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What Professors Don’t Teach

By: Erin Pembroke

When I graduated college and stepped out into the world, I realized that the professors
did not prepare me for what was to come. I am currently dealing with shock, not necessarily
culture shock but close to it. Why would professors do this to their students? Why are students
not prepared for the world that they have to assimilate in?

I realized that the concepts that I was taught in school do not apply outside of the
academic world. The concepts were fine to learn but that is just it; they are merely concepts that
do not work in the world. The concepts that I have learned in my classes belong only in the
books that I have read but they are merely theories that do not work in reality. To emphasize my
point that not everything can be learned from a book, I placed parts of William Wordsworth’s
poem, “Expostulation and Reply” below:

“Where are your books? That light bequeat’d

To beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! Up! And drink the spirit breath’d
From dead men to their kind.”
“You look round on your mother earth
As if she for no purpose bore you…”

“Nor less deem that there are powers

Which of themselves our minds impress,
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness…”

“--Then ask not wherefore, here alone,

Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away.”

The poet basically states that he is learning more by going out and experiencing nature
than in the books that he reads. In my own experience, that is what I am finding and learning to
be true. I must go out and experience things as opposed to simply reading about them…

Furthermore, the professors live in the books that they read but they do not teach students
to think beyond academics. How can I use what I have learned in the “real world?” Some
students can but I personally cannot. There are just some things in life that cannot be taught in
books and that a person has to learn by simply experiencing and taking a hands-on approach.
Professors do not teach students how to use their skills beyond academics or to think at all.
Parents stopped raising thinkers and teachers stopped nurturing the ability to think.

Professors and teachers stopped teaching critical thinking skills and started dictating to
their classes. How can a student learn when they do not need to think? All a professor has to do
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is tell the student what to think and what to write about. I rarely had a professor that allowed me
to pick a topic within a wide range of a topic. I was always limited or had a very narrow range in
what the professor wanted me to write about or what the professor specifically knew. I also
rarely had a professor that truly challenged my mind. I can only name two or three professors out
of four fields that I studied in that truly challenged me.

Most of my professors never asked me about my ideas and opinions on a subject matter
and that is a problem in itself. How would a professor know what their students are thinking or
about ideas that they have on the subject matter if they simply do not ask? I dislike that some
professors view some of their students as inferior when some are perhaps on the same thinking
level. I remember stating many ideas to professors that have never thought about or pointing out
many ideas and themes in a book that they have never seen and would not have seen had I not
pointed it out and voiced my ideas to them. Therefore, professors do not realize that they are
raising “mindless robots.” These “robots” are students who cannot think for themselves in
society.

Professors encourage this robotic mind but perhaps to think is to rebel against the norm.
Perhaps professors are afraid to teach others how to think and not what to think because it can
possibly lead to a rebellion of some sort. For a culture and era that overcame a lot of learning
obstacles, especially those of the 1940s to 1960s, we still have a lot to learn. It is a wonderful
concept that women are now allowed think in America but what good was women’s movement
when most female students now are not willing to think. It is not just female students, but male
as well. What good was the Age of Enlightenment or Age of Reason, when male students do not
want to reason anymore?

Professors do not teach students or allow students to challenge them because they think
that they will lose their authority over their students. Guess what, I undeniably made it my
prerogative to challenge them. I figured that some professors have a narrow-minded view of their
students, as if their students do not know anything. I also figured that if they have the right to
question the students, then why can’t I, as a student have the right to question them? Learning
works both ways. I think it is beneficial for a student to question their professors so that the
professor can think some more and learn from the students. However, this is not encouraged in
classrooms and the professors do not teach this.

Moving on, not only do professors not teach students to challenge them, they do not warn
them of the difficulties of finding a job in this economic crisis and the depression that they may
suffer through. Professors and students may touch on the subject of the difficulties of finding a
job but it should also be a professor’s duty to prepare them for what is to come. Students need to
know and expect that there is an almost non-existent chance at the moment to find a job or career
in their field of study. Students also need to statically know of their chances of succeeding in
their field of study. Students need to know that they will undergo depression.
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Some of these students may surpass their depression and some may commit suicide while
others may turn to narcotics to alleviate their emotional pain. This is the dark and shady side of
education and the transition from the academic world to the non-academic world. The students
that were once optimistic have now turned pessimistic and without hope. Some do not have
mentors to guide and encourage them and that is what a student needs from a professor. The
professor has to learn to become more or be more for the student.

All-in-all, professors do not teach students how to think or use their skills out in the
world. Concepts that one may have learned may not apply or “work in the real world.”
Professors also do not teach their students to question or challenge them and the very real
possibility of undergoing depression when job hunting. However, professors should be more
open-minded and ask students opinions and listen to their ideas about a subject matter. Most
importantly, professors should be mentors for their students.