Something that I have noticed in classes is that more and more students have been coming to class and spending the entire lecture talking to their friends. It is one thing if you are coming to class and spend the whole time on Facebook or iChat talking to your friends but speaking out loud in class is not okay. With a society with so much technology the issues of speaking in class and passing notes should be beyond us. If I want to share someone with the person sitting next to me or even 5 rows ahead of me all I have to do is pick up my phone or open Facebook.
This has gotten so bad that there are professors who stop every few minutes to tell students to be quiet. I have even ad one class where the professor just told the students to, "keep it to a dull roar." How can you run a class when there is so much going on? I can nearly keep a conversation going in a one on one setting when there is other stuff going on around me, let alone teach a class while 140 students are having private conversations in front of you.
This problem may be too big to handle. Out current society has been promoting short attention spans. It seems like too big a task for most people to sit through an hour and a half lecture. But on the flip side why is it so easy for people sit in front of a computer or television for hours on end. A much as I would like to suggest a solution, the problem is too big and there are too many other more important problems in the world. My biggest issue is just that I feel that my education is not at the level that it could be because there are other students in the room who do not feel that they have to pay attention.
If this is how you feel then don't come to class and if you do come to class just to be present please be quiet and curious to students who are here to learn. The must be some secret solution because you walk into a library and no one would dare speak out loud, but a lecture is your social scene.
