Ronald C. Roat is program coordinator of the print and online journalism sequences and an associate professor of journalism. He joined the faculty in 1986 after a professional career as a reporter, columnist, and/or editor at six newspapers in Michigan, West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana, including the Lansing State Journal and the Dayton Daily News. He has written regular opinion page columns for three other newspapers. Professor Roat is the author of three mystery novels, Close Softly the Doors, A Still and Icy Silence, and High Walk, all stories in the Stuart Mallory Mystery series. A Michigan native, he earned his master of arts degree at Oregon State University and his bachelor's degree from Michigan State University. He currently writes a weekly Internet column for The Evansville Courier & Press. Roat is in his 19th year at USI and is the single father of his daughter, Brittany, and is working to complete a book on which is an outgrowth of many of his columns and his unscheduled “rants” he delivers to his students. After that, Roat will finish the next Stuart Mallory novel, Some in Velvet Gowns.

Scholars Today
Education seems so irrelevant to today’s students

by Ron Roat

Five students stared at computer screens. Two typed intermittently, then studied their inventions. One read email. The others withdrew into themselves, vanishing to a place where deadlines do not exist, procrastination is an honorable profession and clever laws keep journalism professors locked up where they can harm no one.

Those were the good ones, those students feigning work. They came to class. The other nine took the day off, accepting the less-honorable but also less-embarrassing option of revealing they had ignored the semester’s most demanding assignment for 10 weeks.

Not much in that scene – which is how my week started – is new. Students do not embrace education. They believe in their “right” to avoid work which they, at the gifted, accomplished age of 20, sense irrelevant to their significant lives. They know they will write about rising Hollywood stars, super athletes and rock bands, certainly not “humdrum” Evansville inhabitants. So, what’s the point? They appreciate the university’s interest in skillful writing, but they recognize grammatical rules as mere details, perhaps simple guidelines allocated to subordinates such as editors. When those “scholars” become professionals, they will be far too busy making money to trouble themselves with spelling, grammar, accuracy or deadlines.

You believe I exaggerate.

The system is broken. I do not know how to fix it. When I began teaching 17 years ago, students demanded challenges. Scary. For example, I mentioned 20th century novels that journalism students should know for cultural literacy. Most had never heard of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms or Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Finally, two students demanded a list. I created one.

Those two students bragged to one another how far they were progressing through Roat’s list – Robert M. Pirsig, Eudora Welty, Raymond Chandler, Joseph Heller, Hunter S. Thompson, Lee Smith, Kurt Vonnegut and so on. One of those two demanding students is now a Louisville lawyer preparing briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court. The other is a senior editor at the Mayo Clinic.

Today’s scholars roll their eyes, glance at their watches and check their phones for text messages. Clear, effective writing is not their worry. High school and college composition enabled them to focus on their feelings about life. They are experts at “self actualizing.” They are steeped in gender studies. Students live in a world where it is nearly illegal to hurt their feelings or damage their self-images. They are insulated from injury. No cause and effect relationship exists within their environment. Indeed the environment exists for them. Knowledge is not something they understand, verify, test or learn. Indeed not. Knowledge is something they feel.

Maybe I’m wrong.