Via Open Artifact, the tale of of a self-confessed "50 year old, gray haired, college professor", puzzled by a greeting of "How’s it goin’, man?" from an unknown Sears cashier.
The author's later ruminations on informality, habits and learning-as-change are interesting, but I am a little worried by the inferences he draws from these few words. In particular:
I suppose I should be encouraged that a 19-year old thinks I’m cool enought o call me "man," but, actually, I imagine this fellow had no clue what he was actually saying.
On the contrary, I imagine this fellow knew exactly what he was saying. The problem was that he did not necessarily consider what these words might mean to a "50 year old, gray haired, college professor". I suggest that this speaking style may not be deliberate or even unconscious informality, merely the speech patterns of his peer group. Calling you "man" probably says nothing about whether he considers you to be "cool", merely that he acknowledges you as a human being worthy of interaction.
Imagine the young cashier had said "bonjour" instead. Should we infer formality or informality, or merely that he might be French?
In my classes I have students who refer to me as "Sir" or "Mr Carver". I also have some who are more likely to refer to me as "Oy!" or "Franky-boy". The challenge is to maintain effective communication so that learning can take place. As teacher this is largely my responsibility, and in practice this means tuning my responses and communication styles to suit the situation. Students have the luxury of being themselves; I must adapt to be what they need.
This is a familiar dilemma to all teachers. In some ways the approach taken depends on the situation and the aims of the teaching institution.
At the college where I teach, most students are "funded", meaning that they and their families don't pay directly for the courses or qualifications, but that the college claims income from the government for each student on the books. The details of this funding can greatly affect how the students are taught.
Our college recieves some funding for each student enrolled, some more for each student who makes it to the end of the course, and a final amount for each student who passes a qualification. This means that the college is reluctant to offer courses without a qualification, and also reluctant to remove lazy or even disruptive students from courses - if they stay to the end, they are worth more. Note also that there is no extra income for students that score better than a basic pass, so there is hardly any encouragement to stretch students out of their "comfort zone".
So, the upshot of this is that for most of the teaching I have done at this college, I have had to concentrate mainly on the lazy, troublesome and less-capable students at the expense of the (potentially) high-achievers. Any student who can scrape a pass without much teacher input is "money in the bank". The maximum payoff for the college comes in counselling the troublemakers to reduce the impact they have on other students, and pushing and pulling any students who are near the pass line into achieving a pass.
It's a depressing prospect, but at least I have one class, for a whole two hours a week, where I can challenge and grow some of the more able students.
His trouble is understandable. I doubt that the form of addressing would change anything. In Russia, in school and then at the University we had to address teachers and professors in a formal (respectful) manner -- this didn't change the fact that majority of students tried to learn as little as possible.
I have a friend in Russia who started to teach in college not long ago. He confessed that he is a "bad" teacher, because he ignores students who don't want to learn and pays attention only to those who want. Question to Frank: how do you deal with this dilemma?