Student rudeness and uncouth classroom conduct are the stuff of legend these days, and it's frequently been covered at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, and elsewhere. Many of you, I'm sure, have encountered the familiar litany of offenses, including chronic impunctuality, ongoing conversations during lectures, feet propped up with chips and soda and ......... TEXTING, which really does it for me, maybe because I'm always getting into near-car accidents with inattentive cellphone-a-holics.
So how do you handle this? Most of the "professional" advice I regularly get usually indicates why there's a problem to begin with. Here's a couple of examples sent to me recently, which really require no comment unless it's Are You Kidding? Unfortunately, I don't think that the author is. I'm going to stick with being a martinet and a Man of Steel.
