This evening I attended an interesting discussion with my teaching colleagues where we, once again, got into the hot topic of how "students these days are so different from when we were in college." I am beginning to think that this is the same urban legend as, "when we went to school we had to walk up hill in two feet of snow."
If students are not engaged in class lessons, who is responsible, teacher or student? It is my belief that it is the teacher who is responsible for engaging the student in a way that is appropriate for where the student "is at". Meaning, you have to adjust your teaching techniques to how students prefer to learn. Perhaps, once you reach them, you can introduce them to other ways of learning and even teach them to be teachers - which is my secret agenda.
Ultimately, you can't teach them if you can't reach them. What I do know is that pure lecturing, without asking questions and or offering listening, does not work.
