Glen,
I agree with Dewayne's assessment of the "entitled generation". I believe that attention = retention is part of the solution. However, Attention is not just waking up the sleeping student, but communitating with the sleeping student during break or at some time to get to the heart of the issue.
I completely agree with your assessment of the situation. I would like to come to some kind of agreement on how to deal with this " entitled generation".
I find that with today’s society that boundaries are something that should be tested and not respected. The students that I have seem to have been brought up with what I call the "entitlement" mentality. What I mean by this is this new idea that every kid that plays ball gets a trophy even if he did nothing and even if his team did not win a game all season. What we are doing is producing a generation that believes that just by being there is all that matters. They are taught that 'I showed up for practice and the games so I deserve a trophy.' This has now worked its way through the education system and is now in most work places.
Some of the students I have are living examples of this attitude. The school I work for has standards and they are made clear from the beginning, but the students have learned through their lives that what they are hearing is just lip service. When I make it clear that the standards are to be lived up to I am at first not believed by the students, then resented by them for making them live up to those standards that they agreed to. I had one student leave class because I kept waking him up, which by the way is against school policy, and had the attitude that I had no right to continue waking him. With so many students like this in society it becomes very difficult to focus on those in class who are there because they genuinely want an education.
These situations also make the attention=retention idea a little hard to manage to. This only will work when the student you are giving the attention to wants to learn. The previous example was also me giving a student some attention, but not the type intended by the attention=retention theory. My job is to educate using my knowledge and experience in this field to help make the information more interesting. I am not here to coddle those few who feel they don't need to work to get this information; that by paying for the school I owe them the answers to the tests.
I think I will climb down off my soap box for now. My apologies if I got too far off subject.
I tell my students that our class is like a "sandbox". If we stay within it, we can have a great time, but if we go outside it (the rules)it's not so fun.
