Comments on: Generation Y and Academic Teachers

By: Terrence Lockter

Terrence Lockter — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:03:18 +0000

Wow. “incidating” for “indicating”. Can’t recall having perpetrated a typo like THAT before!

By: Terrence Lockyer

Terrence Lockyer — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:09:27 +0000

I wonder. I am on several discussion lists populated mainly by academics, and find there a persistent demographic that is resistent to social media; especially Twitter (of which they claim not to see the point, which they seem to regard – in conflict with the findings of surveys – as a medium for and used mainly by the young, and which they often describe as a medium for trivial communication – incidating to me that they either have not really looked at it, or have not stuck around long enough to find the good stuff). Now, these are people who are very comfortable with the nearly 20-year-old medium of the e-mail discussion list, so I suspect there does continue to be a persistent portion of academia that is very technophobic, or at least resistent to new forms thereof.

There is also – I gather from exchanges on the lists – a clear divide between those who see popular culture and media representation and discussion of their subject area as an opportunity to raise awareness and insert a more informed viewpoint; and those who simply decry errors and oversimplifications, but show no sign of a willingness to join the conversation.

By: AJ Cann

AJ Cann — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:15:01 +0000

It’s not true to say “they all use computers/social media”. Most of them do, but a few avoid these tools if at all possible and should not be excluded.

By: Mary

Mary — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:41:19 +0000

I’ve read similar things about generation Y before, the issue of expecting praise for every little thing, not wanting to buy a house, refusing to participate in ‘growing up’ milestones. I find it (as a 1989 baby) to be a little insulting, but frustratingly accurate for many of my peers.

At high school (2000-2005 for me) there are award systems in place to encourage students to perform well, get a certain number of merits/stars/stamps/stickers and you get for example a voucher for HMV. Many students would recieve stickers for remembering their books, or even in extreme cases just bringing a pen to class. However, those of us who worked hard, who were in the top classes when subjects were streamed and who were understood to be university candidates one day would be lucky to get a merit for completing homework, it would have to be exceptional to be rewarded. So what happened was the lazy, work-shy students were constantly rewarded for the most trifling things whilst we became jaded with the whole system and as this post shows, I am still bitter!

Despite the credit crunch and recession I have moved away from home, one day I dream of buying my first house despite being told it is increasingly unlikely I will ever be able to do so! My ‘generation’ is constantly told we are lazy and childish with no respect for our elders or drive to improve ourselves.

Is it any wonder we’ve taken to the internet to vent our spleen and get one over ‘the man’ by illegally taking on the system one mp3 download at a time? Please be aware that some of us volunteer our time to charity, have dreams and ambitions and know about and use JSTOR, despite the fact it’s a poorly executed website which is often abandoned in favour of googlebooks!

By: rwmg

rwmg — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 10:03:48 +0000

>>Most academics are stubbornly not using any form of social media. They do not blog, they do not follow the few academic bloggers online, they refuse to have a twitter account and they update their facebook page only once every three months.<<

I wonder if this is still true. I can imagine that it was true 5 years ago (bearing in mind that FB and twitter didn't exist then), but there are far more bloggers, FB-ers, and tweeps in classics and history than I have time to keep up with (unfortunately).