnold Palmer is, older staff would answer with one of the greatest golfers of all time, but students would refer to the lemonade brand. Teachers would most likely argue that Arnold Palmer is an important figure in history, but the students would simply shrug. This example demonstrates a huge difference between the two different groups. Each group judges the importance of news items differently and only professors seem to care about the past.

             

Another difference between today’s students and older faculty is lifestyles. These two groups grew up in completely different decades, so they tend to have different preferences. When faculty members were growing up, they didn’t have all of the paranoia that today’s students do. The paranoia of student’s being on drugs is tremendously high. It is almost expected nowadays for a young adult to have at least tried some type of drug. When teachers were growing up, drugs were harder to get a hold of and prohibitions for their use were vigorously enforced. Even the little things, such as riding on the back of a truck or playing outside after dark, were taken more lightly then they are now. Of course the different lifestyles they had growing up affect their personalities and provide further differentiation.

             

The many differences between older faculty and students are never ending because every day something new is invented and both groups have to adapt in their own ways. Both have to come together to learn how to understand and communicate with each other in order to have a stable learning environment. Even though their differences are so large, it is possible to form unity.