The Society Pages has an interesting point about using Facebook in class, and how the professors are more than aware that this sort of slacking is going on:

To return to the classroom example, the power of disclosure and connection to a network of intimates is difficult for a professor to compete with. I am a stranger to most of my students. They don’t know me. They have no way of knowing whether what I’m saying in the classroom will be useful, or uncomfortable by making them think about things they have little control over.

By contrast, on Facebook, they can build deeper connections with people they have already vetted, people to which they are socially proximate. They can share intimate, subjective, feelings and observations about the world around them. They can talk about people they like, what professors are wearing, or how much fun they had the night before. Each update from a friend is a small burst of oxytocin that is next to impossible for someone talking about macro-economics to compete with.

This is a really refreshing approach to the old argument against using computers in class. I hadn’t thought about the concept of the personal vs. the impersonal before, and how the extreme focus on the personal engendered by excessive use of social media can have a lasting negative impact on social engagement later on in these students’ lives.

However, while an interesting thought exercise, I think this problem is still secondary to the issue of technological distractions in class. The typical argument I hear against allowing students laptops is that it’s irresponsible and distracting and disrespectful to the professor. I don’t necessarily disagree with those assessments, but I think those traits are symptoms of a larger disease. Attempting to ban social media, whether through the banning of laptops or otherwise, does little to actually fix the source of the problem.

I brought my computer to basically every class I went to. In Advanced Taxation, I couldn’t check any of my social media sites, because missing even a minute of the lecture would mean that I would no longer be able to follow what was going on. In Social Deviance, I didn’t want to check my social media sites, because I was more interested in what the professor had to say, and whether or not I agreed with their proposed theories. Even in Macroeconomics, the author’s example, the details of fiscal and monetary policy were complex enough that I needed to pay attention if I was going to follow the logic.

The classes in which I whiled away long hours on Twitter and Facebook were, without fail, the classes in which the professors did little more than read off of the slides, regurgitate the textbook, and where they failed to engage the class…or worse, in which they were downright condescending and rude to the students. I went to a top-notch institution in a country that is more or less the definition of the Global North. Yes, these professors still exist.

Because of my own experience, anytime someone tells me to be respectful to what someone is saying from behind a lectern, I tell them that they need to earn my respect, first. I know that seems like the height of youthful arrogance, but I don’t believe that professors have the right to “phone it in” just because their students are forced to be in a particular class. If someone makes an effort to create a good classroom experience, then the students will, believe it or not, respond.

My favourite class in university was a class I took in my last year on the Sociology of Information Communication Technology. Everybody was on a computer in that class, but it remains one of the most engaged class I’ve ever attended. The source material was interesting, the professor knew what they were talking about and communicated it respectfully, we were shown a wide variety of media in order to illustrate the concepts we were learning, and the students were given ample opportunity to provide input. In a lecture hall of 200 students with 200 laptops in front of them, the professor still managed to captivate our attention.

Statistics 101 might not be as interesting as the use of Twitter in the Iranian protests, but there are ways to teach statistics that don’t rely on slide after slide of logorrhea. I had fantastic math teachers in high school. They managed to make math interesting even to this hardcore liberal arts kid. But they also knew what they were talking about, and why they were teaching the way they did. The problem, in other words, isn’t always the students.

Of course, not every student is going to be conscientious about what they pay attention to and why. I did have friends in university who would play online games ad nauseum in class, regardless of the class or the topic. But that problem, of students choosing to disrespect the professor? That’s always existed. Before social media came along, students passed notes (or texted), talked to each other in the back of the room, or slept. If you didn’t want to pay attention to the prof, even staring sullenly into space or doodling would be better than listening to the lecture.

I don’t believe that technology in and of itself changes behaviour. In this case, technology has made the behaviour more visible…but the base problem, that the level of teaching provided in many classrooms is simply substandard, isn’t going to go away just as soon as Facebook does.

As for people who simply aren’t interested in learning about macroeconomics or social deviance, no matter how challenging and interesting the concepts are, and the people who are simply uninterested in questioning their own beliefs, and the people who want to blow off the professor, and see Facebook as an easy way to do so….Those people, honestly, aren’t ready to go to university.

Don’t get me wrong. I think university is an amazing way to broaden your horizons. I think the more educated you are, the more likely you are to make better decisions later on in life. I want everyone to benefit from the type of education that university provides. But the truth is, despite being billed as the panacea, university simply isn’t for everyone. Some people would benefit more from college or trade school; some people would benefit from a few years of travelling or working before coming back to learn. In fact, I would go so far as to say most students aren’t ready for university right out of high school.

But instead of taking a hard look at the nature of university and university degrees, postsecondary education has shifted to become an institution whose primary purpose seems to be keeping young people out of an oversaturated work force for another four years and where partying is seen as a more essential part of the experience than the learning. I was in a business degree program, and the majority of my peers were more interested in getting a job after four years of schooling than groking the nuances of our current political system.

But hey, addressing the work force’s absurd insistence on degrees for jobs that barely requirea GED equivalent, the classist perceptions of college and trade school, and the ridiculous belief in the public’s mind that opting out of university somehow indicates a failing in the students would be far too difficult. Instead, let’s just ban social media.

When professors who are interested in teaching can’t find students interested in learning, that probably says less about the students and more about the learning system as a whole.