Freshmen: They Just Don't Make Them Like They Use To
Cherri Buijk
Issue date: 2/12/08 Section: Arts & Culture
LAST MONTH THE Wall Street Journal reported on the apparent trend among freshmen to "keep their high school identities intact and actively resist entreaties from professors to expand their horizons." Citing English professor at Assumption College James M Lang's "The Myth of the First-Year Enlightenment," which featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, it appears that the intense first-year experience of mind-expansion may simply be a popularized notion of education from the past.
"What teens actually focus on during the first year out is this: daily time management," writes Tim Clydesdale, professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey and author of "The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School." For his book, Clydesdale conducted two sets of interviews of a sample student group, ascertaining their values and sense of identity: the first set during the students' senior year of high school, and the second during their freshman year of college.
"In other words," Lang remarks of the study, "freshmen spend more of their time and intellectual energy figuring out how to handle life without parental constraints and support...[determining] how much time to devote to studying, working, and playing."
At the heart of Lang and Clydesdale's suggestions is a certain lamentation, a sense of being no longer able to impart to students some profound change. "I dream of making a difference in student's lives-not just passing along skills that will help them write better business memos," Lang writes.
Indeed, the echoes of that typical, practically minded freshman can be heard among University of Michigan students. A survey seeking to ascertain Michigan freshmen's understanding of their own personal changes since high school cited an increased sense of independence outside of parental control as most notable. One respondent, noting major positive departures from her high school experience, shared her satisfaction in another practical improvement in her life, saying, "Here I have a good long paper probably every week, and I can crank out an essay in under an hour."
"What teens actually focus on during the first year out is this: daily time management," writes Tim Clydesdale, professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey and author of "The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School." For his book, Clydesdale conducted two sets of interviews of a sample student group, ascertaining their values and sense of identity: the first set during the students' senior year of high school, and the second during their freshman year of college.
"In other words," Lang remarks of the study, "freshmen spend more of their time and intellectual energy figuring out how to handle life without parental constraints and support...[determining] how much time to devote to studying, working, and playing."
At the heart of Lang and Clydesdale's suggestions is a certain lamentation, a sense of being no longer able to impart to students some profound change. "I dream of making a difference in student's lives-not just passing along skills that will help them write better business memos," Lang writes.
Indeed, the echoes of that typical, practically minded freshman can be heard among University of Michigan students. A survey seeking to ascertain Michigan freshmen's understanding of their own personal changes since high school cited an increased sense of independence outside of parental control as most notable. One respondent, noting major positive departures from her high school experience, shared her satisfaction in another practical improvement in her life, saying, "Here I have a good long paper probably every week, and I can crank out an essay in under an hour."
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