Lazy American Students: After the Deluge
By Kara Miller
On Monday, The Boston Globe ran an opinion piece entitled "My Lazy American Students."
In it, I wrote about how teaching in college has shown me that international students often work harder than their American counterparts. Though this is emphatically not true across the board, the work ethic and success of Asian, European, and South American students – who have to compete with a classroom of native English speakers – can be astounding.
I also noted in the column that there's too much texting in class, too much dozing off, too much e-mail-checking, too much flirting (I didn't mention flirting in the first piece, but I'll mention it here). Obviously, international students do all these things, but I have noticed them more amongst American students. ...
... By Monday morning, "My Lazy American Students" was the most e-mailed article on the Globe's website. By late Monday, it was the most e-mailed article in the last 30 days, even though it had been online for less that 48 hours. Hundreds of comments piled up on Boston.com; on Wednesday, there were nearly 500. ...
... I never used the word "lazy" in my submission to the Globe; the original title was "America's Work Deficit," which reflected my intention to comment on our entire educational system. But authors do not write headlines, so that decision was out of my hands. ...
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/wellesley/2009/12/lazy_american_students_after_t.html
-- Kara Miller teaches rhetoric and history at Babson College.
Her previous opinion piece:
