Bad grade blame game
Mitchell Brown: for The Muleskinner
Issue date: 1/28/10 Section: Voices
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Some time ago, I stumbled upon a Web site that could possibly alleviate such apprehension, ratemyprofessors.com. It's a Web site that consists of students posting comments about professors. The content runs the gamut from praise to criticism to students being insulting and vindictive.
When deciding what courses to take I always check out ratemyprofessors.com. However, being a skeptic by nature, I take it all with a grain of salt; everyone has an opinion. The site perfectly demonstrates the double-edged sword of the Internet; anyone can post anything online.
With all of that said, I have noticed a common trend on the site; students casting blame on professors for their own poor grades. A prime example comes to mind in reference to one of my favorite professors-"he doesn't care whether you pass the class or not."
My rebuttal is he doesn't have to care; he's a history professor, not a counselor. That's a ridiculous statement; it's as ridiculous as someone going into a sushi bar and ordering a pork tenderloin sandwich. It's the responsibility of the professor to teach, and it is our responsibility as students to learn and demonstrate retention of the material. If you are having trouble with a certain subject, there are tutoring resources you can look into.
Concerning the same professor, the poster states they had studied for eight hours and still received a poor grade. How did that become the fault of the professor? Maybe this individual has yet to develop effective study habits. In my eyes, such a statement amounts to nothing more than complaining about an outcome that could have been prevented. These comments are prime examples of an unjustified sense of entitlement, a "something for nothing mentality."
How did it become socially acceptable to blame self-created problems on another person? Some of it can be blamed on the popular parenting styles of the baby boom generation.
With some justification, the baby boomers are often referred to as a selfish generation. The baby boomers came of age in the 1960s, the children of the generation who lived through the Great Depression and fought in World War II. In many respects, the baby boomers were feasting on the fruits of someone else's labor.
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