Wednesday, August 20, 2008
1. Why Are You Here?
After reading the articles by Stanley Fish and Dave Eggers in your Current Issues textbook, make a claim of your own based in the arguments they present. Do college students have a responsibility to the greater community? What is the connection between students and the larger world? Make sure to refer to the ideas of both writers in your answer. Due Friday, 22 August.
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After reading the articles by Stanley Fish and Dave Eggers, I have some claims in both arguments. In Fish’s work, it's your job to do your own work. It's not someone else's job to do the work for you. You can't succeed if you don't try. If you need help with schoolwork, then ask for help but you can't get free answers. Life is not easy but you have to deal with it. You can't always do whatever you want to do in life because you have responsibilities to take care of in life. If you want to get an academic scholarship in college, then you must work hard to make A's and B's every year in high school and also do well on the SAT or ACT. I honestly put in all my effort and worked hard to get some scholarship money for college. I also did that so that I could save my parents money. It is not worth it to cheat or plagiarize because it doesn't help you learn at all or make you have a better education. You have to put in effort to make your education successful. In Eggers work, he talks about volunteering for a community service. College life makes you busy. After graduating college, you have to know what to do in the real world such as your job. I think college students have a responsibility to the greater community because you are on your own and it is something that everybody will be experiencing once they are a freshman in college. The connection between students and the larger world is that you have to take care of your responsibilities because you do not live with your parents anymore and they can’t tell you what to do. It’s now your turn to step up. It’s time to get out of the shell and take risks.
Do college students have a responsibility to the greater community? I think we have the opportunity of helping to change the world, rather than the responsibility. As I think Stanley Fish would agree, he says,". . .don't confuse your academic obligations with the obilgation to save the world". In college we do have that priority of creating better character not only within ourselves but others around us. Dave Eggers on the other hand, had somewhat of a different opinion. He believed in community service. He says "college students are uniquely suited to have time for and to benefit from getting involved and addressing the needs of others around them" , which I think isn't a bad idea. I think their is some good in college students community service, it can help better their social and listening skills. But, I also think that they shouldn't be forced to do such services.
What is the connection between students and the larger world? Well, there is a great connection. Soon after their college years, students will be introduced into the real world. And they will need that knowledge of the bigger picture to be able to function in society and know what is happening. Stanley and Dave I believe both had good ideas about the "college student" but also very different.
I must say that I am leaning more towards that article written by Stanley Fish because so many Americans procrastinate and don't think about how they should be spending their time because we tend to be involved in numerous activities at once. I agree that requiring students to participate in a certain amount of community service hours, mentioned in the second article, is a good idea but this isn't necessarily achieveable for many students. There are more productive things us students could do with our time but we have to consciously make the right decision on our own. A huge majority of college students are not going to like being told to do something and quite frankly, making this a requirement is not going to minimize our party time it's going to cut into our study time. Generally speaking, college students like to party and making community service a requirement is not going to take that away. Personally, I am not a party girl but that doesn't mean I want to spend what little time I do have cleaning up someone else's mess. To me it seems as though Dave Eggers might regret the poor decisions he made in college but that doesn't mean future students should be punished for it. If I want to play foosball then I'm going to play foosball, if I want to study then I will study and if I want to stay out all night then I will stay out all night. It's my decision to make, not anyone else's.
After reading both articles I honestly think that both articles statements are true. In Stanley Fish's article he claimed that you must do your own and that no one can do your work for. Basically saying that it is up to you whether you want to succeed in life or not. However in Dave Eggers' work he claims that there is too much time on students hand, which to me would seem to give the student more time to do work and succeed in the classroom. I guess I would be leaning more toward Stanley Fish and most of his views. I believe that students have responsibility to the greater community because i think that students have the ability to change the world. Everyone has an opinion and has the capability to express their feelings towards everything. I feel that this access and this capability connects students to the larger world. The students are receiving an education and are able to make an educated decision based on their academic progress, which then makes them have to ability to change the world around them. Whether it be the community or the whole world, students can change it.
After reading the two articles by Stanley Fish and Dave Eggers, I have obtained several claims from their arguments and believe a little bit of both. I believe Stanley Fish when he states that people should do the task you are called to do and the job you get paid to do. It is not fair for someone else to do your job and the point of going to college is to find your specialty in life and make a career out of it. However, I do not believe that college students should be limited to just one task in the world. Dave Eggers makes the point that "college students are uniquely suited to have time for and to benefit from getting involved and addressing the needs of those around them." If a college student wants to help out in the community and volunteer to help someone who is in need or is suffering then they have the time and the work is greatly appreciated. Eggers tells the reader that even a simple 10 hours from 6 millions students would mean a total of 60 million hours of volunteer work. Thats 60 million hours of helping someone in need. I disagree with Fish's statement about how our job is not to change the world, but interpret it. People go to college so that when they get out in the real world they can make it a better place to live and learn. People who become teachers educate, doctors heal the sick, therapits help people who are grieving or possibly mentally unstable. All of these things make the world go around and make this life worth living when people in need are helped. Wouldn't you want to make someones life worth living?
I don't think Mr. Stanley Fish accurately answers the question: "Do college students have a responsibility to the greater community?" Here is why I came to this conclusion. The author talks about how college professors should have things in place that "penalizes cheating and plagiarizing" (pg.581). However, it is not the responsibility of the university/college to instill a sense of moral behavior within their students. Mr. Fish talks throughout his essay about how politics and academia are intertwined and how it is the academics job to interpret the world and not change it. In his essay, Mr. Fish talks about the universities role about creating morality in students but not about whether or not students have a responsibility to the greater community.
Mr. Eggers suggests that college students should be required to perform community service instead of devoting their time to foosball or any other wasteful activities. Students will come to realize how important helping those in need actually is, and will come away from graduation with the insight of how to “balance jobs, family, and volunteer work” (pg. 585). Volunteer work during college will create “lifelong volunteers,” according to Eggers.
The two articles that have nothing in common both have supporting details. Professors at colleges should not dedicate all their time to persuade students to do vollunteer work. A student is in class to learn and just as Stanly Fish stated teachers should "not surrender academic obligations to the agenda of any non-academic consitituency." I also agree with Stanly Fish when he writes that moral values and politics should be relevant to the class subject. His exact words in his work is that politics should be "appropriate to the enterprise they signed onto." Teachers can incorporate this by "arguing about thinks like curriculum, department leadership, the direction of research, the content and manner of teaching, and establishing standards "- that relate to the class subject. I as a student-athlete am already discovering great difficulties in keeping up with my academic obligations and finding time to get in the gym. I disagree with Mr. Dave Eggers for belittling the college student for questioning if the college "deserves the time off?" This question makes one feel as if the student does not have any responsibilities to studying, sports, or even the universities clubs. I do like his idea of giving a student one class credit of every 25 hours of community service that they complete. I believe the community service should relate to a students major because we as students attend college to master a particulary skill. College is a time to master a skill and then once our duty of work is complete in the classroom we take the knowledge we learned in those four years and effect the world in a positive way. In conclusion teachers and students should "do their job; don't try to do someone else's job, as your are unlikely to be qualified and dont let anyone else do our job."
While I love volunteering and helping other people; I think I may agree with Stanley Fish. In A College Education: What is Its Purpose, he says "...don't confuse your academic obligations with the obilgation to save the world." When a student enters college, they are not thinking about what community service project they are going to do next. They are thinking about what classes to take for their major, or maybe what to major in. However I do not think it is a bad thing for colleges to want their students to become better citizens and volunteer once in a while. Or at least one point during their college experience. Dave Eggers believes that there should be a requirement of volunteer services, which reminds me of the high school that I attended that is starting to require some odd hours of community service for graduation, starting their freshman year and ending a few weeks before the graduation date.
As for the connection between students and the world, if students do volunteer they can be given the opprotunity to see how the world really is. My church gives enough food to sixty different families to feed them for the month, and I have seen that even "nomral" people struggle in the world. I volunteer also at Palliative Care Center and Hospice of Catawba Valley. There I have been given the opprotunity to help cancer victims do daily chores, such as walking the dog. Not only have I been able to see how the real world is, but I have been able to help out others while doing so. Seeing people who can not afford food has made me really appreciate the chance that life has given me in going to college and getting a good education. Who knows if I would appreciate it as much if I did not volunteer and see these things. I suppose I'm trying to say, academics are really important; but then again so is volunteering. If you go to college for academics, worry about what you are there to accomplish. If one of the things on the list is volunteer work, great; if not there are other opprotunities in life to volunteer.
College students do have a responsibility to the community, whether that community is the local community or a national community. College is said to be about not just classes but forming your ideal lifestyle. The choices made in college are choices that will probably be made for the rest of that student's life. Why shouldn't the young adults in college be taught to make a philanthropist decision at least once a year, if not twice. Fish argued that it was not for the college to change world, but he never fully answered why we should not get involved. We have to take control of what is going to happen to our society in the future, and if that means something as simple as handing out food in a homeless shelter, than so be it, because no one can guarantee that he or she are not going to be the one that is homeless after a few years out of college. In Eggers closing paragraph he brought up question after question that if boiled down to its beginning essence would be along the lines of, "what do college students have that doing that serving at minimum ten hours of community service would be that much of inconvenience?" I am inclined to agree with Eggers, being involved in the community would be rather beneficial for all college students, even community college students. Getting involved in the community in college would mean that when the students of today become adults they can take part of changing some of the world issues. Everyone talks a great deal about their plans to change the world to have a better future, what way to get everyone motivated for that change than to do work for the community. In the article written by Stanley Fish, he makes a reference to how Marx thinks that we are not to interpret the world but to change it, and Fish was quick to support the other side when it comes to academia. But why can't students do both, interpret and change the world?
After reading both articles I believe college students do have a greater responsibility to the community since it is the time to change. Everyones' life is like a hermit crab. We must take our own responsibilities and make our own choices. The reason why I compare life to a hermit crab's is because we all must move on. We have to find our own place and before we can do that first, we must learn our place society. We must keep to our own business like what Stanley Fish wrote. However, we cannot close the outside world away from us. What happen outside have much impact on our daily lives. For example, if all we care about is our academics than how will we afford to pay our education bills. If we aim low to get the task done then what is the benefit of it. I was always told to aim high, get that goal, and receive the benefits from the hard work completed. Sometimes I don't even reach that high goal but I never give up.
In addition, Davy Eggers stated in his article that college students should be required to volunteer in service activities. I agree with his statement because we must learn from the outside to help enhanced our knowledge. Though, a newly college student should not be too impulsive with the community yet. Of course, he is learning his place of belonging but it is not easy to jump into unknown territory.
Yet, I disagree with Eggers on his statement that all college students must learn to live the unprotected
world. What if a college is not ready yet? No one is ready to leave a protected world and enter into the unknown but we must move on with the crowd or be left behind. Even though college life is very different from high school life I believe that aiming high and hard work will get every person their dreams.
The arguments presented by both authors include aspects that I agree with and do not. I do believe that college students have a responsibility to the community in general. However, to say that they are the only ones that are responsible is wrong. As Fish claimed in his argument students are there for their academic obligation. I agree whole heartedly with that statement. A student pays to attend college and to risk their academic obligation is wasting money. However, as Eggers claimed students have unlimited amounts of time playing “foosball” or wasting time that could be well spent. I also agree with this statement. My claim seems to come to the middle of the two authors’. College students should have responsibility for their community. Nonetheless, they are not the only ones who have free time that could be well spent. Everyone in a community should have a responsibility in their community. While, like college students, people have things they are obligated to do they still have time to put work into the community. So I believe college students do have responsibility, but they are not the only ones.
Students have a huge connection with the larger world. After they graduate they are literally thrown out into the “large” world. However big the connection, it is still with the world.
Overall, I believe the connection to the large world begins with their community. I agree with both arguments and feel that there is a compromise.
I believe that students do not need to be apart of the growing community. This may seem like I don’t care about the community of where I go to school. I do but my main objective is to obtain a proper education to better myself and my future. Stanley Fish states that we should not worry about others jobs but focus on what we are here for, which as a student is to learn. We should not have to worry about school work, the financial aspect of schooling and helping out around the community. I understand that there are others in need of help around the surrounding community, but there are groups designed specifically for that reason. Dave Eggers suggest that college students have free time and mainly use that time to learn a craft of very little importance such as foosball. This may be the case but to suggest that they should use that time to work community service is unfair. Free time is free time if they want to do community service that’s ok, but if a person wants to do something else they should do what they please. Plus college classes can be difficult and students need that free time to complete tasks for their classes. Students are the future of the world and some may want to help out, but I feel that to better help serve the world they should get the best education possible. That’s why students attend college. If a person wants to be helpful to the world by helping less fortunate there is the peace corps and habitat for humanity and other organizations that are designed for that. To require students have a requirement for community service would be absurd and I feel would be a disservice to a persons ability to change the world through other venues.
After reading both articles I have to agree more with Stanley Fish. He seemed to have more facts to back up his point which was that students need to do their own work. But, to answer the question Do students have the responsibility to the greater community, I would say they should not have to hold that responsibility if they do not want to. I believe that student should do for themselves before they can do for anyone else. It is all about what students want to do with there free time. They could choose to party, study, play sports, or sleep.
With Dave Eggers he believes that everything sould be working toward helping others in need. Sometimes that is good but not all the time because people go to college to experience new things and not do the same thing over and over again. Eggers sounded like he did not want anyone to do anything besides school and commmunity service. But, that is against what a lot of people came to college for. Most students came to experience new things and maybe find something they would like to do along the way.
I completely disagree with Why We Built the Ivory Tower. Professors and teachers have more obligations than just presenting subject matter and handing out work. Teachers and professors definitely shape young people's lives and help build their characters all throughout their lives. Teachers should hold their students to a moral standard as well as an academic one in order to help make society a better place.
Also, I completely disagree with Serve or Fail. college students have enough demands and pressures already without adding on forced volentary work. The part that made the most sense to me is when it said who would want to receive community service from someone who is forced to serve. I also don't think students would warm up to it like it implied. I think it would be a burden to all students and the job they do therefore would suffer.
In my opinion after reading both articles, I believe that Stanley Fish makes a great point about doing your own work. In the article he says that in order to succeed you have to do your own work, its not another persons job to do your work. I believe that Mr. Fish hit that point right on the head. You can not succeed in life if you rely on someone else to do your work for you. I think that's also something that you should carry with you, your whole life. Even though times get hard, or you have other things you would rather do, you still can't rely on someone else to do your work. You have to do your own work in order to succeed. Dave Eggers states an argument that college students have a responsibility to the greater world. I will also go with Eggers here because the transition from high school to college is a big step in a lot of freshman's minds. You don't have your mom and dad there to tell you what to, or you have to motivate yourself to do your homework. You are an adult now and your going to have to start making your own decisions. So I think the connection between students and the greater world is also a big part of learning in college. You have to make sure you are taking care of your responsibility's. You have to tell yourself, "I have to get this paper done, before my next class" and do your paper. It's almost like your a boss of yourself and you make the decisions now. After all I believe different parts of both of the articles read.
While I found Dave Eggers a bit overbearing and obnoxious, I think he raised several good points. College is a kind of transitional period during which students are prone to change their minds and are open to influence. Because of this, college students could be profoundly influenced by service. A university should recognize its role in the development of the youth. Stanley Fish seems to also ignore the value of the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and fails to recognize that a university is a crucial part to any community and by failing to encourage or at least address ‘the practices of responsible citizenship and moral behavior’ a university is partially failing the students and, in turn, the whole community. By offering one hour credit for every 25 hours volunteered, a university helps to nudge students onto a better path without forcing them to do service. I mean, ‘forced philanthropy,’ as the Daily Californian put it, is a ridiculous concept. You have to let the people choose for themselves. But a college should try to encourage the best from its students as they are in a kind of limbo–not yet in the real world but close enough to have an impact on the surrounding community. Without the guiding hand of the university, students left to their own devices would probably end up in a bubble, ignoring the rest of the world and instead playing foosball 24-7.
I believe that college students first have a responsibility to themselves but additionaly have responsibility to the community which surrounds them. A student is a part of the community which surrounds so therefore the student has responsiblity for themselves along with the community. I agree with Fish in the aspect that it is your own responsiblity to do your work and succeed in this work. In order to succeed in your work you must first and foremost be responsible for your self. Also students owe it to themselves to be responsible for their own well being first since they have put in the hard work to make it to the college level and are working toward a goal to better their future. I also think that a student has the oppurtunity to better themselves and the community through community service. Participating in community service could allow a student to be more well rounded and be able to make a name for themselves rather than to spend their time playing games such as the student in Egger's article. This oppurtunity to become more well rounded overall helps the student in the long run and gives them a connection to the community for when they graduate and potentially go look for jobs.
After analyzing the articles written by Stanley Fish and Dave Eggers, I have more desire to articulate my negative thoughts about them. Fish expressed multiple good statements, especially when he declared that a student should be most focused on their work and not saving the world. The overall point that students should only be expect to excel in their work and the universities should only be expected to teach that rather then focusing on morals or citizenship is very true. There are two main downfalls from his article that I sense the reason for me to be turned off. For one he seemed overconfident and had no problem stating all of his achievements in a fashion that made me draw back from his true points. And secondly, this article seems like it is directed towards parents or other university professors, and if this is the case it would be harder for an actual college student to understand his philosophy. Egger may have had some positive statements in his work but none were totally absorbed by me because I could not get passed the first couple paragraphs. The fact that he feels that college students have so much free time and all they seem to do is paint toenails or play foosball just blows my mind. Ill admit in a way his statement is true, but what a college student chooses to do with their free time is different with every individual. I have only been attending college a week or so, I know since I am a freshman I have easy classes, and I don’t have a lot of “free time”. Obviously I don’t have classes as frequently as high school, but the majority of the day out of class I am either studying, writing papers, cleaning my dorm room, or trying to put a dent in the massive heap of laundry that’s sitting in the corner of my room. I am not even a school athlete and I find myself scrounging for “free time”, so I cannot relate to Eggers article at all.
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