Apathy

I’m still aggravated with my students, but mainly because of their apathy. I just don’t understand it. Why wouldn’t someone want to learn? There is so much on this world to know, and ignorance is just not an excuse for me. I have always loved learning new things. I’ve always been one of those people (before the Internet age) who would look something up in the encyclopedia, find something else interesting along the way, read both, and then end up finding something else. I could spend hours perusing the encyclopedia. (Maybe I had a bit of ADD, LOL.) I’m the same way with Wikipedia and other information sources on the Internet. The difference now is that I can open a new tab instead of having three or four fingers holding my place for the next thing I wanted to read about.

I realize that this makes me a complete nerd. Then again it also makes me a great partner for Trivial Pursuit. I’m full of useless knowledge; some not so useless. Sometimes it just comes spilling out, and I have the fear that I’m a complete bore. I try to guard against that. A bore, a nerd, or whatever you would want to call me, I’ve always loved adding to my knowledge and reading new things. My love of learning is why student apathy frustrates me so much. I think it is something all teachers have to deal with at some point. It’s one of the reasons I loved teaching at the college where I was an adjunct. A lot of my students were older and had tried college once before but left because of apathy, then they realized what they were missing and were back to really learn this time around. Middle and high school students just don’t have that life experience yet to realize what they are missing. And it’s not just with my teaching because that would sound incredibly arrogant of me, but it is with nearly all teachers (many coaches are the exception). We have so much to give, and it gets frustrating when students don’t care.